The Georgetown University Medical Center co-hosted a national conference this week highlighting the application of meditation in medicine and psychiatry.
The three-day event, sponsored in partnership with the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and the Mind and Life Institute, addressed the interfaces between medicine and meditation in the treatment of anxiety and depression.
Approaching the topic from both a spiritual and a scientific angle, the conference at DAR Consitution Hall featured speakers ranging from the Dalai Lama and Buddhist monks to specialists in neuroscience and psychiatry.
“This conference offered the opportunity to hear different perspectives,” Georgetown physiology Professor Aviad Haravati said. “It gave the opportunity to hear a dialogue between thought and scientific leaders.”
According to Haravati, Georgetown University Medical Center was contacted months ago by the Mind and Life Institute, an organization founded by the Dalai Lama to promote cooperation between meditation and modern science, to co-host the event.
After attending numerous planning meetings with officials from the Institute and Johns Hopkins, Haravati was convinced of the value of Georgetown’s participation in the conference.
“I came away with the impression that this would be a first-rate scientific meeting,” he said.
Lawrence Freeman OSB, Director of the World Community for Christian Meditation and the John Main Center for Meditation and Inter-religious Dialogue at Georgetown, also supported the University’s participation.
“The inter-religious friendship growing out of meditation can be a useful force in healing the wounds of division brought by conflicts,” Freeman said.
In recent years new studies have emerged about the medical benefits of meditation, Freeman said, citing contemporary research aimed at scientifically measuring the effects of meditation on the psychological and physical being.
Haravati noted an important study last year by conference panelist Richard J. Davidson, a professor in the University of Wisconsin’s neuroscience department, suggesting that meditation increases activity in the part of the brain associated with happiness and pleasure.
Davidson’s findings, Haravati said, could prove useful in understanding stress and in combating stress-related health problems such as high blood pressure.
“Stress and depression are a product of suffering and wrong interpretation of self,” Tenzin Gyatso, the XIV Dalai Lama, said. “The primary purpose of Buddhist meditation is overcoming anger. Buddhist contemplative practices are aimed at attaining liberation and can have an impact in the medical domain in restoring health.”
This conference is part of Meditate D.C., a week-long celebration and promotion of meditation in everyday life.
