How God Changes Your Brain - Andrew Newberg, M. D_ [79]
A forty-minute cardiovascular workout every other day is enough to keep your brain healthy, but why limit yourself to just one modality? When you look at all the techniques that have proven effective in treating physical and emotional problems, you'll find that most treatments use a combination of approaches. For example, when Dean Ornish created his famous program to reverse heart disease, he combined exercise with meditation, breath awareness, relaxation, and a low-fat vegetarian diet.97
Combined strategies are always more effective, so why not assemble all of the above techniques into a cardiovascular meditation? Warm up with a dozen yoga stretches and yawns, then put on your running shoes and smile. And, since there's no reason why you can't contemplate God or focus on developing inner peace as you strengthen your muscles, bones, heart, and brain, why not pick a spiritual or personal goal that you want to accomplish in your life? You can literally sprint to success. Get together with a small group of spiritually minded friends and sponsor an interfaith marathon with your church. Become a cardiovascular Christian. Do isotonics for Islam. Jog for Judaism. Bike for Buddhism. Eat plenty of vegetables and be as healthy as a Hindu. And don't forget to yawn. You'll open your heart and your mind, in both a spiritual and literal way.
If you think this sounds silly, let me tell you about an experiment conducted with nineteen churches in Baltimore, Maryland.98 Five hundred twenty-six Baptist, Holiness, Catholic, and Methodist African-American women spent a year integrating spirituality and exercise. They did aerobics to gospel music, and chanted religious praises during a cardiovascular dance. They also received scripture-based messages encouraging physical activity and healthy eating. Participants had significant improvements in dietary energy and blood pressure, weight and waist reduction, total fat reduction, and lower sodium intake. Church involvement specifically contributed to the program's success, but the addition of spirituality did not significantly improve outcomes. Still, it does point out the potential power that religious groups have in fostering physical and emotional health.
THE SECOND BEST WAY TO EXERCISE YOUR BRAIN
Dialogue with others. Language and the human brain coevolved with each other,99 allowing us to excel over many of the physical and mental skills of other mammals and primates. And if we don't exercise our language skills, large portions of the brain will not effectively interconnect with other neural structures. Dialogue requires social interaction, and the more social ties we have, the less our cognitive abilities will decline.100 In fact, any form of social isolation will damage important mechanisms in the brain leading to aggression, depression, and various neuropsychiatric disorders.101 Without dialogue, we would not be able to cooperate with others, and without cooperation, human behavior rapidly deteriorates into conflict. We can either talk our way out of a problem or fight our way out, and dialogue is certainly the more civilized solution for attaining and maintaining global peace.
But don't just talk about the weather or gossip about the neighbors. These forms of dialogue are more like monologues, and they won't engage the brain as much as a deeper conversation. Talk about abstract ideals like harmony and peace. Ask what your neighbor