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Marjorie Woollacott

Author of Infinite Awareness

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Recent Posts

  • Extending Compassion to Ourselves and the Planet: Can Meditation Help?
  • Are Angels Real? Do Miracles Happen?
  • The Nature Of Consciousness: Resonance Between Ancient Philosophies And Current Science
  • Does the Brain Filter Out a Wider Awareness?
  • Hypnosis: Does it Work?

Archives

Extending Compassion to Ourselves and the Planet: Can Meditation Help?

March 25, 2017 by Marjorie Woollacott 1 Comment

  • This article first appeared on The Huffington Post, February 16, 2017. Used with Permission, 2017.

We are at a critical point in our planetary history, and we’re polarized in our views about how to protect both ourselves and our environment. We may all agree that the time is critical, but there is no consensus on what is needed to help—some might say heal—our planet. Many feel the key issue is human safety and the remedy is to protect our species and our resources. These “others”—and I am among them—contend that our sense of separation is what produces both individual and planetary suffering.

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Filed Under: Blog

Are Angels Real? Do Miracles Happen?

November 28, 2016 by Marjorie Woollacott 5 Comments

* This article first appeared in Awareness Magazine, Nov-Dec Issue, 2016. Used with Permission.

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As a young neuroscience professor, I had a spiritual awakening—an inner event that inspired me to spend the last thirty years exploring any understanding that might connect the exceedingly different worlds of science and spirituality.

Angels and miracles are two concepts, I found, that were accepted by spiritualists but never by scientists—and never, I must add, by myself. In religious texts and spiritual magazines, I would read descriptions of angels, the winged messengers or guardians sent by a deity and often the performers of miracles. A miracle, I would like to add, is defined by Webster’s as “an extraordinary event manifesting divine intervention in human affairs.”1

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Filed Under: Blog

The Nature Of Consciousness: Resonance Between Ancient Philosophies And Current Science

August 17, 2016 by Marjorie Woollacott 5 Comments

*This article first appeared on The Huffington Post, Science Section, Used with Permission, 2016.

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What is consciousness?  Is it an essentially human characteristic or a fundamental characteristic of the universe?  Questions about consciousness have intrigued philosophers and scientists for thousands of years.  Neuroscientists, like myself, are asking questions about the essential characteristics of consciousness, and the extent to which it is dependent on activity in the brain. In the laboratory, I have studied consciousness through my research on meditation, and more recently the phenomenon of near-death experiences.

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Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: awareness, consciousness, meditation, mind, Mind-Body Connection, Yoga

Does the Brain Filter Out a Wider Awareness?

August 13, 2016 by Marjorie Woollacott Leave a Comment

*This article first appeared on The Huffington Post, Science Section, Used with Permission, 2016.

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The human brain has amazing capacities. It contains billions of neurons, allowing it to process vast quantities of information so that we can function effectively. But can we have too much information? Yes, and, in fact, filtering information, is one of the brain’s most important functions. Brain filtering is an adaptive strategy and ensures that only the information relevant to our goals is allowed into our consciousness. This keeps us from being flooded with irrelevancies that might distract us.

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Hypnosis: Does it Work?

April 3, 2016 by Marjorie Woollacott 6 Comments

*This article first appeared on The Huffington Post, Science Section. Used with Permission, 2016

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In recent years, hypnosis has become an accepted medical therapy to address a variety of conditions, including childbirth pain and weight loss, which are concerns for many women. This increased popularity is probably due to research that shows hypnosis can produce profound improvements in health—though we know very little about the mechanisms by which these improvements are made. The word hypnosis comes from ancient Greek and means “a mental state like sleep” -but as a therapy, it isn’t so easily defined. Though hypnosis produces changes in the body, it appears as if these physiological changes occur through our own mental processes.

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Science and Meditation: Integrating a First-Person Experience into the Scientific Process

January 9, 2016 by Marjorie Woollacott 2 Comments

*This article first appeared on The Huffington Post, Science Section. Used with Permission, 2016

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As a long time meditator and neuroscientist, my interest in the effect of meditation on brain function is both personal and professional. The benefits meditation has brought to my life mirror first-person accounts of other meditation practitioners–basically, a sense of greater peace and more joy.

In addition to being even-minded in the midst of life’s challenges, many meditators describe having experiences that might be called mystical–and not just in the state of meditation but also after their session of meditation has ended. Some individuals say that their awareness has been expanded beyond the stretch of their five senses; some say they experience the world to be luminous or to scintillate with light.

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Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: awareness, consciousness, first-person, meditation, Woollacott

The Placebo Effect: Harnessing the Healing Power of the Mind

December 14, 2015 by Marjorie Woollacott 2 Comments

*This article first appeared on The Huffington Post, Health Living Section. Used with permission, 2015. 

Infinite Awareness, Marjorie Woollacott Having performed research for a number of years on the healing effects of both Western medicine and complementary therapies such as Tai Chi and meditation, I’m intrigued by the question of which factors actually contribute to improvements in health.

Do Western and complementary therapeutic modalities share any common healing factors? In our society we generally assume that Western therapies heal and complementary therapies, like meditation or acupuncture, do not. If some improvement comes after a complementary therapy, I’ve heard people say, “It’s just the placebo effect.” But what exactly is the placebo effect? And what is its relationship to all forms of healing, not only complementary therapies but Western medicine as well?

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Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: awareness, marjorie woollacott, mind, science

Art and Meditation: Can One Help You Access the Other?

September 19, 2015 by Marjorie Woollacott 4 Comments

Marjorie Woollacott, street art, art and meditation

Artistic inspiration is something that most scientists—at least most neuroscientists—refuse even to consider in the laboratory. How can you measure what’s truly inspired and what isn’t? There is, however, a subjective experience that comes with inspiration, and this I’d had tastes of myself before I ever studied neuroscience. Though I grew up as a musician and loved music, one of the reasons I chose science as a career was that I didn’t feel I could reliably access true inspiration as an oboist..

The Connection Between Art and Meditation 

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Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: art, awareness, marjorie woollacott, meditation, mind, science

A Scientist Steps Beyond the Material World

September 13, 2015 by Marjorie Woollacott Leave a Comment

Is it possible that there is a scientific basis for the mystical experiences people, including myself, often have in meditation? This is one of the key questions I address in my forthcoming book, Infinite Awareness: The Awakening of a Scientific Mind. The answer that most scientists would give is a resounding no, but in my book I take the reader with me through my own exploration of science and meditation.meditation, marjorie woollacott, science

My Early Years

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Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: awareness, marjorie woollacott, meditation, mind, reiki, science

Questions on Mind, Meditation, and Awareness

September 1, 2015 by Marjorie Woollacott 12 Comments

Is human consciousness simply a product of brain activity?

Most neuroscientists say that you must have an active brain in order to have conscious experience, yet there is much research evidence that suggests otherwise. In the area of near-death experience (NDE) during cardiac arrest, I have seen compelling evidence to support the premise that human consciousness does not require a functioning brain. A sizable percentage of cardiac arrest patients report having these experiences even though their body—including, naturally, their brain—has been judged by medical professionals to be nonfunctioning, to be dead.

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Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: awareness, marjorie woollacott, meditation, mind, science

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