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

Andrew Newberg, M.D., is the director of the Center for Spirituality and the Mind at the University of Pennsylvania. He is one of the founders of the new interdisciplinary field called neurotheology. He is an associate professor in the department of radiology, with secondary appointments in the departments of psychiatry and religious studies, at the University of Pennsylvania. His work has been featured on Good Morning America, Nightline, Discovery Channel, BBC, NPR, and National Geographic Television. He is the co-author of Why God Won’t Go Away, Born to Believe, and The Mystical Mind.

Mark Robert Waldman is an associate fellow at the Center for Spirituality and the Mind at the University of Pennsylvania. He is a therapist, the author or co-author of ten books, including Born to Believe (with Andrew Newberg), and was the founding editor of Transpersonal Review. He lectures throughout the country on neuroscience, religion, and spirituality and conducts research with numerous religious and secular groups. His work has been featured in dozens of newspapers and magazines and on syndicated radio programs.

God is great—for your mental, physical, and spiritual health. Based on new evidence culled from brain-scan studies, a wide-reaching survey of people’s religious and spiritual experiences, and the authors’ analyses of adult drawings of God, neuroscientist Andrew Newberg and therapist Mark Robert Waldman offer the following breakthrough discoveries:
 
• Not only do prayer and spiritual practice reduce stress, but just twelve minutes of meditation per day may slow down the aging process.
• Contemplating a loving God rather than a punitive God reduces anxiety and depression and increases feelings of security, compassion, and love.
• Fundamentalism, in and of itself, can be personally beneficial, but the prejudice generated by extreme beliefs can permanently damage your brain.
• Intense prayer and meditation permanently change numerous structures and functions in the brain, altering your values and the way you perceive reality.

Both a revelatory work of modern science and a practical guide for readers to enhance their physical and emotional health, How God Changes Your Brain is a first-of-a-kind book about faith that is as credible as it is inspiring.
 

Publishers Weekly

Over the past decade or so, numerous studies have suggested that prayer and meditation can enhance physical health and healing from illness. In this stimulating and provocative book, two academics at the University of Pennsylvania's Center for Spirituality and the Mind contend that contemplating God actually reduces stress, which in turn prevents the deterioration of the brain's dendrites and increases neuroplasticity. The authors conclude that meditation and other spiritual practices permanently strengthen neural functioning in specific parts of the brain that aid in lowering anxiety and depression, enhancing social awareness and empathy, and improving cognitive functioning. The book's middle section draws on the authors' research on how people experience God and where in the brain that experience might be located. Finally, the authors offer exercises for enhancing physical, mental and spiritual health. Their suggestions are commonsensical and common to other kinds of health regimens: smile, stay intellectually active, consciously relax, yawn, meditate, exercise aerobically, dialogue with others and trust in your beliefs. Although the book's title is a bit misleading, since it is not God but spiritual practice that changes the brain, this forceful study could stir controversy among scientists and philosophers. Illus. (Mar. 24)

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Author's Note xi

1 Religion and the Human Brain

1 Who Cares about God? 3

Prelude to a Neurological and Spiritual Revolution

2 Do You Even Need God When You Pray? 22

Meditation, Memory, and the Aging Brain

3 What Does God Do to Your Brain? 41

The Neural Varieties of Spiritual Practice 41

2 Neural Evolution and God

4 What Does God Feel Like? 67

The Varieties of Spiritual Experience

5 What Does God Look Like? 83

Imagination, Creativity, and the Visual Representation of Spirituality

6 Does God Have a Heart? 106

Compassion, Mysticism, and the Spiritual Personalities of the Brain

7 What Happens When God Gets Mad? 131

Anger, Fear, and the Fundamentalist in Our Brain

3 Transforming Your Inner Reality

8 Exercising Your Brain 149

Eight Ways to Enhance Your Physical, Mental, and Spiritual Health

9 Finding Serenity 170

Meditation, Intention, Relaxation, and Awareness 170

10 Compassionate Communication 214

Dialogue, Intimacy, and Conflict Transformation

Epilogue: Is God Real? 241

A Personal Reflection

Appendix A Compassionate Communication 249

CDs, Workshops, and Online Research

Appendix B How to Participate in Our Research Studies 251

Appendix C Meditation and Mindfulness 253

Book?, CDs, and Resources

Acknowledgments 257

Endnotes 259

Index 335