#MAGICAL THINKING HOW TO#

#MAGICAL THINKING HOW TO#

The event created a venue for researchers in basic and applied science, academia, and contemplative traditions to figure out how to integrate “first-person data,” or information that is gleaned from sensual, conscious experience, with “third-person data,” which is gathered by measuring brain processes and physical and behavioral responses using scientific instruments.Ĭredibly bridging this gap-between what contemplative practitioners have experienced and described for more than two millennia and what Western science can precisely measure-was the pervasive theme of the event. Sponsored in part by the Emory Collaborative for Contemplative Studies (ECCS), the event was historic, bringing together original sages in the field-including MIT molecular biologist Jon Kabat-Zinn, who originated mindfulness-based stress reduction in the 1970s-and newer stars, including Emory’s John Dunne, a Buddhist scholar who is working to define the generic term meditation. They recently gathered in Denver at the inaugural International Symposia for Contemplative Studies to showcase their findings to each other and more than seven hundred others who attended. Several Emory experts who have studied this innate human faculty are working together and with others around the world to both scientifically prove its effectiveness and increase its acceptance in clinical settings and classrooms. In the growing field of contemplative studies, scholars are exploring whether the practice known as mindfulness may be such a treatment. What if there were a treatment for every negative emotion and destructive behavior imaginable, from depression and anxiety to anger and violence, even to something as simple as poor eating habits? What if this same treatment could also help people learn more effectively, see things more clearly, access their true potential, and understand their relationship to other beings? And what if the treatment were free, available without a prescription, and potentially accessible to everyone?

Magical thinking