"How Does TM Affect the Way We Behave?:" Meditation and the Brain at the Rubin Museum of Art

Clinical psychologist Dr. Bill Stixrud and neuroscientist Dr. Fred Travis during a Q&A on the subject of meditation and the brain. This event was held at NYC's Rubin Museum of Art and featured a live EEG scan of the brain during Transcendental Meditation. Mediating the Q&A is DLF's Executive Director, Bob Roth. Bob Roth: "Dr. Travis, now I am going to be the skeptic. Is it anecdotal? You are taking 15 minutes to close your eyes, doing a meditation, and there is this kind of change- behavioral changes. From the standpoint of the brain, impact of stress, and TM, how does that happen?" Dr. Travis: "It's very simple Bob, the brain is a river, and not a rock. What that means is every experience you have ultimately changes the brain. If the experience is fragmented, trauma, stressful, violence, it creates dysfunctional circuits. And this is for everyone: kids as well as adults. The issue with kids is they are just beginning to make connections. The opposite is also true: if you can allow content to settle down and be awake, that is supporting a different kind of experience where you are just awake to who you are (your deep silence inside, the source of your creativity and intelligence, and that is creating different circuits). It is a physiologically based change that you're seeing." For more information: http://davidlynchfoundation.org