{"id":84941,"date":"2019-01-16T14:38:29","date_gmt":"2019-01-16T21:38:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=84941"},"modified":"2019-01-16T14:54:32","modified_gmt":"2019-01-16T21:54:32","slug":"molecular-dance-meditation-reveals-youre-just-atoms-and-energy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2019\/01\/16\/molecular-dance-meditation-reveals-youre-just-atoms-and-energy\/","title":{"rendered":"Molecular dance meditation reveals: you\u2019re just atoms and energy"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><em>BY\u00a0<a class=\"author url fn\" style=\"color: #0000ff;\" title=\"Posts by Sam Littlefair\" href=\"https:\/\/www.lionsroar.com\/author\/sam-littlefair-wallace\/\" rel=\"author\">SAM LITTLEFAIR\u00a0\u00a0Courtesy<\/a> LION<span class=\"s1\">\u2019<\/span>S ROAR<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n<p>Physics and Buddhism both posit that\u00a0it\u2019s hard, if not impossible, to pinpoint you.\u201d Harrison Blum, the Buddhist spiritual advisor at Northeastern University, has created a new guided meditation that allows practitioners to experience that truth.<\/p>\n<p>In three sessions last fall, participants sat and danced in meditation, while watching molecules and energy fields interact with their bodies on a screen. The meditation uses a simulation called danceroom Spectroscopy,\u201d or dS\u201d for short. dS was created in 2011 by physicist and Royal Society research fellow David Glowacki, who wanted an easy way to share his research findings with non-scientists. Using supercomputers, cameras, a projector, speakers, and a screen, he created the\u00a0simulatihon, which\u00a0puts participants directly inside the molecular world. Participants\u2019 bodies are interpreted as energy fields that interact with atoms and molecules on the screen in real time. The simulation\u00a0uses the same equations used by physicists\u00a0to model the complex movements of atoms. Glowacki\u2019s work\u00a0has won a host of awards for breaking down barriers between art, science, and education.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Moving Meditations with danceroom Spectroscopy\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/J6U5T7iDC1U?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Glowacki observed that dS participants found the experience to be deeply spiritual and introspective, so he reached out to Blum, who was an old friend from college.<\/p>\n<p>I think he was interested in what would happen if there was a specific invitation to experience dS as a spiritual practice,\u201d says Blum, who\u00a0is a Community Dharma Leader in the Insight Meditation tradition, and has just finished editing <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mcfarlandbooks.com\/book-2.php?id=978-0-7864-9809-3\">Dancing with Dharma<\/a>,\u201d a collection of essays on movement in Western Buddhism.<\/p>\n<p>In the video above, Blum describes how the event unfolded.<\/p>\n<p>In dS, the visual representation of our form dissolves, and is populated by particles or movements of energy that are not owned by anyone. They\u2019re dynamic,\u201d says Blum.<\/p>\n<p>Blum set up dS in Northeastern\u2019s\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.northeastern.edu\/spirituallife\/our-spaces\/sacred-space\/\">Sacred Space<\/a>, with cushions set around the room. The sessions began with a guided meditation, and then participants were allowed to move around the room freely.<\/p>\n<p>The idea was that, whether you were moving our sitting, you would be engaged in a form of meditation,\u201d says Blum in the above video. It was thrilling. I felt like I was seeing Buddhist principles brought to life in front of my eyes.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Glowacki has also pointed to on overlap between Buddhist thought and the principles of physics. He has described dS as an invitation to contemplate the interconnected dynamism of the natural world.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>As participants in dS watch the energy fields of their bodies push and pull on the atoms around them, it becomes apparent\u00a0that there is no clean-cut entity that can be identified as self,\u201d and that the elements that we comprise are constantly shifting and changing. These observations resonate strongly with the\u00a0Buddhist concepts of no-self and impermanence.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s pretty obvious that people are interpreting this on a metaphysical, spiritual level,\u201d says Glowacki in the video below. dS creates the opportunity for participants to ask themselves questions, says Glowacki, like What is the separation between ourself and the environment in which we are situated?\u201d<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/54523219?title=0&amp;byline=0&amp;portrait=0\" width=\"735\" height=\"413\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>In\u00a0<em>The Guardian<\/em>,\u00a0Glowacki, who has a personal interest in Buddhism,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/science\/small-world\/2013\/oct\/25\/danceroom-spectroscopy-invisible-world-visible\">writes<\/a>,<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Tibetan texts quote the Buddha as having said: \u2018All the many things in the universe are appearances of collections.\u2019 These words, spoken nearly 2,500 years ago, resonate with the recent Nobel Prizes in medicine, chemistry, and physics \u2013 which recognize advances in our understanding of how tiny things are composed of even tinier things.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Blum and Glowacki are discussing ways to use dS in a therapeutic context. Blum currently teaches mindfulness meditation to teenagers with mental health issues. Mindfulness meditation is an effective treatment because it helps patients see painful thoughts and emotions as dynamic and transient. In the same way, dS allows participants to see themselves as ever-changing energy. Blum hopes dS could be an entry-point for patients who are less likely to try mindfulness meditation on its own, as well as a powerful tool for contemplation and discussions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>BY\u00a0SAM LITTLEFAIR\u00a0\u00a0Courtesy LION\u2019S ROAR Physics and Buddhism both posit that\u00a0it\u2019s hard, if not impossible, to pinpoint you.\u201d Harrison Blum, the Buddhist spiritual advisor at Northeastern University, has created a new guided meditation that allows practitioners to experience that truth. In three sessions last fall, participants sat and danced in meditation, while watching molecules and energy [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-84941","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-buddhism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84941","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=84941"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84941\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}