Science of Yoga Blog (2)
Tibet House US & Science of Yoga Project Blog present it's second installment.
| Continuing where we left off in the first blog entry, we are in the process of introducing into this “cyberframework” subjects that have been presented in our recently published volume, Longevity, Regeneration and Optimal Health; Integrating Eastern and Western Perspectives (Annals of the New York Academy of Sceinces, Volume 1172), based on a Conference of the same name held at Tibet House’s Menla Center in late 2006 with keynote speaker His Holiness the Dalai Lama. In the last blog, I very briefly described how meditation and yoga could potentially activate the body’s powerful innate defenses against the forces of aging and disease, and how our Conference and volume contributed to the process of integrating the exciting new discoveries in various branches of “Western” (actually more appropriately called “cosmopolitan”) science with the ancient and still-flourishing Asiatic sciences of meditation and yoga. Now I would like to also briefly introduce the idea that these practices not only possess potentially powerful “defensive” properties, but also properties that can lead to the optimization of functioning as well. Here in this blog, as well as in the last chapter of our volume and in the last of my three classes for the Spring 2010 semester at Tibet House, I am focusing on how these practices may lead to the optimization of fundamental functions such as perception and cognition. The fundamental idea – based in part on the writings of the Dalai Lama, Professor Robert Thurman, and other major figures in the Indo-Tibetan tradition, along with contemporary scholarship and science – is that these practices have the potential to actually transform the brain. In particular, working with these sources, I have developed an integrative “East-West” scientific model, based on critical analysis of direct and indirect evidence, that suggests that meditators may through prolonged intensive practice become capable of dramatically enhanced visual perception, including into much more refined and smaller scales of space and time. For example, the evidence critically reviewed and interpreted in this model suggests that advanced meditators may be able to achieve clear perceptual awareness at least within intervals of several miiliseconds of time and several millionths of a meter in space. Meditators may also be able to exploit the innate capacity of the human visual system to perceive light itself at the level of single photons, at its quantum mechanical limits. According to this new model, these capacities may be obtained through the development of profound stillness and corresponding subtle awareness in which the signal-to-noise ratio becomes increased; through the related capacity to control attention, which has recently been dramatically demonstrated by advanced meditators in the experimental setting; and through neuroplastic changes in the visual system itself, mediated by the process known as “perceptual learning.” These terms will be explored and defined more precisely and in depth in future blogs and publications, as will the model that suggests that these changes in capacity may be at least partly responsible for enabling advanced meditators to directly perceive aspects of the phenomenal world which are geometrically “right in front of our eyes” but nevertheless not detectable without these changes, such as, possibly, the “subtle moment-to-moment impermanence” and lack of solidity of the objects that make up the phenomenal world. We will return to these perhaps tantalizing suggestions, hoping to elicit further comments, questions, and criticisms from a range of readers, in future installments of Tibet House’s Science of Yoga Project. |     |
William Bushell, PhD 3/30/10
Tibet House US & Science of Yoga Project present a new blog series & evening lectures along with Longevity, Regeneration and Optimal Health publication.
Introducton to Project
This is the first installment of the Tibet House Science of Yoga Project Blog. My name is William Bushell, PhD, and I am the Director of this project. My fields of study include physiology, neuroscience, and psychology, and my PhD is in medical anthropology. I have been studying meditation, yoga, and related practices from a scientific and cross cultural approach for several decades, with a focus on the Indo-Tibetan tradition. Ground breaking conference & publication
The first installment of this blog happily coincides with a landmark event for Tibet House and the Science of Yoga Project in particular: the recent launch of what some have called our “groundbreaking” volume entitled, Longevity, Regeneration and Optimal Health; Integrating Eastern and Western Perspectives. Based on a Conference of the same name held at Tibet House’s Menla Center in late 2006, this volume is published by the prestigious New York Academy of Sciences, one of the leading scientific publishers (in the top 2%) in the world. The Conference brought together two dozen of the world’s leading scientists and scholars with Tibetan doctors and lamas, along with the guest of honor, His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Nobel Prize for Longevity Genes
Among these are the discovery of previously unknown: “longevity genes” at MIT and Harvard; regenerative genes and potentials at the University of Pennsylvania; lineages of adult human stem cells at Einstein/Beth Israel and Yale; enzymes that can immortalize cells, discovered by the 2009 Nobel Prize winner in Physiology/Medicine Elizabeth Blackburn of UCSF; nervous system potentials to control the immune system in order to enhance defense against infectious disease, physical trauma, and the degenerative forces of aging and chronic disease; brain capacities to achieve dramatically enhanced cognitive functioning. New Model Emerging
One of the key achievements of both the Conference and volume has been to relate most all of these exciting and extraordinary discoveries to the practices of meditation and yoga, particularly to those in the Indo-Tibetan tradition. A new model has emerged from this work which provides the initial neural, hormonal, genetic, and molecular connections between these discoveries and the effects of these practices. Indo-Tibetan claims for the potential enhancement of longevity, regenerative potential, and of optimal health and functioning, all associated with the practice of meditation and yoga, now also have an impressive foundation in Western scientific developments, from which to proceed towards the kind of cross cultural research advocated by His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Professor Robert Thurman, and others. The work ahead
Future blogs will take up each of these discoveries and their relevance for the practice of meditation and yoga, and will include contributions from some of the scientists themselves. There will also be contributions from scholars, Tibetan doctors and lamas, and hopefully the Dalai Lama himself. Longevity, Regeneration & Optimal Health:
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