Evidence-Based Research for Our Courses

LINKS TO EACH SECTION OF THIS PAGE:

The General Scientific Foundation for Our Courses

The Scientific Foundation for Our Effortless Sleep Course, Wake Up to the Best Sleep Ever

The Scientific Foundation for Our Effortless Mindfulness Course, Train Your Brain, Change Your Life

The Scientific Foundation for the Value of Having a Supportive Community

The General Scientific Foundation
For Our Courses

[We can] perceive the extraordinary within the ordinary by changing not the world but the eyes that look… 

Jane Hirchfield.

With crises of all kinds erupting everywhere, and the world seeming to be coming apart at the seams, your “new age woo detector” may be triggered by the apparently “big” claims you’ll see on this site and in our courses.

The purpose of this page is to show you that everything we include in our courses has a strong basis in scientific research. I’ve divided the page into four sections:   

1. Defining the term, “evidence-based practices” and a brief review of research showing the
   power of the mind to affect the body

2. A brief explanation of how the sleep-wake cycle relates to CBT-I, the most highly
   recommended program for insomnia, and a quick look at how the limitations of CBT-I
   are addressed by the addition of a unique, effortless approach to mindfulness

3. A review of the research that supports the kind of brain training we teach in Train Your
   Brain, Change Your Life

4. An overview of research showing the power of a supportive community for successful
   habit change 

Part 1: Evidence-Based Practices and
Mind-Body Research

EVIDENCE-BASED PRACTICES

These days it’s common to speak of “evidence-based practices.”  What does that mean?  With regard to the kind of practices we teach, people tend to assume it means the standard form of controlled studies in which you take two or more groups (preferably with a large number of people in each group), teach a practice to one group and compare them to a control group through careful measurements that will determine the effects of the practice.

However, according to the National Institutes of Health, a practice qualifies as evidence-based if it has been shown to be effective through systematic case studies, ethnographic (field) research, clinical observation, or single-case reports.

Every claim we make on this site or in our courses is based on more than 30 years of reviewing the relevant research and selecting from it only those studies that have a solid scientific basis according to the standards laid out by the National Institutes of Health.

RESEARCH ON THE POWER OF THE MIND TO AFFECT THE BODY

Why review the research on the effects of the mind on the body? Because despite over half a century of high-quality research, many people still feel that the effects of psychological practices are not “real” in the same way as those of a pill or surgical procedure. The fact is, however, that psychological practices like the ones you’ll be learning in our courses have been shown repeatedly, over many decades, to have real, measurable physiological as well as psychological effects.

What follows is a very brief historical overview of some of that research. I’m focusing in this section on relaxation and breathing, as they provide an excellent (and easy-to-practice) foundation for all other practices.

Calming The Autonomic Nervous System: Relaxation

Dr. Edmund Jacobsen was one of the early pioneers in the field of mind-body medicine (then known as psychosomatic medicine). In the 1920s, using one of the first machines ever available for measuring electrical activity in muscles and the nervous system, he demonstrated that there’s a connection between tension in the body and tension in the mind. Studies of Jacobsen’s particular ‘tense-relax” practice have shown that it can improve sleep as well as reduce anxiety, tension, high blood pressure, the likelihood of seizures, and more.

Dr. Hans Selye, in the 1940s, arrived at our modern understanding of the stress response and showed how our natural, healthy, biological response to stress is distorted by our conditioned habits and negative thinking such that now, rather than saving our life, it makes us sick.

Dr. Herbert Benson, famous for his phrase, “the relaxation response,” is probably the next of the most well-known explorers of the mind-body connection. He helped show how negative thoughts, emotions and deeply rooted beliefs keep the sympathetic nervous system aroused, leading to a wide range of physical and psychological problems. The relaxation response, which can be triggered by simple relaxation, breathing and other practices, is the return of the autonomic nervous system to a balance of its sympathetic and parasympathetic branches.

Along with hundreds of other researchers around the world, Dr. Benson’s research team at the Benson-Henry Institute for Mind-Body Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital has been exploring the effects of relaxation for more than 40 years. Researchers have found that relaxation practices are quite beneficial in helping to reduce addictions of all kinds and are a crucial component in the treatment of insomnia, anxiety, depression, as well as the treatment of many kinds of physical pain, respiratory, cardiovascular and other physical concerns.

Calming The Autonomic Nervous System: Breathing   

As with relaxation, breathing has a direct and rapid effect on the ANS (autonomic nervous system). Researchers, including Suzanne M. Bertisch of Harvard Medical School, Richard P Brown, associate professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, the above-mentioned Dr. Herbert Benson and many more have found a wide array of benefits from various kinds of breathing exercises.

• Cognitive: Better working memory, which is a major component of general intelligence; improvement in attention leading to improved skills in the arts and sports; and reduced symptoms of ADHD

• Emotional: Reduced anxiety levels, fewer panic attacks, reduction in symptoms of PTSD and depression, reduction in overall stress levels

• Physical/instinctive: Reduced cravings related to smoking, alcohol and drug abuse; reduction in blood pressure, improvement of overall cardiovascular functioning 

Calming the Autonomic Nervous System: Music

Over 50 years of research has shown music to have wide-ranging, beneficial effects on various systems of the body, including the ANS, CNS (central nervous system), endocrine, musculo-skeletal, cardiovascular, and gastro-intestinal systems. Psychologist Daniel J. Leviton is one of the most prominent researchers in this field, conducting research showing how music improves the immune system, can be more effective than prescription drugs in reducing anxiety before surgery, and reduces stress in pediatric emergency room patients. The Beth Israel Center’s Louis Armstrong Center for Music and Medicine has shown that music has beneficial effects on premature babies. The Mayo Clinic has conducted research showing music can slow the decline of cognitive abilities in those with Alzheimer’s and other kinds of dementia.

Other effects of music on the body that have been established by research include: 

• Stimulation of the parasympathetic nervous system which facilitates deep relaxation

• Establishment of a strong mind-gut connection via the movement of neurotransmitters and hormones between the brain and the gut, alleviating  a wide range of digestive issues including many kinds of stomach pain as well as irritable bowel syndrome.

• Strengthening of the immune system

• Strengthening of the cardiovascular system, leading to overall improved heart health

• Improvement of the central nervous system’s capacity for effortless attention and use of our working, short-term, and long-term memory.

• Improvement of sleep:

  • One study with 272 premature infants showed that listening to soothing music improved their breathing, sleeping, and eating patterns.

  • A number of studies showed a significant decrease in the time it takes to fall asleep when listening to music. 

  • Studies showing that music supports the endocrine system by enhancing the production and regulation of hormones such as melatonin and adenosine which are helpful for falling asleep.

Various forms of mindfulness and cognitive-behavioral practices can also calm the autonomic nervous system. These will be discussed below.

Stress and Mind-Body Interaction

Understanding stress and the mind-body interaction may be the easiest way to get a feel for the power of the mind to affect the body because – whether or not you’ve paid attention to it – you’ve experienced it many times in your life.

When faced with something perceived as a threat – whether it be a growling dog off its leash or the loss of job security:

• Your heart rate increases, and your blood pressure goes up

• Your muscles tense up to prepare you for action

• Your digestion slows down

• Your reproductive system slows down 

The way the the stress response is supposed to work is that after the threat is gone, the blood pressure, muscle tension, slowed digestion and reproductive functions all return to normal. However, due to our “sophisticated” human brain, we can dwell on possible threats even when they’re no longer present and we’re in a completely secure environment. Over 80 years of stress research shows that this compulsive dwelling on potential threats can cause or worsen a very wide range of health problems, including those associated with physical pain such as arthritis, headaches, back pain, irritable bowel syndrome; insomnia; anxiety and depression; blood sugar levels in Type 2 diabetes; heart problems including hypertension, angina, arrhythmias, and even heart attacks.

The good news is that the practices you’ll learn in our courses have been shown, when practiced regularly, to be able to stop and even reverse the negative effects of stress. Research dating back to the pioneering work of Edmond Jacobsen, Hans Selye and Herbert Benson, and elaborated further by studies in psychoneuro-immunology and the recent explosion in research from contemplative studies centers in universities across the world, shows that the practices in these courses can reduce or even eliminate the kinds of symptoms listed above. 

The fact that the brain changes in response to experience has been known since the 19th century, but until recently it was thought that its capacity for change was lost some time in childhood or adolescence. More recent research, however, shows that:

• the brain continues to make substantial changes throughout the entire lifespan

• the way we use our mind can lead to direct physiological changes in the brain

According to Michael Merzenich, one of the leading authorities on neuroplasticity, by consciously changing where we choose to focus our attention, we can create physical changes in the structure and future functioning of the nervous system. This leaves us with the clear physiological fact that, moment by moment, based on how we use our minds, we are in a very real sense sculpting our brains and shaping who we are becoming. 

Here are a few examples of changes in the brain due to both physical and psychological activities:

• The hippocampus – that part of the brain which is responsible for spatial memory – is larger in London cab drivers who spend years learning to navigate the incredibly complex streets of London.  

• The brains of basketball players, violinists, and others show more development in areas of the brain that are directly related to the particular skills they’ve practiced. Some of these changes are seen even when the athletes and musicians just imagine the activity.

• When stroke victims who have lost mobility in one arm are “constrained” from using the unaffected arm, various parts of the cortex (the more sophisticated part of the brain) reorganize themselves making it possible to use the weaker arm.

• Regular mindfulness practice improves emotional regulation, memory and attention, and increases the gray matter in those parts of the brain responsible for each of these cognitive and executive functions.

Decades of research has shown that, among other things, placebo pills and placebo “objects” can reduce or eliminate symptoms of depression, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, anxiety, migraine and tension headaches, back, knee, stomach and other kinds of pain, asthma, epilepsy, Parkinson’s, blood sugar levels in Type 2 diabetes, hypertension, Crone’s disease, arthritis and more.

It is worth noting that not all placebo pills are created equal. Researchers have found that the effectiveness of a placebo pill has a lot to do with its shape and color – which means that, whether we realize it or not, when it comes to pills, we have more faith in some shapes and colors than others. The least effective placebo is your ordinary round white tablet. Similar white pills, but with angled edges, have a stronger placebo effect. The effect is even more powerful with a colored tablet, and more powerful still with capsules of colored beads. Injections top them all.

One of the more creative uses of placebo we’ve heard is placebo expert Patrick Wall’s example of “a doctor who handled the placebo tablets with forceps, assuring the patient that they were too powerful to touch the skin.”

So, for example, we have genes that cause cancer, and genes that prevent it. Whether or not we actually get cancer depends on which of those genes is switched on and which is switched off. Epigenetics is the science that studies the factors that influence when and how particular switches are turned on and off.

There are a number of these factors over which we potentially have some degree of control – meaning there are things we can do to affect which of our genes get activated. For example, how much exercise we do and what kind of food we eat can affect whether certain genes are turned on or turned off. What’s perhaps more surprising is that even our thoughts, our moods, and our ability to focus our attention can influence whether or not the genes for diseases like autism, diabetes, asthma, schizophrenia, and heart disease get activated. 

Dr. Herbert Benson, best known for his book, “The Relaxation Response,” recently conducted a study comparing the stress-related genes of long-term meditators to those of people who never practiced meditation. He found more than 1,000 stress-related genes were turned off in those who meditated. In the non-meditators, only half that amount was turned off. This has important implications for our health because the more stress-related genes we have that are turned on, the more likely we are to have high blood pressure, chronic pain, diabetes, and other stress-related conditions.

But fortunately, the story doesn’t end there. Benson then trained the non-meditators to use a simple meditation technique. After practicing it for eight weeks, he re-examined their genetic make-up. And what he found was that after just eight weeks of meditating an additional 433 stress-related genes were turned off. 

Part 2: The Scientific Foundation
for Our Sleep Course

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia (CBT-I)

I was certified in CBT-I through a program created by Dr. Gregg Jacobs. Dr. Jacobs developed the Behavioral Medicine Insomnia Program at Harvard Medical School’s Deaconess Hospital in Boston, in 1991. It was the first comprehensive program for insomnia that did not use drugs. Over the past 30 years, it has been taught to thousands of patients and healthcare practitioners. It was considered successful enough that he was awarded a four-year grant by the National Institutes of Health to study the effectiveness of his Insomnia Program compared to medications prescribed for sleep. (Spoiler alert: it was more successful).  

CBT-I, as developed by Dr. Jacobs and others, is based on a simple principle: rather than making an effort to sleep or an effort to meditate, we can learn more about the naturally balanced functioning of our brain and body, and then learn to cooperate with that natural functioning. When we do, there’s no need to struggle to control our mind or our behavior.

And it’s not just humans. All mammals and reptiles have natural sleep-wake cycles, along with a number of other natural cycles. We tend to live our lives with so little awareness of these cycles that it may be hard to believe there are times when our bodies are ready and eager to sleep, eat, or exercise; that there are cycles of greater and lesser susceptibility to illness; and there are even periods throughout the day that are more favorable for analytic or creative thinking!

We can learn to tune into these circadian cycles (cycles that occur within a 24-hour period), not only to get high quality, restorative sleep with relatively little effort, but to more easily develop healthy work, eating, exercise and recreational habits as well.

Circadian rhythms regulate not only our sleep-waking patterns, but our digestion, immune and other systems of the body. They affect our metabolism and weight through regulation of blood sugar and cholesterol, and can even affect our mental-emotional state, particularly our levels of happiness and sadness (SAD, or “seasonal affective disorder,” is an example of this).   

Our body has some natural rhythms that are independent of the environment, but for the most part, sleeping and waking are affected by sunlight. Light stimulates our hypothalamus (the “master clock” in our brain) to produce hormones such as cortisol and acetylcholine that increase alertness, and darkness stimulates it to produce melatonin, adenosine and other “sleep” hormones. These circadian rhythms harmonize our sleep-wake drive with the sun so that we generally stay alert throughout the day (except for a dip in energy which often occurs in mid-to-late afternoon) until the sun goes down when our sleep drive takes over.

In 1987, psychiatrist and sleep specialist Arthur Spielman developed a protocol to help people find a sleep schedule that would best align them with their natural sleep-wake cycles. (Dr. Spielman referred to this process as “sleep restriction,” the term commonly used in CBT-I.  Since that term tends to evoke an uncomfortable feeling of control, the opposite of what we’re aiming for, I’ve chosen to refer to it as “sleep scheduling” instead.) Sleep researchers around the world have come to agree that if you could choose just one thing to do to improve your sleep, it would be to go through the process of determining your ideal sleep schedule.

Still Trying Too Hard to Get to Sleep? The Mindfulness Solution

 Judith Davison, David Reed, William Sacco, Stephanie Gilberman and Charles Morin are among the leading clinicians writing about and teaching CBT-I. Their work and the application of CBT-I have been so successful that in 2016, the American College of Physicians identified CBT-I as ­the #1 choice for treatment of insomnia, prior to the use of medications or nutritional supplements. OK is it

Though CBT-I has had widespread success, not everyone has benefitted from it. In order to address its shortcomings, a “second generation” CBT-I treatment was developed over the past 10 to 15 years – one that incorporates mindfulness. As developed by Jason Ong, Guy Meadows, William Moorcroft, Brandon Peters and others, it targets the biggest problem people have with CBT-I – trying too hard. Dr. Ong and others have found that for many, the addition of mindfulness has been the key to helping those who had only partially benefited from the original version of CBT-I.

Beyond CBT-I and Conventional Mindfulness

As someone who has conducted research on mindfulness, practiced it for over 40 years, and taught it to many people, I know that trying too hard can also be a problem in learning mindfulness. The tendency to be tensely effortful is so pervasive among people trying to meditate or be mindful that I designed the entire sleep course using the most recent developments in what has been referred to as “effortless mindfulness.” In the next section – on the research associated with our “Train Your Brain, Change Your Life” – course, I’ll go into more detail about the research associated with effortless mindfulness.

Learning About Sleep Stages

In the sleep course, you’ll see how learning what scientists have discovered regarding the stages of sleep can be utilized to help you get a better sense of what it means to get to sleep “without trying.”

In studying the research on sleep, I’ve noticed that sleep researchers often aren’t very familiar with the research on dreams. Dream researchers may not be familiar with lucid dreams (dreams in which you’re aware that you’re dreaming), which was the subject of the research I conducted for my Masters thesis. And in many cases, neither sleep nor dream researchers are familiar with much of the research on meditation and mindfulness.

So let’s look at the research in these different fields and see how it can be used to help you get an even deeper, more restorative sleep.

It has been known since the 1920s, when Nathaniel Kleitman and Eugene Aserinsky developed the first sleep laboratory, that rapid eye movement is associated with dreaming. In 1955, Dr. William Dement, one of Dr. Kleitman’s students, identified the various stages of sleep. Since then, lucid dream researchers have noted that timing your sleep in a way that makes maximum use of these sleep cycles can help you to both remember more dreams and develop your ability to have lucid dreams.

In the sleep course, you’ll learn to identify very specific experiences associated with stage 1 and stage 2 sleep in a way that, if you practice consistently, will dramatically reduce the time you need to get to sleep and increase your overall sleep quality.    

Richard Miller has developed a profoundly restful practice he calls “iRest.” It combines mindfulness, deep relaxation and a practice known as “yoga nidra” – or “yogic sleep.” He has conducted extensive research at several veterans’ hospitals showing the effectiveness of iRest in helping veterans overcome trauma. Uma Dinsmore-Tuli founder of the International Yoga Nidra Network has been teaching yoga nidra for over 25 years. She describes the practice as simply “becoming mindful of the transition from stage 1 to stage 2 sleep.” 

Miller has also conducted research on insomnia at the Walter Reed Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas, showing the value of yoga nidra for relieving insomnia. My own research on lucid dreams in the early 1990s focused on the power of being mindful of the spontaneously arising images that occur during the transition from Stage 1 to Stage 2 sleep. The extensive work of dream expert Charley Morley, who has successfully helped thousands of insomniacs and trauma victims overcome their ailments, confirms that becoming mindful of this transitional stage is a very powerful means of easing effortlessly into sleep.

Part 3: The Scientific Foundation
for Our Brain Training Course

So far on this page about research, I’ve explained that the practices in our courses have been drawn from evidence-based science, and that basic relaxation and breathing practices are used, in both the sleep and brain training course, as a foundation for all the other practices. Although you’ll learn about “effortless mindfulness” practices in the sleep course, we delve into it much more deeply in the brain training course, where you’ll learn more about the different kinds of attention that have been described and researched extensively by Les Fehmi, John Yates, Iain McGilchrist, Dan Siegel and others. In this section, I’ll be focusing on the research regarding mindfulness practice in general.

WHAT RESEARCH TELLS US ABOUT THE EFFECTIVENESS OF MINDFULNESS PRACTICE

A consistent practice of mindfulness has been found to make positive changes to the physical structure of the brain. Brain scans of people who practice mindfulness meditation show that the size of their prefrontal cortex – (PFC) actually increases (this is the part of the brain that’s in charge of integrating and balancing the different parts of the brain and body). I realize that there have been many critiques of mindfulness research, some of which I’ve made myself. I won’t be addressing them on this page, but if there is sufficient interest, I’d be happy to post a series of blog posts and videos describing these critiques in more detail. Meanwhile, I’m including the results of what I consider to be the best quality mindfulness research available.

One of the important findings of the research is that there are limitations to the use of mindfulness alone. A great deal of research shows that mindfulness presented as we do in both our courses – integrated with relaxation, breathing, and positive psychology interventions – makes its positive results both more likely and more powerful.  The research of Loch Kelly’s “Effortless Mindfulness Institute, Les Fehmi, Dan Siegel, Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi, Zoran Josipovic of the New York University Nonduality Laboratory, and Diana Winston, director of mindfulness education at the UCLA Mindful Awareness Research Center, among others, shows that even more powerful effects come about when an “effortless mindfulness” approach is utilized.

With regard to the above-mentioned positive psychology interventions, this is especially important with regard to understanding the benefits of mindfulness. The practice of mindfulness is often taught as if it were a purely neutral, non-ethical exercise. Extensive research shows that when we are less focused on our own concerns, and our hearts naturally open to care, compassion and service to others, that this increases both the physiological and psychological benefits of mindfulness.

SOME BENEFITS OF AN INTEGRATED MINDFULNESS APPROACH

The Importance of a Supportive Community

It’s now a fairly well-known fact that some kind of community support plays an essential role in successful attempts to lose weight. But what’s not as well-known is that having a strong support community makes any change effort more successful.

In this section, we’ll look at some of the neurological research which shows the beneficial effects of social connection on the brain. We’ll look briefly at some of the research on healthy communities where people thrive physically and psychologically. And finally, we’ll look at how you, with the help of the community associated with our courses, can build your own support community to help you not just with sleep but in every area of your life.

In helping others as well as yourself, you will be likely to also find more and more ways to help the world.   

It’s your mirror neurons that make you spontaneously yawn when you see someone else yawning. When you see someone drinking, it’s your mirror neurons that make you thirsty and prepare you to drink. When you see someone eating a waffle cone with two scoops of your favorite ice cream or downing an order of crispy french fries, your mirror neurons cause your mouth to water and prepare your body to indulge. When you see someone in pain, your mirror neurons activate the areas in the brain that register pain. During large group events like concerts, rallies, and sports competitions, there can be a kind of emotional contagion that spreads through the crowd. These are all examples of mirror neurons at work.

The discovery of mirror neurons can also help us understand the basis for recent research findings showing that people are more likely to gain weight when their friends are overweight or when people they hang out with start to put on weight.

Even beyond the effect of mirror neurons, whether we realize it or not, and whether we like it or not, in a very tangible way, we are always influencing each other’s behaviors – for better and for worse.  

The research below, on supportive communities, will give you some idea of how powerfully we influence each other and how beneficial it can be when we set out to create supportive communities.

Dan Buettner is one of the founders of what’s known as the Blue Zones project. As a journalist for National Geographic magazine, he travelled the globe in search of the world’s healthiest communities to identify the characteristics that made them so healthy. Later, the term “Blue Zones” was used to describe the communities that embody those characteristics and the Blue Zones project was initiated to help create more of them. 

What Blue Zone communities tend to have in common is the value placed on high quality foods (lots of plant-based food), physical activity as an integral part of the day, time for playful interactions with others, “downtime,” strong social connections, and having a deep sense of purpose in life. Perhaps not surprisingly, the elements that make communities healthy, are the same as those which support the healthy, balanced functioning of our brain.

There are now 42 Blue Zones projects across the United States. The overall results have been quite dramatic.  These are just a few examples:

• In Fort Worth, Texas, from 2014 to 2018, there was a 31% decrease in smoking in a population of nearly 200,000 people

• In Spencer Iowa, from 2011 to 2014, there was an overall 7.5 million dollar decrease in annual healthcare costs for employers

• In three beach cities of Southern California (Hermosa Beach, Manhattan Beach, and Redondo Beach), from 2010 to 2015, there was such widespread improvement in general psychological and physical health that together, they had the highest “Global Well-Being Index” score in the United States, surpassing 190 other metropolitan areas. (The Global Well-Being Index is a measurement tool used worldwide to assess overall well-being based on a wide range of physical, psychological, and socio-cultural factors. In addition to physical and financial well-being, it measures more “inner” aspects, such as the quality of social interactions, community connections, and a sense of purpose and meaning in life.)

Since we all generally like to be seen in a positive way by others, peer pressure can often have the effect of motivating us to engage in unhealthy activities in order to gain the approval of our peers. Conversely, researchers have been able, quite successfully, to use “positive peer pressure” to motivate groups to engage in healthier behavior.

These are just a few examples that have worked:

• A “social energy app” that provides homeowners with measures of their neighbors’ energy usage, promoting friendly competition to see who could use the least amount of energy, and to share tips on energy conservation

• Otpor, that got students involved in street theater as a medium of protest against the regime of Serbian dictator Milosevic

• LoveLife, a peer group in South Africa making AIDS awareness part of an aspirational lifestyle for teens

• Chicago-based Willow Creek Community Church, which has aimed at changing lives with small, neighborhood-based groups made up of people with quite diverse interests getting together to help each other

• The Emerging Scholars, a peer-based group teaching calculus to poor Latino students through nightly study groups

• A community drop-in center in Brixton, England that has created successful anti-terrorism programs through providing gathering places for Muslim teens to find greater community

We want to do everything we can to help you feel welcome in our online community and to feel like you can make a positive contribution. We hope you’ll join us!

Selected Reviews of Our Book:
Yoga Psychology and the Transformation of Consciousness

The aim of the book is to look at the yogic approach to psychology

and provide a valid integration of this approach with the best of contemporary science.

"As a neuroscientist, I find the ideas presented by Salmon & Maslow wonderfully complementary to my own perspective. Those interested in the nature of consciousness . . . would be well advised to study this text closely. It is a high quality, authentically serious effort, and very nicely written."

Jeffrey M. Schwartz, MD, Research Psychiatrist UCLA and author of The Mind & The Brain

Blending ancient wisdom and up-to-date science, Salmon and Maslow paint a picture of consciousness that is compelling and inspiring."

Larry Dossey, MD, editor of Explore: The Journal of Science and Healing, and author of The Extraordinary Healing Power of Ordinary Things, former executive editor of the peer-reviewed journal, “Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine.”

"Developing a global consensus about the nature and evolution of consciousness provides a major challenge for 21st Century thought… the authors provide an in-depth account that sheds a very different light on the view currently prevalent in the West. Fascinating and provocative."

Max Velmans, Ph.D., Emeritus Professor of psychology at Goldsmiths, University of London, author of Understanding Consciousness and science editor of The Blackwell Companion to Consciousness.

"What a beautiful and hopeful book Don Salmon and Jan Maslow have given us! In an age of oppression and anxiety they offer us a path of hope and redemption. But don't think this is another book on how to relax and breathe properly under stress, though such books surely have their place. It is rather a deeply intelligent and compassionate exploration of the profound evolutionary possibilities of the human soul and spirit."

Allan Combs, Ph.D., Psychologist, author of The Radiance of Being, founder and president of The International Society for Consciousness Studies

"This book tackles in an elegant yet incisive manner one of the necessities of our time -- the synthesis of science and spirituality. Bringing to bear the insights of Indian philosopher-sage Aurobindo Ghose, it helps us understand our experiences from a spiritual perspective. It offers optimism about our world's future which is needed in this time of transformation. Read it."

Elmer Green, Ph.D., Psychophysicist and Biofeedback Pioneer

Don Salmon and Jan Maslow in their beautifully presented, accessible and highly readable book lead the reader in a meditative way ever deeper into the awakening of consciousness. They demonstrate a solid inner grasp of the science and philosophy of yoga and bring this vital teaching into our contemporary lives as we face the challenges of the 21st century. This important book speaks deeply to all emerging global citizens – to all persons who seek wholeness, well-being and inner peace.

From the Preface by Ashok Gangadean, Ph.D., Professor and Chair of Philosophy, Haverford College

"For the reader who is sincerely interested in knowing about the positive, transformative changes and states of consciousness that are possible to be experienced by right personal endeavor, this book will be extremely helpful."

From the Foreward by Roy Eugene Davis, direct disciple of Paramahansa Yogananda and Director of The Center for Spiritual Awareness

“The human future depends on a spreading awakening to a spiritual reality that our modern cultures have been prone to deny. Salmon and Maslow bring together ancient spiritual teachings with the most advanced of modern science to help us penetrate the illusions of culture, helping us not only to understand the nature of spirituality, but even more, to experience it.  A profoundly important book.”

David C. Korten, Ph.D., board chair YES! Magazine; author, The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community

“The authors range widely through contemporary thinking in consciousness studies and philosophy of science, providing provocative challenges to traditional thinking at every step.”

William A. Adams, Ph.D., psychologist, author: What Does it All Mean? A Humanistic Account of Human Experience

“Yoga, in its original and deeper intention has always been a psychology, a way of alleviating suffering from the mind and heart and opening a higher awarenss within us. Salmon and Maslow have taken the essence of yoga psycyhology and show its relevance today as an important paradigm by which all our personal and social problems can be solved in a lasting manner.”

Dr. David Frawley, author,Yoga and Ayurveda, Director: The American Institute of Vedic Studies

“Here is a map to help us escape the confines of our contemporary cultures, a way to understand what it really means to be fully alive to our infinite nature. Here are signposts for individual and collective transformation: read them!

Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, Sufi teacher; author, Awakening the World: A Global Dimension to Spiritual Life

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