Meditative origins of Aikido
B: It is said that Aikido is quite different from Karate and Judo. O Sensei: In my opinion, it can be said to be the true martial art. The reason for this is that it is a martial art based [...]
Photos Showing the Strange Similarities of Human Cities and Human Neurons
In the side-by-side images above, the photo on the left shows a city as seen by astronauts on the International Space Station, and then photo on the right shows a photo of a neuron imaged with fluorescence microscopy. One is [...]
Mohammed on meditation
He who knoweth his own self, knoweth God. One hour’s meditation on the work of the Creator is better than seventy years of prayer. —Mohammed
Live longer, be a log: here’s how
Based on the ancient definition of meditation - "a meditator sits and like a log he does not think" - researchers surveyed 343 long-term Sahaja yoga meditation practitioners and compared their results to the general population. “We found that the [...]
St Theresa of Avila describes the experience of meditation
“You will at once feel your senses gather themselves together; they seem like bees which return to the hive and there shut themselves up to work without effort or care on your part. God thus rewards the violence, which your soul has been doing to itself; and [...]
Consciousness After Death: Strange Tales From the Frontiers of Resuscitation Medicine
Sam Parnia practices resuscitation medicine. In other words, he helps bring people back from the dead — and some return with stories. Their tales could help save lives, and even challenge traditional scientific ideas about the nature of consciousness. “The [...]
Elegance in Science: The Beauty of Simplicity
Thinking of elegance as graceful, tasteful, of refined luxury, is useless here. So what does elegance mean in the context of science? Economy is a considerable part of it, creativity too. An elegant mathematical proof, an elegant theory, or an [...]
Many Neuroscience Studies May Be Based on Bad Statistics
The fields of psychology and cognitive neuroscience have had some rough sledding in recent years. The bumps have come from high-profile fraudsters, concerns about findings that can’t be replicated, and criticism from within the scientific ranks about shoddy statistics. A new study adds to [...]
Controversial update to ‘bible’ of psychiatry fuels debate over foundations of mental health
Today, the DSM is widely referred to as the "bible" of psychiatry — but not everyone is a believer. The book has undergone four major revisions since first being published in 1952, with each one drawing varying degrees of criticism. [...]
The Music of ‘Flow’
As a composer who studied music and mathematics, I have always found numbers, structure, and science accessible touch-points. But something more interesting evolved over the past several years as I returned to the Hungarian psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s work on “flow.” [...]