Science

By Janet M. Gibson | The Conversation Amusement and pleasant surprises – and the laughter they can trigger – add texture to the fabric of daily life. Those giggles and guffaws can seem like just silly throwaways. But laughter, in response to funny events, actually takes a lot of work, because it activates many areas of the brain: areas that control motor, emotional, cognitive and social processing. As I found…

Although Western medicine has radically transformed our world for the better, and given rise to some of the most remarkable breakthroughs in human history, in some ways it is still scratching at the lower slopes of the bigger picture. Only recently have our health systems begun to embrace the healing power of some ancient Eastern traditions such as meditation, for example. But overall, nowhere across the human health spectrum is Western medicine more…

For centuries, yogis have been expressing the incredible benefits meditation can provide. More recently, meditation has become a more mainstream means of treating anxiety and stress, as deep breathing has been proven to calm the nervous system and reduce our heart rate. Avid meditators or individuals who practice breathing techniques typically report that such practices have the ability to silence or slow down the mind. This begs the question: How…