Science backing up emotional mastery? What?
In their new book The Body Has a Mind of Its Own: How Body Maps in Your Brain Help You Do (Almost) Everything Better, Sandra Blakeslee and Matthew Blakeslee describe how emotional awareness and physical sensation are both integrated in the same brain structure (the right frontal insula).
Excerpts from the August/September 2007 issue of Scientific American Mind, caught my attention with the implication that such seemingly distant realms could be related in the brain. They describe how researchers have found that “people who are more aware of their heartbeats are also more emotionally astute.”
My first inclination is to ask which way the river flows: is it that emotionally astute people become more physically self-aware, or that physically self-aware people become more emotionally astute?
While this question may seem trivial initially, it may have implications to how we live our lives.
In spiritual and other realms, often it is said that a mastery of the emotions must precede any lasting changes in the physical world. As someone who has lost a lot of weight over the past few years, I can attest that a revolution in thought (regarding fitness and diet) must take place before any meaningful improvements to health can begin, then remain.
Of course the argument can swing the other way. Ritual plays a huge role in reaching new levels of spiritual awareness.
While some have downplayed its importance in their lives, these actions pervade many religions. Prayer is typically down with a reverent head down, or even with the whole body bowing, hands may come up as if to directly connect with this unseen Being. Yoga also brings physicality to the spiritual realm (or is the other way around?) Certain rites are preserved not merely as a throwback to previous generation, but because they are believe to help facilitate a deeper awareness.
As this is mainly a site on education and academics (with frequent tangents), what does any of this have to do with getting smarter and performing better?
I mentioned this scientifically-based article at the beginning to set a more concrete backdrop for the idea that expanding in many other ways — spiritually, emotionally, physically, etc. — will directly aid us in becoming smarter better people.
Again this is not a particularly new message; however, since I know many are hesitant to believe “airy-fairy” talk of emotional mastery and its benefits (myself included at times), I cite this article to suggest that even science is beginning to point in this direction. I know the inference may be a little large, but when the Dalai Lama speaks at a neuroscience conference, realms are quickly emerging.
This is what it’s like when worlds collide.
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