How God Changes Your Brain: Breakthrough Findings from a Leading Neuroscientist

If you want to get a flavor of what this book is about, check out the Tavis Smiley PBS national television interview with co-author Mark Waldman. If you google "tavis smiley pbs waldman" you'll easily find on the Public Broadcasting Station's site the brief interview that aired on April 10, 2009. It captures Waldman's and Newberg's "mission" to use neuroscientific research in practical, pragmatic ways, especially when dealing with conflicts between people who hold different points of view, be they relational, political, or religious. When you engage in any form of gentle contemplative spiritual practice - meditation, prayer, even positive thinking and affirmations - the brain-scan studies clearly show that you can permanently change its neurological structure and function in ways that improve memory, cognition, and compassion, while simultaneously suppressing anxiety, depression, anger, fear, and rage. To paraphrase the authors, "spiritual practice, be it religious or secular, helps to bring a little more peace into one's personal life, and if you take that sense of peacefulness into conversations with others, it may even help to bring a little more peace into the world."

Having grown up in a very conservative Christian family and community, this book surprised me by the authors' incredible openness, not just toward contemporary spiritual practices, but also toward some of the strictest fundamentalist groups I have known. There is a lot of love there, which the authors point out, but I agree with them when they say that angry tirades by conservative ministers can do a lot of damage to one's soul. When you preach hell and damnation toward those who have different religious beliefs, this becomes toxic to the congregation, and to the world. What a surprise and delight to hear two nonreligious scientists talk positively about the gospel of compassion! This was truly music to my ears, and it even helped me to feel more tolerant toward my own religious roots, which nearly turned me off to religion as a whole. If science can be used to show the strength behind religious beliefs and practices, then I say, "More power to science" and its ability to spread the truth about the difference between love and hate. As my pastor used to say, truth is in the heart, and if we live our truth by respecting other people's truth, as this book suggests, then truly we may generate more peace in the world. I think every fundamentalist and atheist can find value in this remarkable book. Thank you, Newberg and Waldman, for helping to quell my own personal struggle with God. In essence, this was one of the most inspiring books I have ever read.

As a nurse practitioner in women's health, and one who has been exploring consciousness and God for my entire life, I find that nearly every religious and spiritual practice can bring peace and happiness into my life. This book reinforces my belief by presenting a wealth of scientific evidence showing how beneficial prayer and meditation can be to your physical health and well-being, and it doesn't matter what your personal religious convictions might be. And with nearly 70 pages of medical and biological references at the end of the book, even skeptics who believe that science has all the answers should come away with the knowledge that secular forms of meditation and self-reflection provide a wealth of neurological and psychological benefits. As the authors of this book explain in clear and simple language, destructive emotions like anger and hate have no place in religion, politics, or in any social situation - be it at work, home, or with one's children or spouse. I tried out the "Compassionate Communication" exercise described in Chapter 10 with my husband, and I found it very easy to do. As we slowed down our talking, and consciously relaxed as we focused on each other's eyes, we discovered that we could quickly to talk about very difficult topics in a way that felt totally nonjudgmental and loving. I felt that we could listen to each other more deeply than we had ever done before, and it happened the very first time we did it. We ended up talking for hours from a very intimate place that really felt safe for both of us.

I'm a professor of business at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, and I have to say that I was blown away by this book, for the simple reason that I have a deep love for science, and a deep appreciation of meditation and spiritual practices. Like the previous reviews, I was surprised to see a neuroscience book be simultaneously recommended by Time Magazine and Oprah. I have followed Newberg and Waldman's research for years, and have actually used some of the focusing exercises they describe in their book to help my students do better in class. I think this is their best book yet, because anyone can use their simple exercises to help stay focused on their commitments, goals, and personal values. I plan to try out their new exercises, like Compassionate Communication, to see if I can improve social empathy with my fiance' as well as my students. I believe that they have solid documented research to show that the exercises in the book actually improve the sales potential of business people (this is based on a Stanford University study that taught a forgiveness meditation to executives at American Express). I recently found out that Waldman is conducting research at Moorpark College showing that sitting quietly or yawning for a few minutes before taking a class can improve student test scores by an entire grade point. This book goes beyond the normal self-help books because it is solidly grounded in Newberg's brain scan research showing how the simple exercises they offer in the book change the structure and function of the brain. Here are some of the points that particularly interested me: 1. Different parts of the brain construct different perceptions and experiences of the world, including one's concept of God. 2. Every human brain constructs a unique image and conception of reality and God. 3. Spiritual practices can be stripped of their religious beliefs and still benefit the brain. And they can also be adapted to traditions with different theological beliefs. 4. Meditation is good for everyone, whether you believe or disbelieve in God. 5. The longer you meditate, the more you change your brain in very positive ways. I particularly like the research that showed how optimism, hope, faith, and positive thinking is the most important thing we can do to maintain a healthy brain.

Details about this book appeared in Time magazine a few weeks ago, featuring Newberg's and Waldmans research on spirituality and the brain. They touted it as a "self-help field guide to the health benefits of spirituality" and meditation practice. Then it was featured in Oprah magazine, so as a mental health professional, I had to see what their research was all about. What I found was a brainstorm of some of the most amazing research on how spiritual practices change the structure and function of our brain. Like the classic book, Varieties of Religious Experience, by William James, the authors, who are neuroscientists at the University of Pennsylvania, summarize a dozen different ways the human brain processes spiritual experiences. For example, one part of the brain can generate images of an angry god; another, feelings of a compassionate god; yet another part of the brain can generate doubtful thoughts, and so on. They also present new data showing how Americans are becoming less religious but more spiritual as they embrace images of a universe that is scientific yet mystical. Their online survey of a thousand participants shows that nearly everyone holds radically different concepts of "God." They even track, using people who draw pictures of God, how this concept begins as a face in a child's brain, and that the more a child thinks about god, new abstract conceptualizations begin to form in different parts of the brain. The authors show many brain scans of many different practitioners (religious and secular) which demonstrate that the more intense one contemplates any spiritual issue-or even evolution or the Big Bang-the more it changes the structure and function of other parts of the brain in healthy ways (for example, meditators from Christian, Buddhist, and nonreligious backgrounds permanently alter their thalamus, and thus their perception of reality), which makes their deepest beliefs feel "neurologically real." This explains the book's title, for even atheists, when they try to make sense out of religion, grow new dendrites in important areas of the brain that appear to slow down the diseases we get as we age. Fortunately, the authors put the neuroscience in terms anyone can grasp, and they proceed to give explicit instructions that the reader can use to stimulate their precuneus (a key center of consciousness), the frontal lobes (logic, reason, motivation), and the anterior cingulate (compassion, intuition, and social awareness). There's so much practical and provocative material, that the best way to review this book is to briefly describe each chapter: Ch 1: "Who Cares About God?" - We all do, argue the authors, who introduce basic concepts of neuroplasticity, the neurologal "war" between beliefs and disbeliefs, and why any religious concept generate both anger and compassion in virtually everyone's brain. Ch 2: "Do You Need God When You Pray?" The authors describe a new study showing how a 12 minute chanting meditatio