ASM219 Neurotheology with Andrew Newberg

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[Music] well friends as you know we are in the middle of a series that i'm calling the books behind the book where i talk to the authors and researchers and thinkers that have most influenced my life and work and today i am pinching myself because i'm talking to someone that if you've listened to this program more than about twice you've heard me reference today we are talking with andrew b newberg md who is currently the research director at the marcus institute of integrative health at thomas jefferson university and hospital in philadelphia he is the professor in the department of integrative medicine and nutritional sciences dr newberg has been particularly involved in the study of mystical and religious experiences a field referred to as neurotheology he has published over 200 peer-reviewed articles and chapters on brain function brain imaging and the study of religious and mystical experiences he's published 10 books including how enlightenment changes your brain which have been translated into 16 different languages he also of those 10 books three have been especially influential in my life the first being how god changes your brain breakthrough findings from a leading neuroscientist which if you've read my first book finding god in the waves you understand that that book more than any other helped me relate to god again after a period of atheism and approach mysticism in a way that's brain based another book he wrote is called how enlightenment changes your brain the new science of transformation and dives deep into how enlightenment experiences can reshape our lives for the better and the kinds of practices that can facilitate those experiences and he also wrote a book called words can change your brain 12 conversational strategies to build trust resolve conflicts and increase intimacy which is how i've been surviving and keeping my sanity since the election in 2016. there is really absolutely no person in the world whose work has influenced how i see myself and see others than dr newburgh so it is my pleasure to welcome andrew b newberg to ask science mike well thank you so much for having me on your program i really appreciate it so glad that you're here and i just you know uh i feel like i have one of the beatles on the show right now i'm just so elated i wish i was [Laughter] well your work is certainly is is as powerful you know um the people who listen to this program they're science curious uh they're uh seeking transformation in their lives and a whole lot of them have been through uh some kind of faith transition where they were in one place of faith and then they had an experience and they moved to another that might be they were in one sect of christianity and moved to another that might be they changed religions completely in some cases it means they were secular people and became spiritual in some way and that's kind of a common thread that brings together this audience which is why i think neurotheology is so useful and applicable for modern people and i wonder if we could start today by just hearing from you what neurotheology is well i i certainly agree with everything you said in terms of what i obviously hope is the power of it and the ability for it to be useful in the present day you know for me neurotheology i guess i normally define it as the the field of study that looks at the the link or the relationship between science and religion broadly neuroscience and religious and spiritual beliefs practices and experiences a little bit more specifically uh but for for me for the for the concept to kind of make sense and hold and be useful i one i want to emphasize that it really is a link you know it's looking at the link between these two aspects of humanity it is not a scientific exploration of religion it is not a religious exploration of science but it is ultimately how religion and science and can come together to help us to understand ourselves uh as effectively as possible and and i think also for me for the term to work i feel like we do need to define the neuro side and the theology side of the term somewhat broadly because it is neuroscience and neuroimaging but it can also include psychology and medicine even anthropology sociology different ways of looking at us in terms of our personhood and then of course theology is a very specific discipline deriving out of a given tradition like christianity looking at the the primary doctrines or sacred texts and trying to analyze them and while we certainly can look at all of that um from neurotheology typically is looking at much much broader aspects of religion and spirituality so it is looking at beliefs and attitudes practices experiences all of which can kind of fall under that rubric of the theology side but uh i think if we kind of keep it in those terms then neurotheology actually can be a very exciting and novel way of looking at things that we really haven't had an opportunity to do before and and that to me is what's so exciting about it we're in many ways just at the very beginning of trying to explore what neurotheology can be and whenever i introduce people to the concept of neurotheology they often get very excited and they ask me if this is a way that we can prove or disprove god using science is that something that neurotheology can do well i'm a never say never kind of person so i don't want to say it can never happen um but um but i i think far more important is that we have to be very careful about what kinds of conclusions that we can draw and so um you know we we may be able to find some way of studying something that we've never been able to study before and look at some aspect that links us to something that certainly at the very least goes beyond who we are as human beings uh you know there's some interesting research being done now looking at near-death experiences where just the idea that our consciousness and our mind can go beyond the biology of our brain um you know that kind of research could be very paradigm shifting so so i think that there are some ways which we might construct a study to look at those kinds of questions but we also have to be very careful and you know one of my favorite stories i always like to relate in this regard is one of our early studies where we were looking at a group of franciscan nuns doing a kind of prayer called centering prayer kind of connecting them to god and through that prayer process and you know after i showed the nun what was going on in her brain during the prayer she said oh you know dr newberg thank you so much this is so exciting to see that my beliefs and and everything that i know in terms of my relationship with god are revealed through my biology and it helps to support the idea of why i am so religious and spiritual and how it affects me and how whatever is going on inside of my brain you know can relate to god and i said you're welcome and you know off she went she was very happy and i was i felt good making an unhappy i guess and um and then shortly after the research article came out from the study i i got a call from the head of the local atheist society and i thought oh boy let's hear how this goes and he got on and he said dr newberg i just wanted to thank you so much for proving that god is nothing more than a manifestation of your brain's functions and that there is nothing supernatural it's just all purely in your brain and there is no religion or spirituality to which i said well you're welcome and then off he went and i guess somewhere there was some cosmic balance of making a nun and an atheist happy at the same time but um but but it it serves the important point which is that you know in some sense while both of them found conclusions that worked for them um both of them also drew conclusions which weren't fundamentally there in in the study i mean to me what the scans show and i'm sure we'll probably talk about that a little bit later you know they show you what's going on in your brain when you have the spiritual experience but you know in the context of the nun it doesn't prove that god was in the room with her it doesn't prove that god wasn't in the room with her it's just showing what was going on in her when she was feeling like she was making that connection and we just have to be careful about what kinds of you know reality statements we make epistemological statements we make that that come out of the research that's part of neurotheology would it be fair to say that today neurotheology is more focused on how beliefs about god and spiritual practices impact people than it is on making epistemological evaluations of you know whether god exists or not yes i think that the current research that's been done at with neurotheology certainly has been more focused on the applications of it uh as opposed to epistemological questions in fact if you look at the sort of the scientific and medical literature a lot of the research looking at practices like meditation and prayer really have focused more on therapeutic intervention it has a therapeutic intervention how it might help people with various issues and problems and coping and all that kind of thing but um but there certainly is um an undercurrent of the importance of addressing these kind of more deeper questions and certainly for me uh in everything that i've pretty much everything i've ever written article or book um i always try to get back to those fundamental questions in fact in many ways those are what have driven me into this entire field it was really the the need to want to understand how we as human beings uh perceive reality and make sense out of that reality and uh you know on one hand while i love science um you know to me it it still winds up getting us a good bit down that road towards understanding the nature of reality and particularly the physical world around us but it seems that there are certain limitations that it runs into and so you're trying to address things like consciousness like our awareness like our perceptions of reality science has certain things that it just can't seem to get to uh on the other hand religious and spiritual perspectives are are wonderful and and provide a lot of great perspective for people but but have certain limitations as well and that's part of what has always kind of drawn me down this kind of combined path which now is referred to as neurotheology which is to say you know how can we use both sides of who we are the scientific and material at the spiritual and the consciousness to come together to help us best answer that question about the nature of reality and hopefully as we do more research both on the applied level as well as considering these deeper questions we will get closer to to really being able to answer those kinds of questions um you know as i look at the landscape of our culture today uh you know it seems like in many ways people are becoming less involved with organized religion but they aren't actually becoming less spiritual and um in my life neurotheology had a tremendous impact because i grew up in a conservative christian household and became an atheist as an adult and then i had a mystical experience that i really didn't know how to process because my old belief system didn't seem any more reasonable than it once had and yet this divine encounter i had was was quite beautiful and i had this tug of war between uh my believing brain and my thinking brain about what to do next and that's when i encountered your work and seeing the ways that the application of neurotheology revealed a lot of these practices to be beneficial psychologically and beneficial for for the health of our bodies helped me justify kind of exploring spirituality in a way that seemed healthy and helpful without having to go through and make a lot of epistemological claims about reality uh which is kind of why i basically identify as a neuro mystic these days no absolutely and yeah i'm completely right about that but yeah i'm sorry god well i just i i was wondering if you might be willing to uh share with the listeners of this program some of the things you've been learning about the ways in which beliefs and practices can be positive in our life experience absolutely well so certainly um and i'm so thrilled that it had that kind of an impact for you to be able to look at these things uh these kinds of experiences in that way and and uh before we get into those beneficial effects you know that type of experience is certainly something which is reasonably common as you mentioned i mean there's a lot of people uh who do struggle with their religious beliefs and and various spiritual beliefs but they're always striving for something uh and having the language having the ability to look at this from a scientific perspective as well as spiritual perspective can can really be very powerful for people um you know a lot of the studies that i've been involved in have looked more specifically at what's going on in the brain and certainly when people have different types of mystical experiences other types of spiritual experiences do practices like meditation and prayer they turn on large areas or affect i should say large areas of our brain some that get turned on some they get turned off and a lot of these areas you know there's there isn't like a spiritual part of the brain so much as it is utilizing the same parts of our brain that are involved in our everyday life and so doing practices like meditation and prayer can ultimately augment our cognitive processes it can help us to you know if we're learning how to concentrate on a particular meditation then it may actually help us to be able to concentrate when we're at school studying for a test or it works trying to solve a problem um the creative element of it uh is is sometimes very powerful for people and can help people to find you know new answers to questions that they're dealing with in life whether it's their job or a relationship or whatever it is and and certainly when it comes to specific disorders a lot of research has shown that these practices can help reduce anxiety reduce stress reduce depression again enhance various aspects of cognitive function so uh you know with being you know really kind of simplistic in some senses a lot of the practices actually it's sort of like um you know lifting weights for your brain you know if you lift weights for uh using your arm your arm gets thicker and it gets more functional and stronger and in some sense that's part of what happens we see with the brain itself that it actually you know begins to work differently uh changes the different ways in which it functions and most of the time those wind up being very very beneficial and very positive for people and people do experience such you know positive helpful things in faith but then also it seems sometimes that people experience harm or discomfort or their their faith drives them to be you know more afraid of people in their social out group or um make them more anxious and i noticed um in how god changes your brain you pretty carefully delineated between uh when people understand like a primarily loving god versus a god that might be primarily more angry or wrathful right uh what kind of findings did you see as you looked at those two conceptions of the divine well it does it has a very important implication as far as our overall health and well-being when people believe that god is there to support us when they look at their spirituality as something which is beneficial and will help them with coping and so forth those are the neural connections that begin to form more and more in the brain that you know the more we focus on any concept or any emotion the more that's kind of how the brain works so if we focus on being compassionate being loving being open being helpful both to ourselves as well as to others then the neural connections that support that really wind up being incorporated into the brain and help that individual act that way and feel that way so that they they do become you know more compassionate more loving more open and understanding towards other people and then on the other hand uh when people wind up going down these more darker paths more anger hatred uh exclusivity and so forth uh the more there's focusing on those kinds of ideas the idea that god is is angry with us is not happy with us is maybe even vengeful um then then our brain becomes that way and so we begin to feel more angry more vengeful more more um uh scared and and unhappy with other people and even within our own lives and so uh you know as as a medical doctor that is a very important piece to what neurotheology can look at which is you know what are the ways in which religious and spiritual attitudes can go good and what are the ways in which they can go bad uh and and the more we understand them then perhaps we will do a better job at being able to help direct people towards those more positive more compassionate ways of being and um you know you you mentioned from the at the beginning about you know where where we are as a society and and the current political uh milieu you know there's a lot of anger and um and frustration and hatred and so forth um and on one hand these are natural reactions that we have i mean they're part of how our brain works too but the more we foster that kind of perspective the more that becomes the way in which we think and if we you know to sort of get out of this um you know on both sides there has to be this you know deeper understanding about where we are why we are you know how we are as human beings uh and frankly i think one of the um one of the real important lessons that i've learned from all of this neurotheology research is the profound appreciation for everybody's perspective um you know everybody we basically have a brain that's looking out at the world and trying to make some kind of sense out of what is essentially an infinite world and so you know whether it's our genetics our experiences the people we talk to you know it's not a surprise that everybody comes to a different conclusion and so maybe we need to be a little bit more open to the fact that people come to different beliefs whether they are religious or moral or political uh and and try to work together a little bit more to to try to understand those differences and maybe find ways of utilizing those differences together to to get all of us on a on a much better path towards uh personal as well as uh you know global enlightenment and um you know that's that's my idealism side speaking but but i think it's it's very important for us to think about that and i think it's a natural part of what what neurotheology strives to do which is to say there are positives there are negatives and how do we use that information and how do we learn from it to to get everybody onto a more positive path [Music] if it weren't for my friends at kiwi co this episode of ask science mike would have never happened kiwi co is an amazing california-based company that makes learning products believe it or not and i say believe it or not because i just can't believe how much fun kiwico products are if you're not familiar with kiwico they make things called crates which are you know art and education products that you get mailed every month and they are for children they you know they have crates for uh panda crates for children there's zero to 24 months koala crates ages two to four the atlas crate which is around geography and culture for ages six to eleven the classic kiwi crate ages five to eight for science art and more moving up they have the tinker crate which is science and engineering focused for ages 9 to 16 the doodle crate which is arts and crafts for ages 9-16 and then they have the new eureka crate for ages 14 to 104 for engineering and design and the maker crate ages 14 to 104 for art and design and we get four crates every month at my house we get a doodle a tinker a maker and a eureka and then we set them on the kitchen table and my family all barters for who gets which um crate that month so uh i just absolutely love it it is a great way for people of any age to go deeper in their understanding of science technology engineering art and math and you can get started today by going to kiwico.com slash ask science mike where you can get 60 off your first month of any of all of kiwico's lines of crates you're going to love them i get so many pictures sent to me of families enjoying their kiwi crates after hearing about them on the show and by the way i love those pictures keep sending them when you tag me on instagram i do see it so once again get started today kiwicode.com ask sciencemike [Music] and you know even the word god itself can be divisive or polarizing you know on in this program about 15 of our listeners are atheists and agnostic and then when you add another 30 or so of people who are spiritual but wouldn't identify as any kind of theist they they wouldn't they wouldn't name any god in particular as part of their spiritual experiences um neurotheology they might be thinking right now well i'm not sure this applies to me i don't really have beliefs about god at all right and yet you have another book how enlightenment changes your brain which i really enjoyed because it kind of blew the doors off any uh required god lens right for these kind of transformative experiences um and i i would just appreciate it and love it if you could uh bring the listeners in on on what you mean when you say enlightenment and how it can impact our lives well absolutely i mean um that was an attempt for us to begin to look you know to go beyond just the god experience to to broader experiences of spirituality and um you know one of the things i want to add in too and and this is for all the listeners that you have you know to me the the real heart of neuro theology is what i would like to refer to as a passion for inquiry and what i mean by that is that we just keep asking questions and so whether you're an atheist or a devout religious individual or a spiritual person looking for some meaning part of what neurotheology says to us is let's start asking the questions let's try to understand what each one of you think and what everybody else thinks and so you know if an atheist gets into an argument about the nature of god with a with a theist what are they actually what are they arguing about what actually is god you know what what is spirituality what is religion and and in fact when it got to the concept of enlightenment you know uh it's really quite fascinating it almost encapsulates this issue which is that you know you you when we say the word enlightenment what so many people often think about is like buddhist or hindu uh monks you know in in prayer and meditation for for many many years uh hours and hours a day until they achieve enlightenment which is a spiritual kind of enlightenment usually where they feel that they their their consciousness kind of reconnects with some fundamental you know aspect of reality but there's also the age of enlightenment which occurred in the 18 you know the 18th century which said spirituality and religion are you know that's not the answer to enlightenment it go you know we've got to go through reason and uh and through rationality and scientific methods to get to the answers that we're looking for so even in the context of enlightenment again when you start to ask the question well what exactly is enlightenment you get to so many different kinds of answers and you know when we start to think about it more from the neurotheology perspective what what we really mean by neuro theo by examining by enlightenment um we we divided enlightenment into what we call the big e and the little e experiences and and for the little e experiences um these are experiences that virtually everyone has had at one one or another points in their lives sometimes multiple where you know it's that aha moment that sort of creative insight where we suddenly recognize how to solve a problem or maybe we're working you know for a researcher maybe we're working on solving some issue that we can't get beyond maybe it's somebody struggling with a relationship question or or a spiritual question and then they kind of get that moment that we're ah i got it you know i figured it out and um and those those moments are very important for people uh they they change the way they think about a specific thing but they don't change everything about the person and that's really reserved for the big e experiences and whether those big big experiences are ultimately spiritual or rational um you know what what we're talking about are those experiences where um a person's complete sense of who they are how they relate to the world and what the world is completely changes and so oftentimes it can be the kind of experience that you mentioned you you had you know some kind of mystical experience sometimes it can be just such a pow such a powerful overwhelming paradigmatic shift for an individual that they do convert from one state of belief to another they go from being religious to being non-religious or being non-religious to religious but it changes everything about them it's not just it's not just a specific idea that changes it is you know who they are as a person it changes the not just you know how what they are thinking but how they think as a person and it has an impact ultimately and going back to your earlier question about you know how do these things affect us um we ran an online survey where we asked people about their most intense enlightenment or spiritual experiences and um you know 90 of people said that these experiences transformed their lives made them feel better about themselves in terms of meaning and purpose in life their overall health and well-being their relationships uh their fear of death and their sense of spirituality so these kinds of experiences do you know overwhelmingly shift people into a whole different way of being but also going back to our last point there is a small percentage of people who wind up coming away with a very negative results from these experiences and that's also something for us to study and try to understand and see if we can help people to move back into that positive way of of thinking about things but but that's really what we mean by enlightenment but it just underlies the the important principles of neurotheology that are that are essential for us to ask the questions to not just take it you know for what uh you know what kant said or what buddha said but you know what what do people think um what does the everyday person think and what and what do each one of us think about these terms you know we all have an opportunity we don't have to be these great philosophers to engage these questions um everyone can can think about these things and that that's part of also what i think neurotheology is about is to to provide a language for people to explore questions in ways that they never had before but hopefully in a way that is accessible uh at least as reasonably as possible for everyone you know it's one of the things that i've so enjoyed about neurotheology and your work in particular is this information we get about what's happening in our brains and our bodies as we ask these questions as we explore and experience them and there's this wonderful kind of theory this this this insights into the mechanics but then there's also always this uh application because the nature of your research is revealing what actions we can take in our lives that if we want to feel more god we can feel more close to god by doing these things or if we care about personal transformation or or moving toward an enlightenment style experience we can do these things what are some of the things you've uncovered in research that help people to have more positive experiences both in their you know beliefs about god and just about their life experiences and positive mental framing well as you mentioned and we talk about this for example and then how enlightenment changes your brain you know we learn from each other so when we ask people about their experiences and how they occurred what comes from that is oh well you know i mean obviously yes there are some people who we heard from who were literally you know driving their car down the street and suddenly you know blam they had this kind of mystical experience but those are rare um for the most part what we've learned is is that people can very purposefully and intentionally work towards these kinds of experiences and work towards the the kinds of experiences that have a positive effect on their lives so for example um uh what we talk about in terms of certain the process towards enlightenment um one of the things we said uh we found was that people people have to sort of consciously want to engage this um so again i would and i would imagine that most of your listeners feel this way which is that there there is this purposeful search there's this person purposeful uh wanting to learn something wanting to know something wanting to figure out a new way of thinking about things and that that is very important in some senses it's a way of kind of preparing yourself for what's to come to prepare yourself for the experiences that you have and to be open to them and to be able to explore them as effectively as possible part of it and part of that preparation also includes a willingness to be open a willingness to do certain practices that kind of allow your mind to explore these questions more specifically and then finally are one of the most important aspects towards these practices is to come up with the specific types of rituals and practices that work best for you i mean there are hundreds if not thousands of different approaches and certainly again what the data show is that there isn't a one-size-fits-all people have to find the practices that where the goal of the practice even ahead of time is stated to be heading down the path that they're looking for so if somebody wants to reduce their stress once to reduce their depression wants to feel more relaxed wants to be more spiritual wants to be more connected you know what every practice sort of has its own ways of going about those things and and you don't have to do one you know you don't have to do just one either um so but again going back to one of the things that we mentioned earlier the more the focus of the practice are on positive ideas then ultimately the more likely that the outcomes would be positive as well so whether it's doing loving-kindness meditation where you think purposely about loving and kind thoughts to somebody else whether you whether you focus on uh being open and being allowing your mind to just sort of experience the world practices like mindfulness for example um if you're a religious person and you feel that that connecting to a god that is supportive and and helps people to achieve their their spiritual ends to be the good person and to engage society positively and to be charitable and altruistic and so forth then all of those are the ways in which people can work towards their own paths of of enlightenment um and then um you know once they have kind of figured those things out one of the things that we also noticed in the descriptions that people got and this was about like i said about 2000 descriptions of these experiences was there's there seems to be some spot or some point where the person feels that they must kind of let themselves go that they must let go the process they must surrender to the process different different terms that people use but that basically allows the person to kind of have the experience where the whole thing kind of comes back to them instead of them striving and then ultimately if one is able to have some type of relatively intensive spiritual experience then you know the last part of it really is to find ways of incorporating that back into their life you you mentioned in your experience you know the difficulty of trying to bring a very profound mystical experience back to a traditional belief system some people can but other times people cannot and so it's very fundamental to kind of keep working on trying to understand the spiritual experiences that we have and how they relate to our lives how they relate to our beliefs do we need to go back to older beliefs do we need to uh subsume new beliefs uh what are the different ways in which we can think about things and um and that piece is is also fundamental i think for for changing our lives for the better it's it's not just having the experience but what do you do with it how does it change the way you behave act you know treat others uh and again always with the eye that uh towards those experiences and beliefs that are more positive you know in terms of the emotional content more compassionate more open um they are the ones that typically at least again the research shows lead people down paths that wind up being very positive for them and so people do this and they they experience personal growth and transformation and they feel like sometimes even like a new person i know there's been times in my life where a period of meditation or experiences uh combined usually with therapy has led me to a very open and compassionate place and then you go home for thanksgiving or you have to have someone steal your lunch from the break room at the office and like real life starts to invade this these profound experiences of transformation and one thing that is really helpful and useful in your work is not only have you focused on how we can cultivate a different inner landscape but you've also explored in words can change your brain how we can build trust resolve conflicts and increase intimacy with other people what are some of the things you learned about how what i would call maybe transformed people can also transform the ways that they relate to others well you uh in our book words can change your brain again you know part of what we always try to do part of what neurotheology is about is is using data to help us understand all these different aspects of who we are and when it comes to the ability to interact with other people positively for the most part we're talking about communication and so when we looked at how our brain operates and and the various studies that have been done to help foster improved communications with people and develop greater intimacy and better connections with people um there are some fascinating ways of bringing in the science to adapt and adopt uh very powerful ways of helping to communicate with people more effectively so um to give just maybe one or two examples uh one of the things that we have learned through all of the brain studies that have been done is that we have uh what's called working memory and that allows us to hold on to maybe four or five pieces of information at any one time and to work on them and to use them in our mind but what that means from a communication perspective is that we have to be careful when we get into long dialogues with people that they become long that you know the more we continue to go on if we're getting into an argument with someone if we go and talk to them for 10 15 minutes at a time the brain just doesn't hold on to that amount of information so in a kind of practice that we refer to as compassionate communication based on the data that we have in terms of how our working memory works we say you have to speak briefly um you have maybe you know for 30 seconds or a minute because that's basically what our brain can hold on to there's also data to support the idea that the slower we talk the more other people will understand and be able to listen to us and we also have to kind of we also have to use a kind of meditative approach in our listening processes that allows us to pay attention to what somebody else has said but to rest with that and to not be overly reactive because obviously that's also something that happens so often somebody says something to us and then we you know the proverbial flying off the handle type of thing instead of paying attention to how we're feeling and thinking and reply again briefly but with um a certain sense of trying to express what we're feeling but being open and understanding to what other people feel that helps to foster that kind of dialogue and what's also interesting when we look again at how the brain works we have these things called mirror neurons that essentially reflect what other people are doing so if one gets into a conversation with somebody else if you are very calm and very pleasant and very positive about it then their mirror neurons kind of reflect that and they are more likely to engage in that conversation in a positive uh constructive kind of way whereas if you get very defensive and very angry as we all have been in those situations as well usually the result isn't good because they're you know the other person's brains uh their mirror neurons say okay you know that i'm gonna be angry and frustrated as well and that usually leads to very negative kinds of conversations so um you know not only can we try to communicate with people better but we can actually foster greater compassion and understanding in them as well as just by being who we are and being able to be compassionate and understanding to them uh and and there's some really interesting data that you know even if somebody does something nice to us you know if we're standing in starbucks and somebody lets us get in front of them in line because we're in a rush we're more likely to be friendly to the next you know to the next person who we interact with and of course if somebody cuts us off and we're not happy then we're more likely to be nasty to the next person so it really can cycle in both ways and the more intentional you are about it the more uh you can utilize sort of the conscious elements of your brain to modify and alter your behaviors in a more compassionate loving and and ultimately spiritual way then then that is something that can be very beneficial for people it's so funny because um you know i've i've read and internalized a lot of the material in that book and it's been so beautiful and beneficial and helpful in my life and relationships but as a media person um sometimes guests don't know what to do when they finish talking and i'm quiet because i'm you know in kind of a meditative state really focusing on what they said and taking the time to respond sincerely that we've had to start priming guests for programs or yeah priming guests on programs that i host to know it's not a big deal if mike doesn't say anything back immediately because we've been so conditioned uh by you know our societal rhythms and our culture that it can almost be unnerving at first when you really pay attention to someone and you really focus on what they have to say and people are so accustomed to either being interrupted or having someone rush in with their response already prepared uh when someone finishes talking but to to just um i guess support what you've just said i have found uh the quality of my relationships and the time i spend with people has been so dramatically increased you know by that simple idea of really taking a mindful approach to listening to another person to also take a mindful approach to how we react with them one of the tips i love that you offer was to harness a positive memory right before having a conversation with someone to soften our faces and i find that i have so much more access to my feelings in a conversation when i take the time to do that so i just um i just wanted to to i guess step in and and experientially reinforce the data that you've just shared that it really does invite people into a different pattern of relating when we take the the effort to curate and share a more whole and authentic part of ourselves through these practices that are based in neuroscience it's really powerful stuff well thank you and and yes and and to even you know to take it one step further i mean part of what we learn about how the brain works is you know the great thing about the brain is that it can change and it can adapt so for those people who are just so you know revved up all the time and intense um you know you're never maybe going to get them to speak uh as slowly as a zen you know master but you can get them to speak slower and you can get them to reflect more specifically on what people say and you can get them to be more intimate with other individuals on the basis of their facial expressions and as you mentioned you know having that contented smile again just another way of helping to connect with people these are things that are practicable i mean you can again as part of the the applied neurotheology piece which that we can do these things we can learn these things and we can take advantage of how our brain can change and adapt by making purposeful attempts at changing our behaviors and our ideas and um you know one of the things that we talk a lot about and this this may be a good moment to just mention this to the people who are listening um you know one of the exercises that we have people do is what we call an inner values exercise and what we do is we ask people to kind of sit down take out a piece of paper take a few deep breaths and then ask your ques ask yourself the following question what is my innermost value and we try not to define it too much um and then we say just write down what comes to your mind but the reason and then to do this several different times maybe even do it several times uh over a course of several different days because sometimes you'll have different kinds of answers but the importance of that is that it helps you to connect with things that you feel are most important and then uh what we what we ask people to to work towards doing is to basically proceed from those inner values and what i mean you know just to take one example uh you know if one of your values is respect you know that it's important that you rece the people respect you for example um then then part of the question that we turn around and say well when you are communicating and interacting with other people how are you can you do that from that innermost value com from that value of respect are you speaking to people with respect how can you speak to people with respect how can you uh look at people with respect in terms of your your facial expressions your body positions um you know are you creating that sense of respect in the people around you and within yourself um and so you know and there are so many different values that can have very positive effects on people but when people do take those more positive um values like like respect or love or compassion um and and work from them it can be very powerful and it can change and it does literally change the way their brain works and again i mean you know the data from the brain scans show that the emotional centers of the brain the cognitive centers of the brain you know the frontal lobes that help us with um you know basically generating our behaviors um you know these areas change as the result of doing these kinds of practices and engaging other people in the world in these new ways so our brain is always capable of of changing and adapting you can teach an old dog new tricks and uh even up until the age of you know 103. so um you know the brain continues to move and work and adapt and we can do our best to take advantage of that to to lead us down a path that hopefully makes those relationships um you know more more synergistic more resonant with other people um provides more satisfaction in life more happiness and and all of those things can be very very helpful for people [Music] and now we reach the point in the conversation that i'm most excited about um because i i love being able to introduce my audience to to your work and all the helpful and useful and interesting things that that entails uh but i'm very familiar with all that material um and what i'm really excited to hear about uh is what are you working on now what are what are some new developments that you're uncovering that you're really excited about and would like to share with people well you know as i mentioned at the very beginning we are just scratching the surface on what we have yet to learn i mean the brain itself is incredibly complex and so some of what we are learning is in that area so we are doing more studies looking not just at areas of the brain in terms of what's turned on or turned off but we are looking at different neurotransmitters the chemicals that help the brain to function uh chemicals like dopamine and serotonin and so we're looking looking at that kind of work we continued to look at the treasure trove of data from our survey that we did where we got a couple thousand people to talk about their spiritual experiences and we have looked at the descriptions of those experiences and compared different types of experiences to each other so we've compared people who are religious versus people who are non-religious who have very intense experiences we compared psychedelic experiences to more quote unquote natural experiences and we will continue to explore the nature of these kinds of experiences as well one of the things that we are also working on is is is some new ways of looking at the varieties of these different kinds of experiences taking a little bit of a page out of the famous psychiatrist william james back in around 1900 and looking at all of the differences that these experiences have how they manifest for people and um and i've also been exploring different traditions as well and so you know looking at how neurotheology may be useful uh to help people engage the the basis and the doctrines of given traditions like christianity and judaism islam and so forth and also thinking about neurotheology you know this this may be a great point to to make here is you know we sometimes have talked about neurotheology as being what we call a mega theology which is that it has content which may be so universal that irrespective of what your own personal beliefs are there could be something that is valuable there that can help you learn about yourself how to ultimately uh you know engage the world more effectively how to find your own enlightenment whatever that winds up meaning for each person and so we'll continue to do that and explore neurotheology from the very practical to the very esoteric and hopefully we'll find a lot of answers along the way and for anyone who wants to keep track of you and your work and what you're doing where can they go online to find you uh the best way is my website which is just andrew newberg n-e-w-b-e-r-g dot com and on there we have the results of a lot of our research studies uh the information about the books and other uh programs that uh i'm involved with and uh we'll we're gonna keep working on it and uh we'll keep working on helping other people start to explore this field um i think there's a very bright future for for the field and uh and hopefully you know all of this will will help everyone uh find their own spiritual paths that that work best for them and uh and help us all learn how best to interact with each other and how to work all together and on whatever podcast platform you're listening to right now to hear us talking you can tap on the show notes and there'll be a link there that will take you directly to dr newberg's website as well as linking you to those three books that i mentioned how god changes your brain how enlightenment changes your brain and words can change your brain all three come with my highest possible recommendation those those books have transformed my life i dare say that without those books there would be no ask science mike podcast at all and i just want to take a moment dr newberg and uh just share with you from my heart how grateful i am that you spent time with us today and for the work that you do and the focus that you place with your expertise on helping people live more satisfying and fulfilling lives and to live in better community with each other i believe deeply that that is important and necessary work in our world today it is so meaningful to me that you joined us today thank you thank you so much i really enjoyed it [Music]