Blissful Brain

The Blissful Brain is published by Gaia Thinking. For more information on how to order your copy, please click here.

Guardian G2: Mind over matter by Andy Darling

"Neuroscientist Shanida Nataraja has proven meditation does more than clear your head, it can put both halves of your brain to work, improving your concentration, memory, and decision-making...". To read more, please click here.

Upcoming talk: Yoga Ananda, Reigate, Surrey on Friday the 4th of June

Shanida Nataraja will be speaking at a seminar on The Blissful Brain on Friday, 04th June 2010 at 19:30 at Yoga Ananda Ltd. 46 Albert Road North, Reigate, Surrey, RH2 9EL. For more information, please click here.

Small World Phenomenon

In 1967, the Harvard Social Psychologist Stanley Milgram performed a groundbreaking psychological experiment in which he sent 300 letters to randomly selected individuals in Omaha. Each letter contained instructions to forward the letter to a target person in Boston (identified by name, location, and occupation), using only personal contacts (i.e. friends, family members, business associates, or casual acquaintances). Milgram discovered that as many as 60 letters reached their target, and that the average number of steps in the chain was six. This finding led to the anecdotal notion that everyone is only ever six “degrees of separation'” away from everybody else on the planet.

This notion has been formalised in recent years as the “small world phenomenon”. How many times have you bumped into a stranger and, after a few moments of conversation, realised that you have a mutual acquaintance? It appears that we are connected to a vast number of people through networks of acquaintances. Milgram demonstrated the existence of this network on a national level; however, common sense tells us that recent advances in telecommunications have meant that these networks have been extended globally. The Internet is often touted as the best illustration of a global network, connecting over 750 million people worldwide. Similarly, the world economy can also be viewed in terms of a network of national economies, each comprising a network of economic markets, each comprising a network of producers and consumers.

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