Category: Spirituality

— In the late 1990s, Jane Anderson was working as a landscape architect. That meant she didn't work much in the winter, and she struggled with seasonal affective disorder in the dreary Minnesota winter months. She decided to try meditation and noticed a change within a month. "My experience was a sense of calmness, of better ability to regulate my emotions," she says. Her experience inspired a new study which will be published in an upcoming issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, which finds changes in brain activity after only five weeks of meditation training.

Previous studies have found that Buddhist monks, who have spent tens of thousands of hours of meditating, have different patterns of brain activity. But Anderson, who did this research as an undergraduate student together with a team of University of Wisconsin-Stout faculty and students, wanted to know if they could see a change in brain activity after a shorter period.

At the beginning of the study, each participant had an EEG, a measurement of the brain's electrical activity. They were told: "Relax with your eyes closed, and focus on the flow of your breath at the tip of your nose; if a random thought arises, acknowledge the thought and then simply let it go by gently bringing your attention back to the flow of your breath."

Then 11 people were invited to take part in meditation training, while the other 10 were told they would be trained later. The 11 were offered two half-hour sessions a week, and encouraged to practice as much as they could between sessions, but there wasn't any particular requirement for how much they should practice.

After five weeks, the researchers did an EEG on each person again. Each person had done, on average, about seven hours of training and practice. But even with that little meditation practice, their brain activity was different from the 10 people who hadn't had training yet. People who had done the meditation training showed a greater proportion of activity in the left frontal region of the brain in response to subsequent attempts to meditate. Other research has found that this pattern of brain activity is associated with positive moods.

The shift in brain activity "was clearly evident even with a small number of subjects," says Christopher Moyer, one of Anderson's coauthors at the University of Wisconsin-Stout. "If someone is thinking about trying meditation and they were thinking, 'It's too big of a commitment, it's going to take too much rigorous training before it has an effect on my mind,' this research suggests that's not the case." For those people, meditation might be worth a try, he says. "It can't hurt and it might do you a lot of good."

"I think this implies that meditation is likely to create a shift in outlook toward life," Anderson says. "It has really worked for me."

Praying about health issues dramatically increased among American adults over the past three decades, rising 36 percent between 1999 and 2007, according to a study published by the American Psychological Association.

Researchers analyzed data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's 1999, 2002 and 2007 National Health Interview Surveys for an article in the May issue of the APA journal Psychology of Religion and Spirituality. The study primarily focused on comparisons of results between the 2002 and 2007 surveys, which included, respectively, 30,080 adults (over 18 years old) from 44,540 households and 23,393 adults from 40,377 households.

"The United States did have an increase in worship attendance across multiple religious faiths immediately after the 9/11 attack, but that has not stayed elevated. However, people continued to use informal and private spiritual practices such as prayer," said lead author Amy Wachholtz, PhD, of the University of Massachusetts Medical School. "There is also a greater public awareness of Buddhist-based mindfulness practices that can include prayerful meditation, which individuals may also be using to address a variety of health concerns."

People who had a decline in health as well as those with improved health reported more prayer, suggesting that individuals who experience a progressive disease or an acute health change are more likely to use prayer to cope with the changing circumstances, the article states.

While prayer about health issues increased across all groups, from 43 percent in 2002 to 49 percent in 2007, the data indicated that people with the highest incomes were 15 percent less likely to pray than those with the lowest incomes, and people who exercised regularly were 25 percent less likely to pray those who didn't exercise. Women, African-Americans and the well-educated were most likely to pray about their health.

"We're seeing a wide variety of prayer use among people with good income and access to medical care," Wachholtz said. "People are not exchanging health insurance for prayer."

A significantly greater proportion of women prayed compared to men, with 51 percent of women reporting prayer in 2002 and 56 percent in 2007, in contrast with 34 percent and 40 percent, respectively, among men. African-Americans were more likely to pray for their health than Caucasians, with 61 percent of African-Americans reporting having done so in 2002 and 67 percent in 2007, compared to 40 percent and 45 percent for Caucasians during the same periods. People who were married, educated beyond high school or had experienced a change in health for better or worse within the last 12 months were also more likely to pray about health concerns, the study found.

The study did not reveal the type of prayer people used, or which occurred first — prayer or the health issue.

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Journal Reference:

1. Amy Wachholtz, Usha Sambamoorthi. National trends in prayer use as a coping mechanism for health concerns: Changes from 2002 to 2007.. Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, 2011; 3 (2): 67 DOI: 10.1037/a0021598

 Knowing how long a good experience will last makes it better, but being aware of the duration of an unpleasant event makes it worse, according to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research. But people usually predict the opposite effect.

"Which is more enjoyable, knowing the exact duration of a dinner with a charming friend or not knowing it? What if the dinner is with disliked in-laws?" ask authors Min Zhao and Claire I. Tsai (University of Toronto). People often assume that knowing the duration of a pleasant event will "kill the fun," whereas knowing the duration of an unpleasant event makes it tolerable. But the authors' new study contradicts this lay understanding.

"Rather than weakening affective episodes over time, duration knowledge actually intensifies them, rendering a positive experience more pleasurable and a negative experience more aversive," the authors explain.

The authors conducted a field study in a Taiwanese "cram school," an after-school program designed to help middle school students meet academic goals. They told half the students that the session would last 60 minutes and told the other half that the session would be similar to after-hours sessions they had attended in the past (which vary from 30-90 minutes). "The results show that whereas students predicted that duration knowledge would improve their negative experience, in fact it rendered the experience worse."

The authors also conducted a lab experiment where participants listened to 30-second song clips sung either by a pop star or one of the researchers "who sings abominably." They found that people who knew the duration of the experience had more intense reactions in both directions.

In subsequent experiments the authors found that counting down during a positive experience weakens the enjoyment of participants but helps improve negative experiences. "Counting down an activity directs attention away from the activity to its end," the authors write.

"Duration knowledge prompts people to consider the state in which the ongoing experience terminates: an undesirable future state for pleasurable experiences and a desirable one for unpleasant experiences," the authors conclude.

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Journal Reference:

1. Min Zhao and Claire I. Tsai. The Effects of Duration Knowledge on Forecasted Versus Actual Affective Experiences. Journal of Consumer Research, October 2011 DOI: 10.1086/660114

— A team of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute students has created a system that pairs an EEG headset with a 3-D theatrical flying harness, allowing users to "fly" by controlling their thoughts. The "Infinity Simulator" will make its debut with an art installation in which participants rise into the air — and trigger light, sound, and video effects — by calming their thoughts.

Creative director and Rensselaer MFA candidate Yehuda Duenyas describes the "Infinity Simulator" as a platform similar to a gaming console — like the Wii or the Kinect — writ large.

"Instead of you sitting and controlling gaming content, it's a whole system that can control live elements — so you can control 3-D rigging, sound, lights, and video," said Duenyas, who works under the moniker "xxxy." "It's a system for creating hybrids of theater, installation, game, and ride."

Duenyas created the "Infinity Simulator" with a team of collaborators, including Michael Todd, a Rensselaer 2010 graduate in computer science. Duenyas will exhibit the new system in the art installation "The Ascent" on May 12 at Curtis R. Priem Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC).

Ten computer programs running simultaneously link the commercially available EEG headset to the computer-controlled 3-D flying harness and various theater systems, said Todd.

Within the theater, the rigging — including the harness — is controlled by a Stage Tech NOMAD console; lights are controlled by an ION console running MIDI show control; sound through MAX/MSP; and video through Isadora and Jitter. The "Infinity Simulator," a series of three C programs written by Todd, acts as intermediary between the headset and the theater systems, connecting and conveying all input and output.

"We've built a software system on top of the rigging control board and now have control of it through an iPad, and since we have the iPad control, we can have anything control it," said Duenyas. "The 'Infinity Simulator' is the center; everything talks to the 'Infinity Simulator.'"

The May 12 "The Ascent" installation is only one experience made possible by the new platform, Duenyas said.

"'The Ascent' embodies the maiden experience that we'll be presenting," Duenyas said. "But we've found that it's a versatile platform to create almost any type of experience that involves rigging, video, sound, and light. The idea is that it's reactive to the users' body; there's a physical interaction."

Duenyas, a Brooklyn-based artist and theater director, specializes in experiential theater performances.

"The thing that I focus on the most is user experience," Duenyas said. "All the shows I do with my theater company and on my own involve a lot of set and set design — you're entering into a whole world. You're having an experience that is more than going to a show, although a show is part of it."

The "Infinity Simulator" stemmed from an idea Duenyas had for such a theatrical experience.

"It started with an idea that I wanted to create a simulator that would give people a feeling of infinity," Duenyas said. His initial vision was that of a room similar to a Cave Automated Virtual Environment — a room paneled with projection screens — in which participants would be able to float effortlessly in an environment intended to evoke a glimpse into infinity.

At Rensselaer, Duenyas took advantage of the technology at hand to explore his idea, first with a video game he developed in 2010, then — working through the Department of the Arts — with EMPAC's computer-controlled 3-D theatrical flying harness.

"The charge of the arts department is to allow the artists that they bring into the department to use technology to enhance what they've been doing already," Duenyas said. "In coming here (EMPAC), and starting to translate our ideas into a physical space, so many different things started opening themselves up to us."

The 2010 video game, also developed with Todd, tracked the movements — pitch and yaw — of players suspended in a custom-rigged harness, allowing players to soar through simulated landscapes. Duenyas said that that game (also called the "Infinity Simulator") and the new platform are part of the same vision.

EMPAC Director Johannes Goebel saw the game on display at the 2010 GameFest and discussed the custom-designed 3-D theatrical flying rig in EMPAC with Duenyas. Working through the Arts Department, Duenyas submitted a proposal to work with the rig, and his proposal was accepted.

Duenyas and his team experimented — first gaining peripheral control over the system, and then linking it to the EEG headset — and created the Ascent installation as an initial project. In the installation, the Infinity Simulator is programmed to respond to relaxation.

"We're measuring two brain states — alpha and theta — waking consciousness and everyday brain computational processing," said Duenyas. "If you close your eyes and take a deep breath, that processing power decreases. When it decreases below a certain threshold, that is the trigger for you to elevate."

As a user rises, their ascent triggers a changing display of lights, sound, and video. Duenyas said he wants to hint at transcendental experience, while keeping the door open for a more circumspect interpretation.

"The point is that the user is trying to transcend the everyday and get into this meditative state so they can have this experience. I see it as some sort of iconic spiritual simulator. That's the serious side," he said. "There's also a real tongue-in-cheek side of my work: I want clouds, I want Terry Gilliam's animated fist to pop out of a cloud and hit you in the face. It's mixing serious religious symbology, but not taking it seriously."

The humor is prompted, in part, by the limitations of this earliest iteration of Duenyas' vision.

"It started with, 'I want to have a glimpse of infinity,' 'I want to float in space.' Then you get in the harness and you're like 'man, this harness is uncomfortable,'" he said. "In order to achieve the original vision, we had to build an infrastructure, and I still see development of the infinity experience is a ways off; but what we can do with the infrastructure in a realistic time frame is create 'The Ascent,' which is going to be really fun, and totally other."

Creating the "Infinity Simulator" has prompted new possibilities.

"The vision now is to play with this fun system that we can use to build any experience," he said. "It's sort of overwhelming because you could do so many things — you could create a flight through cumulus clouds, you could create an augmented physicality parkour course where you set up different features in the room and guide yourself to different heights. It's limitless."

 More than 20 percent of atheist scientists are spiritual, according to new research from Rice University. Though the general public marries spirituality and religion, the study found that spirituality is a separate idea — one that more closely aligns with scientific discovery — for "spiritual atheist" scientists.

The research will be published in the June issue of Sociology of Religion.

Through in-depth interviews with 275 natural and social scientists at elite universities, the Rice researchers found that 72 of the scientists said they have a spirituality that is consistent with science, although they are not formally religious.

"Our results show that scientists hold religion and spirituality as being qualitatively different kinds of constructs," said Elaine Howard Ecklund, assistant professor of sociology at Rice and lead author of the study. "These spiritual atheist scientists are seeking a core sense of truth through spirituality — one that is generated by and consistent with the work they do as scientists."

For example, these scientists see both science and spirituality as "meaning-making without faith" and as an individual quest for meaning that can never be final. According to the research, they find spirituality congruent with science and separate from religion, because of that quest; where spirituality is open to a scientific journey, religion requires buying into an absolute "absence of empirical evidence."

"There's spirituality among even the most secular scientists," Ecklund said. "Spirituality pervades both the religious and atheist thought. It's not an either/or. This challenges the idea that scientists, and other groups we typically deem as secular, are devoid of those big 'Why am I here?' questions. They too have these basic human questions and a desire to find meaning."

Ecklund co-authored the study with Elizabeth Long, professor and chair of the Department of Sociology at Rice. In their analysis of the 275 interviews, they discovered that the terms scientists most used to describe religion included "organized, communal, unified and collective." The set of terms used to describe spirituality include "individual, personal and personally constructed." All of the respondents who used collective or individual terms attributed the collective terms to religion and the individual terms to spirituality.

"While the data indicate that spirituality is mainly an individual pursuit for academic scientists, it is not individualistic in the classic sense of making them more focused on themselves," said Ecklund, director of the Religion and Public Life Program at Rice. "In their sense of things, being spiritual motivates them to provide help for others, and it redirects the ways in which they think about and do their work as scientists."

Ecklund and Long noted that the spiritual scientists saw boundaries between themselves and their nonspiritual colleagues because their spirituality facilitated engagement with the world around them. Such engagement, according to the spiritual scientists, generated a different approach to research and teaching: While nonspiritual colleagues might focus on their own research at the expense of student interaction, spiritual scientists' sense of spirituality provides nonnegotiable reasons for making sure that they help struggling students succeed.

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Journal Reference:

1. E. H. Ecklund, E. Long. Scientists and Spirituality. Sociology of Religion, 2011; DOI: 10.1093/socrel/srr003

— New research shows that musicians' brains are highly developed in a way that makes the musicians alert, interested in learning, disposed to see the whole picture, calm, and playful. The same traits have previously been found among world-class athletes, top-level managers, and individuals who practice transcendental meditation.

The new study was conducted by Fred Travis, Maharishi University of Management in the US, Harald Harung, Oslo University College in Norway, and Yvonne Lagrosen, University West in Sweden. They relate to high mind brain development, and it appears that this represents a basic potential to become really, really good at something.

The researchers measure mind brain development in several ways. EEGs reveal special patterns in the electrical activity of the brain in people with high mind brain development. They have well‑coordinated frontal lobes. Our frontal lobes are what we use for higher brain functions, such as planning and logical thinking. Another characteristic is that activity at a certain frequency, so‑called alpha waves, dominates. Alpha waves occur when the brain puts together details into wholes. Yet another EEG measure shows that individuals with high mind brain development use their brain resources economically. They are alert and ready for action when it is functional to be so, but they are relaxed and adopt a wait‑and‑see attitude when that is functional.

Two questionnaires are also used to measure mind brain development. One has to do with moral reasoning. Those with high mind brain development score higher here. The other questionnaire targets what are called peak experiences. These are described as a higher level of consciousness. You have an intense feeling of happiness and harmony and of transcending limitations. Individuals with high mind brain development have many peak experiences.

Fred Travis emphasizes that everything we do changes our brain. Transcendental meditation and making music are activities people should devote themselves to if they wish to change their mind in the right direction. But you can make good progress by following common health recommendations: get enough sleep, work out physically, eat healthily, and don't do drugs. How you think also plays a role.

"If you are a very envious, angry, mean person and that's the way you think about people that's what's going to be strengthened in your brain. But if you are very expanded and open and supportive of others, there will be different connections," says Fred Travis.

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Journal Reference:

1. Frederick Travis, Harald S. Harung, Yvonne Lagrosen. Moral development, executive functioning, peak experiences and brain patterns in professional and amateur classical musicians: Interpreted in light of a Unified Theory of Performance. Consciousness and Cognition, 2011; DOI: 10.1016/j.concog.2011.03.020

Churches will continue to attract older congregations as increasing life expectancy encourages people to put off involvement in religion, according to new research.

The study, by Dr Elissaios Papyrakis at the University of East Anglia and Dr Geethanjali Selvaretnam from the University of St Andrews in the UK, suggests that religious organisations need to do more to highlight the social and spiritual benefits of participation in religion in present day life if they are to increase congregation sizes and attract people of all ages, particularly young people.

Published online in the International Journal of Social Economics, the research looks at the impact of life expectancy on religiosity — the extent of religious dedication and expression — and the decisions made by individuals about when to become involved in religion. The study analyses religiosity using a cost-benefit economic model, where decisions at each point in time depend on social and spiritual benefits attached to religious adherence, the probability of entering heaven in the afterlife, as well as the costs of formal religion in terms of time allocated to religious activities.

Dr Papyrakis and Dr Selvaretnam explain not only the downward trend in church attendance, but also the increase in the proportion of older people in congregations.

In recent years, religious establishments have been concerned about decreasing religious expression and participation in most parts of the world, particularly in developed economies, with many churches seeing older and dwindling congregations. In the UK, church attendance has been consistently on the decline in the past 50 years. However, in many sub-Saharan African and Latin American nations, for example, religious adherence remains strong.

Previous studies have attempted to attribute these differing patterns in religiosity to several socio-economic variables, including the level of economic development, government regulation of the 'religion market' and suppression of religion. This new research, entitled The Greying Church: the Impact of Life Expectancy on Religiosity, explores the role of life expectancy in explaining differences in religious expression around the world.

"The findings have important policy implications for what churches want to do and how they attract members," explained Dr Papyrakis, of the School of International Development at UEA. "Many religions and societies link to some degree the cumulative amount of religious effort to benefits in the afterlife. We show that higher life expectancy discounts expected benefits in the afterlife and is therefore likely to lead to postponement of religiosity, without necessarily jeopardising benefits in the afterlife.

"For this reason, religious organisations should be prepared to accept and attract a 'greying church', with membership skewed towards the older generation, particularly in countries which have high life expectancy or expect significant increases in life expectancy, for example due to improvements in medical care or declines in critical infection rates."

Dr Papyrakis added: "To increase overall attendance, religious establishments should aim to reduce any discomfort of entry to religious newcomers, both old and young. This may involve making information about the organisation easily accessible to them and helping new-comers to follow religious activities without feeling lost or uncomfortable.

"In light of rising life expectancy, it is important to emphasise socio-economic and spiritual benefits that can be enjoyed during one's lifetime on earth, for example expanding a person's social circle, communal activities, spiritual fulfilment, support and guidance, rather than uncertain rewards in the afterlife. These benefits can counterbalance the negative impact of life expectancy on religiosity — which in effect reduces concern about life after death — and therefore encourage religious involvement."

Religions that largely delink salvation/damnation to the timing and amount of religious effort will particularly need to resort to such means to boost membership numbers. In most religions, the perceived probability of entering heaven or hell depends to a certain degree on the individual's lifetime behaviour. The degree of this varies across religions, being relatively high in Buddhism and Catholicism, but lower in Protestantism. In Calvinism, in particular, salvation/damnation is largely seen as predestined.

In poorer countries where life expectancy remains low, a larger share of the population, both young and old, is concerned about what happens after death, which naturally encourages religious participation

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Journal Reference:

1. Elissaios Papyrakis, Geethanjali Selvaretnam. The greying church: the impact of life expectancy on religiosity. International Journal of Social Economics, 2011; 38 (5): 438 DOI: 10.1108/03068291111123138

— Meditation produces powerful pain-relieving effects in the brain, according to new research published in the April 6 edition of the Journal of Neuroscience.

"This is the first study to show that only a little over an hour of meditation training can dramatically reduce both the experience of pain and pain-related brain activation," said Fadel Zeidan, Ph.D., lead author of the study and post-doctoral research fellow at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center.

"We found a big effect — about a 40 percent reduction in pain intensity and a 57 percent reduction in pain unpleasantness. Meditation produced a greater reduction in pain than even morphine or other pain-relieving drugs, which typically reduce pain ratings by about 25 percent."

For the study, 15 healthy volunteers who had never meditated attended four, 20-minute classes to learn a meditation technique known as focused attention. Focused attention is a form of mindfulness meditation where people are taught to attend to the breath and let go of distracting thoughts and emotions.

Both before and after meditation training, study participants' brain activity was examined using a special type of imaging — arterial spin labeling magnetic resonance imaging (ASL MRI) — that captures longer duration brain processes, such as meditation, better than a standard MRI scan of brain function. During these scans, a pain-inducing heat device was placed on the participants' right legs. This device heated a small area of their skin to 120° Fahrenheit, a temperature that most people find painful, over a 5-minute period.

The scans taken after meditation training showed that every participant's pain ratings were reduced, with decreases ranging from 11 to 93 percent, Zeidan said.

At the same time, meditation significantly reduced brain activity in the primary somatosensory cortex, an area that is crucially involved in creating the feeling of where and how intense a painful stimulus is. The scans taken before meditation training showed activity in this area was very high. However, when participants were meditating during the scans, activity in this important pain-processing region could not be detected.

The research also showed that meditation increased brain activity in areas including the anterior cingulate cortex, anterior insula and the orbito-frontal cortex. "These areas all shape how the brain builds an experience of pain from nerve signals that are coming in from the body," said Robert C. Coghill, Ph.D., senior author of the study and associate professor of neurobiology and anatomy at Wake Forest Baptist.

"Consistent with this function, the more that these areas were activated by meditation the more that pain was reduced. One of the reasons that meditation may have been so effective in blocking pain was that it did not work at just one place in the brain, but instead reduced pain at multiple levels of processing."

Zeidan and colleagues believe that meditation has great potential for clinical use because so little training was required to produce such dramatic pain-relieving effects. "This study shows that meditation produces real effects in the brain and can provide an effective way for people to substantially reduce their pain without medications," Zeidan said.

Funding for the study was provided by the Mind and Life Institute in Boulder, Colo., and the Center for Biomolecular Imaging at Wake Forest Baptist.NewsPsychology or its staff.

 Current research supports the notion that lifestyle choices influence cardiovascular health, but to what extent specific emotions play is undefined. Now, new research from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine has revealed the role that guilt may play as a motivational tool for cardiovascular patients.

Penn researchers interviewed 100 adult cardiology outpatients about the role that guilt plays in their adherence to instructions given by their physicians and as part of their views of their own health. The majority of the patients reported that guilt provides motivation to make lifestyle changes; this finding was associated with having children but no other demographics. When asked whether providers should routinely address guilt with their patients, over half of the patients said yes. Patients with a religious affiliation were more likely to answer that health practitioners should routinely address guilt.

Of the entire sample, 66 percent of patients had experienced a major cardiovascular event, such as a heart attack. Just over 20 percent of these patients reported feelings of guilt related to their health. However, half of these patients wished they had taken better care of themselves, but had no feelings of guilt relating to their health. The study results were reported at the 2011 American College of Cardiology meeting in New Orleans.

"When counseling cardiovascular patients about lifestyle, practitioners should consider addressing guilt as both a motivation for, and a barrier to, lifestyle change, particularly in patients with religious backgrounds," concluded senior author James Kirkpatrick, MD, assistant professor of Medicine, Cardiovascular Medicine Division at Penn. "Further research is needed to explore the impact of guilt motivation on patient outcomes."

 Stressed out? Spend some time with Mother Nature. Pick up any self-help manual and you'll likely find sage advice about the restorative effects of spending time in natural surroundings. Research shows that people who spend time in natural environments are more likely to realize long-term physical, psychological, and spiritual benefits. For urban dwellers with limited access to nature, horticultural activities like gardening may offer stress reduction benefits. But can participation in horticulture-based activities lead to enlightenment?

Researchers Wan-Wei Yu, Der-Lin Ling, and Yu-Sen Chang from the Department of Horticulture at National Taiwan University report on a study designed to understand beliefs regarding the spiritual benefits of horticultural activities and to see if these beliefs were enhanced after participants read plant parables. The study was published in HortTechnology.

Horticultural activities may have the potential to promote spiritual health. Because therapeutic horticulture currently refers only to physical, psychological, and social benefits, the purpose of our study was to understand participants' beliefs about the spiritual benefits of horticultural activities and to discover if these beliefs were enhanced after reading plant parables," explained Chang. The research team combed classical Chinese literature and the Christian Bible for "plant parables," then surveyed students to determine whether reading the parables worked as triggers, or cues, for enhancing "metaphysical imagination."

The researchers surveyed university students from the National Taiwan University. Students were divided into two groups according to their horticultural background; the first group consisted of students from academic departments other than Horticulture, while the second group was made up of students enrolled in the Department of Horticulture. Students were given a questionnaire containing demographic questions, a pre-test of opinions on the spiritual benefits of horticultural activities, plant parables, and a post-test of opinions on the spiritual benefits of horticultural activities.

The four parables used in the study were selected because they contained metaphors that connected human experiences to raising plants or plant growth, for example: "Even the evergreen pines will wither when they are first transplanted to fertile soil. Likewise, when the environment changes, people will encounter immediate difficulties." (Jung, 1990).

The researchers found that regardless of the students' horticultural backgrounds, the participants did not agree when asked if horticultural activities can promote personal spiritual health when there were no trigger cues. "This result demonstrates that people do not recognize the spiritual benefits of horticultural activities because most research regarding the benefits of plants does not mention a spiritual component," Chang noted.

After reading the plant parables, however, the number of students with horticultural experience who agreed that horticultural activities can promote spiritual health increased significantly. Interestingly, the change only occurred in the group of Horticulture students; students with no horticulture background did not report a change in perception. "This finding supports previous research that having more knowledge facilitates the understanding of the meaning that comes from aesthetic experiences," the researchers wrote.

Concluding the impact of their research, the team wrote; "This study demonstrates that plant parables can be used as a simple aesthetic education tool that can encourage readers to metaphysically transform horticultural knowledge. Thus, the effects of therapeutic horticulture can impact psychological and spiritual health."

So, urban dwellers, the next time you seek tranquility and spiritual connection, read some good plant parables — they could just grow on you.

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Journal Reference:

1. Yu, Wan-Wei, Ling, Der-Lin, Chang, Yu-Sen. Comparison of the Effects of Plant Parables on the Promotion of Spiritual Benefits in Students with Differing Horticultural Backgrounds. HortTechnology, 2010; 20: 568-573