Health Healing

Neuraffective Meditation

A Practical Guide to Lifelong Brain Development, Emotional Growth, and Healing Trauma

by Marianne Bentzen Review by David Lorimer, April 2024

Published: 2023
Publisher: Healing Arts Press
Format: Paperback
Pages: 240
ISBN: 9781644113523

Publisher’s description

• Shares 16 guided meditations for neuroaffective brain development and emotional maturation, along with links to online recordings • Explores the stages of emotional development, from childhood to old age, and their potentials for developing new ways of functioning • Reveals the biopsychological effects of meditation on the human brain, including how it affects us at the autonomic, limbic, and prefrontal levels Drawing on her 25 years of research into brain development as well as decades of meditation practice, psychotherapist Marianne Bentzen shows how neuroaffective meditation--the holistic integration of meditation, neuroscience, and psychology--can be used for personal growth and conscious maturation. She also explores how the practice can help address embedded traumas and allow access to the best perspectives of growing older while keeping the best psychological attitudes of being young--a hallmark of wisdom. She explains that there is a sequence to emotional maturation, just as there is for the development of cognitive or athletic skills, and details the central developmental processes of childhood and adolescence and the adult stages of psychological development. She then explores the biopsychological effects of meditation on the human brain, including how it affects us at the autonomic, limbic, and prefrontal levels. The author shares 16 guided meditations for neuroaffective brain development (along with links to online recordings), each designed to gently interact with the deep, unconscious layers of the brain and help you reconnect to yourself, your relationships, and the world around. Each meditation explores a different theme, from breathing in “being in your body” to feeling love, compassion, and gratitude in “the songs of the heart” to balancing positive and negative experiences in “mandala.” The author also shares a 5-part meditation centered on breathing exercises designed to balance your energy. Presenting an authentic, stepwise approach to spiritual growth, emotional maturation, and brain development, this guide explains the science behind neuroaffective meditation and offers detailed practices for a truly personal and ever-evolving experience of inner wisdom and growth.

Neuroaffective meditation is defined as a holistic integration of meditation, neuroscience and psychology, which can be used for personal growth and conscious maturation as well as for addressing embedded trauma. The first part deals with neuroaffective developmental psychology in terms of emotional and spiritual development through the stages of life, culminating in the possibility of developing the wisdom of maturity. (p. 27) The second part on maturation and spirituality explains a number of wisdom practices and their role in brain regulation at the autonomic, limbic and prefrontal levels. These can enable the stabilisation of attention and the experience of oneness along with the development of compassion. The rest of the book gives a variety of meditation practices relating to the body, the biosphere, the beloved, relationships and feelings, mental space and the balancing of energy; these are all available as recordings online. I appreciated the author's conclusion about engagement and responsibility in a balanced life in three main existential areas: self, world and spirit. She stresses that neither meditation nor psychotherapy can stand alone and should not be substituted for each other on the healing path as a journey of embodiment.

Related to this book