“The awakened brain”: what can science bring to spirituality?

There are those who claim that things like meditationa walk in nature or reading a sacred text are some of the many ways to awaken a deep capacity for perception, different from day to day. In brain awakethe doctor Lisa Miller teaches readers to connect, from this state of consciousness, with an “invisible” dimension of the world for all those who have difficulty finding their place of belonging.

Intertwining the author’s investigations with his deep journey of enlightenment, this Sirio-edited book is a journey through the conversations between science and spirituality, driven by academic discoveries that have revolutionized the way we understand how human beings are configured. It is also an exciting guide to accessing an “innate spirituality” and give deeper meaning to our lives.

In an interview with Caras, the author commented, “I have studied in detail how, by listening to God or whatever higher being you believe in, when we connect to this force, we are healthier, happier, we recover more quickly from difficult times and have healthier relationships. The reason why I think this book is very important is because the world is emerging from a very dark age in which there was a lot of uncertainty, and it is a tool with which people can awaken their spiritual brain to connect with their life.

A long, deep scream broke the morning silence in the psychiatric unit, followed by a scream. I rushed out of the crowded little office where we interns were filling out medical histories, ready to take care of anyone who complained. Before she could locate where the scream was coming from, a nurse ran around the corner, a tray in her hands filled with sterile vials and syringes, and disappeared into one of the rooms. A moment later, everything was quiet again. Fluorescent lights reflected off the brownish walls and gray linoleum floors.

It was the fall of 1994. I had just finished my doctoral program at the University of Pennsylvania and did my internship Clinical Psychologyhad chosen the hospitalization unit of a Psychiatric center of Manhattan, which was included in the network of leading teaching hospitals in the study of the Mental Health and the application of psychotherapeutic treatments. Since the clinical approach and quality of care would have been similar at any other large urban hospital in the United States, I will simply call this department Unit 6.

The patients in Unit 6 (I have changed all their names and identifying details) were of the most diverse ethnic groups and ages, many of them poor, many with very difficult lives and recurring diagnoses, many also with health problems. drug addiction. Sometimes the police brought them against their will to the emergency room to prevent a suicide or homicide.

It wasn’t the hospital we would choose first – those with good insurance tended to go to other centers – but it wasn’t the height of fatality to get there either; nothing to do with being “sent up north,” as many doctors and patients euphemistically referred to in an upstate New York mental institution. However, all the patients I have seen they had come and gone again and again; they had folders three or four inches thick.

I was one of four interns on the floor, where we each cared for two inpatients and eight others on an outpatient basis. The day began each day at eight o’clock with a team meeting, during which psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, nurses and assistants gathered around a table to listen to everything that had happened since the day before: what what the patients had eaten, whether they had cleaned themselves, how they had slept, or whether there had been a disruptive episode.

“Mr. Jones had a bad smell this morning” or “Mrs. Margaret refused to have dinner”, reports for example an assistant. There is no doubt that basic hygiene and self-care habits can be linked to aspects of mental health, but it has always struck me as strange that in a service dedicated to the healing of internal conflicts, we spend so much time talking about the physical body.

Most patients wore hospital gowns rather than street clothes, as if they were awaiting surgery or being treated for a physical illness that required them to stay in bed. I had already had the same feeling the first time I had set foot in a psychiatric ward in the mid-1970s, when I was about eight years old. My dear grandmother Eleanor, who had spent years traveling between Iowa and the University of Chicago to study psychology, took me to visit her close friend who was in the hospital. They had grown up together and remained friends all their lives. Even though she wasn’t related to me, she was always Aunt Celia to me.

Arrived at the hospital, I was confused to discover that she doesn’t look sick. She wore no visible bandages, she was not tied to any machinery, she had a beaming smile and a keen sense of humor. And yet, like all the other patients on the floor, who they had pain etched on their faces or stared into space, she was confined to a narrow bed in a small room.

I was impressed by the suffering I sensed in many patients and how isolated Aunt Celia and the others seemed. Years later I learned that my grandmother Eleanor was well known for her active involvement in introducing psychotherapy to public hospitals, where methods given to patients included injections, straitjacket where to electroconvulsive therapyand that he had advocated for patients like Aunt Celia to be moved to nursing homes, where they could receive continued medical care and more human warmth and support.

She is the author of the bestselling book The spiritual child and a professor in the clinical psychology program at Columbia University’s Teachers College.

She is the founder and director of the Mind Body Spirituality Institute, the first graduate program taught at an Ivy League university.

His groundbreaking research has resulted in over a hundred empirical articles that have been published in such renowned journals as Cerebral Cortex and The American Journal of Psychiatry, among others.

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