Image via Wikipedia The yoga sutras are a lot of fun to read – especially the super-natural ones. I try not to take them too literally, as you never know what might have been warped in translation, or perhaps included merely to inspire yogis to go the extra mile in their practices. Occasionally, I come [...]
Posts Tagged ‘Psychology’
The mind is stranger than the yoga sutras
Posted in meditation, tagged Brain, Memory, Nervous system, Patañjali, Perirhinal cortex, Psychology, Yoga, Yoga Sutras of Patanjali on December 16, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Harvard psychology professors and the truth about happiness
Posted in Mindfulness, tagged Consciousness, Daniel Gilbert, Meditation, Mind, Mind-wandering, mindfulness, Psychology, Ram Dass, Religion and Spirituality, Teachers and Centers on November 16, 2010 | 2 Comments »
In his new movie, former Harvard psychology professor turned spiritual teacher Ram Dass (Dr. Richard Alpert), hails us to, “love everybody and tell the truth”. Tell the truth. Not only a great rule to live by, but one of the things that I’ve always loved about science … its a way to discover and face [...]
Talk about nothing
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Alison Gopnik, Children, Development, Developmental psychology, Psychology, Rubin Museum of Art, The Philosophical Baby: What Children's Minds Tell Us About Truth Love and the Meaning of Life on November 9, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Yogic wisdom from kids? Maybe. Check out the upcoming lecture series at the Rubin Museum of Art: “Talk about Nothing” (literally, discussions on what “nothing” means) given by, among many others, developmental psychologist Alison Gopnik and scottish actor Brian Cox. Alison Gopnik argues that the minds of children could help us understand deep philosophical questions. [...]
Love is space and time measured by the heart
Posted in breathing, tagged Art, Craig Wright, Emotion, Empathy, illusions, Marcel Proust, melissa arctic, Psychology, time, Yoga on October 25, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Have you ever lost track of time in yoga class? On a good day, I’ll get so into the practice that my awareness of “how much time still to go?” comes at the very end. Other days, I might feel time dragging as if the class is taking forever (best not to glance at a [...]
Yoga instructors carry out clinical trial on fibromyalgia
Posted in Mindfulness, physiology, tagged Fibromyalgia, Oregon Health & Science University, Pain, parasympathetic nervous system, Psychology, Teachers and Centers, Yoga on October 20, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Image by drburtoni via Flickr A recent scientific study of yoga and fibromyalgia has been buzzing around the web (here, here, here, here). The study is entitled, “A pilot randomized controlled trial of the Yoga of Awareness program in the management of fibromyalgia” [doi: 10.1016/j.pain.2010.08.020] and is one of the most scholarly articles on the [...]
Ground your sitbones into the science of grit
Posted in Mindfulness, tagged persistence, Psychology, Yoga on October 13, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Image by Dru! via Flickr If you’ve practiced yoga, you’ve probably heard these common admonitions: ” Yoga is 1% theory and 99% practice“, “Yoga is for everyman – except the lazy man” etc., etc.. Me too. So I perked up when reading this article entitled, “The truth about grit: Modern science builds the case for [...]
A wide river flows inside the developing brain
Posted in breathing, clinical trial, Mindfulness, tagged Breathing, Central nervous system, Meditation, Mental health, Mind, mindfulness, Practice, Psychology, Teachers and Centers on September 21, 2010 | 1 Comment »
Image by Preconscious Eye via Flickr As a parent, there are times when I realize that the world of my children is not the world I grew up in. Yes, the Readin’, ‘Ritin’ & ‘Ritmetic are still just as important … and there is nothing as precious as apple pie and little league in the [...]
Jung illuminates the fires of the solar plexus chakra
Posted in alchemy, Carl Jung, chakras, Uncategorized, tagged Emotion, Kundalini, Kundalini yoga, Manipura, Psychology, Religion and Spirituality, spirituality on August 24, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Image via Wikipedia More on CG Jung‘s famous “chakra lectures” … In lecture 2 he opines on symbolic and psychological aspects of the 3rd chakra – Manipura – shown here with a yellow center and red triangle that symbolize fire. Interestingly, the location of this chakra overlaps with what we, today, call the “solar” plexus [...]
Posterior parietal cortex and the science of "self-transcendence"
Posted in Mindfulness, tagged Awareness, Brain, Central nervous system, Consciousness, mindfulness, Psychology, Religion and Spirituality, Transcendentalism, Yoga on July 24, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Image via Wikipedia The brain and mind changes that come with extensive yoga practice seem to increase inner awareness and – as many practitioners report – towards a more “spiritual” awareness. What is this? … in terms of specific brain systems? One recent research article, “The Spiritual Brain: Selective Cortical Lesions Modulate Human Self-Transcendence” has [...]
On mindfulness: old yogis and latent biological adaptations
Posted in Mindfulness, tagged Brain, Cognition, Meditation, Psychology, Religion and Spirituality, Yoga on July 2, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Image by whatsthatpicture via Flickr This post is part of an ongoing exploration of “mindfulness” biology and the neurobiology of reflecting inwardly on one’s mental life. I hope it helps support the self-discovery aim of the blog. In some ways, the 8 limbs of yoga described in the yoga sutras, seem a bit like a [...]
A remarkable mixture of the Bhagavad Ghita and the New York Herald
Posted in Mindfulness, tagged Arts, B. K. S. Iyengar, Breathing, Buddism, Central nervous system, Consciousness, Emotion, India, Jonah Lehrer, Meditation, mindfulness, New York Herald, Patañjali, philosophy, Poetry, Proust Was A Neuroscientist, Psychology, relaxation, Religion and Spirituality, soul, Walt Whitman, William James, World Literature, Yoga, Yoga Sutras of Patanjali on June 24, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Image via Wikipedia I’m enjoying some summer reading of Jonah Lehrer‘s Proust Was A Neuroscientist. Chapter 1 does not disappoint! – on the life and poetry of Walt Whitman who was among the first modern western artists to reject dualist notions of a dichotomy between mind and body that stemmed from early Christian writings and [...]
Brain science of self: Llinas and Roy
Posted in breathing, tagged B. K. S. Iyengar, Brain, Central nervous system, coherence, Consciousness, dualism, Input/output, Meditation, Mind, mindfulness, Nervous system, Neuron, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, philosophy, Psychology, relaxation, Religion and Spirituality, Rodolfo R. Llinas, spirituality, Yoga on June 21, 2010 | 2 Comments »
Image by vramak via Flickr One of the themes that emerges in I.I atha yoganusasanam, and runs throughout the yoga sutras, is the notion that a yoga practice will bring one into a deeper awareness of the self. To begin to explore the modern science notion of self-awareness, here’s a 2009 paper entitled, “The ‘prediction [...]
I.I atha yoganusasanam: introduction
Posted in self-awareness, tagged B. K. S. Iyengar, Brain, Central nervous system, Consciousness, Emotion, Mind, mindfulness, Patañjali, Psychology, Religion and Spirituality, Yoga, Yoga Sutras of Patanjali on June 19, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Image via Wikipedia According to B.K.S. Iyengar, in his book, “Light on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali“, the first chapter of Patanjali‘s yoga sutras – samadhi pada – deals with movements of consciousness, or citta vrtti. Specifically, the very first chapter, first sutra: I.I atha yoganusasanam, “With prayers for divine blessings, now begins an exposition [...]
Interview with Professor Chandan Vaidya, Georgetown University
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Add new tag, Dopamine transporter, Georgetown University, Podcast, Professor, Psychology on March 11, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Image via Wikipedia It was a delight to speak with Professor Vaidya this morning on her recent article, Neural response to working memory load varies by dopamine transporter genotype in children. An understanding of how a single genetic variant can relate to brain function, behavior and clinical intervention involves the synthesis of a great many [...]
RARB says I was born when my late born striosomal cells were born
Posted in Basal Ganglia, RARB, Striatum, tagged Ann Graybiel, Basal Ganglia, Brain, Cognition, Development, Dopamine, Mental health, Neural network, Psychology, schizophrenia, self, self awareness, Striatum on February 5, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Image via Wikipedia Everyone has a birthday right. Its the day you (your infant self) popped into the world and started breathing, right? But what about the day “you” were born – that is – “you” in the more philosophical, Jungian, spiritual, social, etc. kind of a way when you became aware of being in [...]
C.H. Waddington provides conceptual framework for shifting influences of genes and environment in the development of mind
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Add new tag, Brain, Cognition, cognitive development, Development, evolution, Genetics, Human behavior, Intelligence, Mutation, Population genetics, Psychology, Twin, University of Edinburgh on January 12, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Just a pointer to onetime University of Edinburgh Professor C.H. Waddington’s 1972 Gifford Lecture on framing the genes vs. environment debate of human behavior. Although Waddington is famous for his work on population genetics and evolutionary change over time, several of his concepts are experiencing some resurgence in the neuroimaging and psychological development literatures these [...]
Thousands of genes together with thousands of resting-state nodes actually makes the genes-to-cognition problem LESS complex
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Biology, Brain, Cognition, connectome, default network, Development, DNA, Dopamine, Frontal lobe, Functional magnetic resonance imaging, Genetics, Memory, Mental health, Prefrontal cortex, Psychology, resting state network on January 7, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
DON’T tell the grant funding agencies, but, in at least one way, the effort to relate genetic variation to individual differences in cognitive function is a totally intractable waste of money. Let’s say we ask a population of folks to perform a task – perhaps a word memory task – and then we use neuroimaging [...]
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