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.

The Times: Calm down dear by Angela Pertusini

"Claims by the neuroscientist Shanida Nataraja regarding the benefits of meditation have been backed up by rigourous scientific research and are explained in her acclaimed book The Blissful Brain: Neuroscience and Proof of the Power of Meditation". To read more, please click here.

Just this Day event: A Day of Silence and Stillness at St Martin's in the Field on 23rd of November 2011

Shanida Nataraja will be participating in this exciting event that aims to explore the power of silience and stillness in our busy world. For more information, please click here or visit the Just This Day website.

Mindfulness in the Workplace: Brain based approaches to improving employee resilience and productivity at Robinson College, Cambridge on 10 February 2012

Shanida Nataraja will be speaking at this day event that brings together leading experts in mindfulness to discuss how it could help organisations improve productivity & resiliance. Speakers include Professor Mark Williams, Michael Chaskalson, Ruby Wax, Margaret Chapman, and more (for more information, please see 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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