a scientific exploration of the neuroplastic effects of meditation on the mind
For hundreds of years the mainstream view was the adult brain was like a sophisticated machine, with each part playing a specific role that did not change over time. More recently breakthrough discoveries have shown that the brain is neuroplastic – able to change its own structure and functioning in response to activity and mental experience.
Recently, studies have demonstrated how neuroplastic healing can improve the lives of people traditional medicine has historically abandoned as untreatable. Now that we know the brain has a capacity to heal itself, there are methods we can utilize − methods to initiate neuroplastic healing and improve brain function.
One of the methods of initiating neuroplasticity is meditation. Enduring changes have been observed in the brains of long-term meditators - global changes in brain connectivity and activity. These changes in the brain correlate with beneficial outcomes such as: a reduction in mental noise, a decreased physiological response to stress, improved disease outcomes, and an enhanced sense life satisfaction.
In this talk I discuss these areas of research from my standpoint as a scientist and Initiator of Vedic meditation − exploring the connections, revealing insights, and linking them to our daily experience as meditating humans.
Length: 90 minutes
Cost: Free with RSVP
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Betsy Turner is a Vedic Meditation teacher and former Chemistry professor hailing from the Central Coast of California where she lives with her lovely husband Ken Hillers.
Betsy combines a deep love and understanding of the philosophy and architecture underpinning Vedic Meditation with a background rooted in Science and education.
Explaining the unexplainable is one of her special talents. She explains cutting edge scientific research to non-science audiences in a way that is accessible, illuminating, and even fun – expanding people’s perspective and understanding of their own inner geography and the natural world.
Betsy enjoys exploring the underlying principles within and between ancient spiritual traditions and observing the play and display of the divine in the matrix of everyday experience. Her love of all things mythic and archetypal, only deepens the revelations attainable via her background in science.
Betsy currently teaches private courses in Vedic Meditation on the Central Coast of California and throughout the world.