June 28, 2020

Brain Stilling - Brain Storming for Effective Decisions




Brain stilling is allowing unconscious mind to work on the problem. The unconscious mind provides intuitive solutions. Brain stilling is also used to understand the others' viewpoint with full concentration on the description provided. Ability to suspend judgment till the other person presents his view completely is important. Top managers need to cultivate the ability to combine intelligences of many people. Spirituality scholars with focus on management even talk of utilizing the universal intelligence in decision making.

Brain storming is a group creativity enhancing technique. In this technique, the members of the group are provided continuous stimulation in the form of ideas presented by others. Some of these ideas may provide the stimulus to bring forth new ideas. Every idea is recorded without any evaluation to encourage further participation by others. Top managers will get the benefit of conscious effort by many in the organization by holding brain storming sessions. The brain storming sessions can be followed by individual suggestions that are communicated after providing more time for external search and individual thinking. There is scope for intuitive suggestions also when time is provided to many for thinking.

After brain storming, some time can be given for brain stilling to allow time for the unconscious to bring out from the depths of one's mind and brain some thing interesting that is of use to solve the problem under investigation.


Meditation and Brain Stilling

Patanjali

The definition of meditation (or yoga) by Patanjali as “restriction (or stilling) of the fluctuations of the mind” (cf, Woods, 1927/2003, p. xxx, 8).

According to Patanjali, five types of fluctuations of mind should be overcome in order to attain concentration (meditation): (1) veridical cognition on the basis of perception, logical reasoning, and verbal communication, (2) illusory imagination, (3) linguistic conceptualizations, (4) sleep, and (5) memory (Woods, 1927/2003; Rao, 2011, p. xxx, 17ff). These fluctuations corresponds to, roughly speaking, the full range of mental states which the mind may pass through during normal life activity as they are described in modern psychology.

Although different schools of meditation use specific techniques and procedures (Focused Attention, Open Monitoring, Nondual Awarenes etc., cf, Josipovic, 2014), the ultimate aim always includes some form of “restriction (or stilling) of the fluctuations of the mind.”

Meditation is a whole-brain (body) activity and needs characterization in terms of whole brain dynamics. The research strategy might follow the non-reductionist proposal of Edelman (2003) and Edelman and Tononi (2000 p. 18f) and concentrate on the brain processes, not just the brain areas, that support consciousness, and examine what kind of neural interactions may explain the fundamental properties of consciousness such as phenomenological unity, differentiation, variability and informativeness, that may reveal characteristics conforming to the phenomenological descriptions of the target states (e.g., rest vs. various forms and states of meditation).

Front. Psychol., 03 July 2015 | https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00915
Patanjali and neuroscientific research on meditation
Klaus B. Bærentsen*
Department of Psychology and Behavioral Sciences, University of Aarhus, Aarhus, Denmark
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00915/full

Joseph Goldstein - Insight Meditation Society, USA
Updated on 14 May 2019, 3 April 2017

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