Bringing new meaning to the phrase, "I changed my mind."

Earlier this week I heard a story on NPR about the way in which prayer and meditation might have the capacity to change the brain. Wait. This is important. Andrew Newberg, a neuroscientist at the Univeristy of Pennsylvania says, "The more you focus on something — whether that's math or auto racing or football or God — the more that becomes your reality, the more it becomes written into the neural connections of your brain." I am not sharing this with you because I think you should pray or meditate, or engage in any particular religious or spiritual practice. But the key point of this story to me is that what we focus on, what we spend our time thinking about, gets wired into our brains and becomes how we experience the world around us.

You can read the article or listen to the broadcast by clicking here: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=104310443

Neuroscientist Richard Davidson says you can change your brain with experience and training. "You can sculpt your brain just as you'd sculpt your muscles if you went to the gym," he says. "Our brains are continuously being sculpted, whether you like it or not, wittingly or unwittingly." When I work with clients who appear to be settled into feeling sad, irritated, helpless, so often there is a mantra that goes with their experience. "I am never going to be happy." "This job is so pointless." "Bad things always happen to me." Perhaps just focusing our attention on a different set of thoughts or clearing away those thoughts through meditation, prayer, or deeper levels of thought can clear away some of those beliefs and ideas and allow a different set of beliefs to be formed.

What's interesting about this research is that it shows that the ways in which we focus our attention and concentration helps to change our neural connections and our ways of thinking, lighting up certain parts of our brains. It also serves to quiet or dim the light on other parts of the brain. We can train our brains to feel more connected to others, to feel more at peace, calm, hopeful. Of course this does not mean that we will be free of difficult experiences, but we have the power to shift how we think and feel...and isn't that good news?!