How an intense spiritual retreat might change your brain

How an intense spiritual retreat might change your brain

Dr. Andrew Newberg is the director of research at the Marcus Institute of Integrative Health and a physician at Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia. He has published more than 250 peer-reviewed articles and chapters, and is the author or co-author of several books, including How Enlightenment Changes Your Brain (2016) and Brain Weaver: Creating the Fabric for a Healthy Mind through Integrative Medicine

What produces major spiritual or enlightenment experiences?

Five elements are common across many enlightenment experiences: intensity, love, joy, awe, meditation, prayer, and psychedelia

A sense of surrender

Most people describe enlightenment experiences as happening to them rather than as something that they made happen.

I surrendered everything, including my faith and my salvation, and only for one reason:

I loved God so much that I would truly give up everything to be connected with Him.

Intensity

The intensity of these experiences is likely associated with increased activity in the limbic system, the brain’s primary emotional centre.

Frontal lobe activity normally increases during meditation or prayer because we are purposefully engaged in the practice. However, during the most intense of these experiences, we are likely to see a decrease in activity in conjunction with a loss of the sense of purposeful control.

Thalamus

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