Stress Awareness Month: A God's-eye view

Tang Dynasty, c. 650 (Photo: Rosemania)

Sometimes seeing the “big picture” just isn’t enough.  For example, if a doctor pronounces that a patient has six months to live, is that “big picture” big enough?  Might there be an even bigger picture – one that leaves room for miracles, both within and beyond this world?

Rather than focus upon disease from an “MR-eye” perspective, perhaps it would be better to highlight ease from a “God’s-eye” perspective.  Such seems to be what the life’s work of Alexander Tsiaras is about.  According to Ted.com, Tsiaras is “an artist and technologist whose work explores the unseen human body.”  However, he doesn’t just view this work anatomically.  As he delves into the very beginnings of embryonic life, Tsiaras observes:

Even though I am a mathematician, I look at this with marvel: How do these instruction sets not make these mistakes as they build what is us?

Ted.com explains that Tsiaras is currently involved with an “online compendium of health visualizations” called The Visual MD.  One series of videos within this compendium deals with the causes, effects and

alleviation of stress.  These videos are brief, to the point, and greatly enhanced by “God’s-eye” glimpses of actual bodily processes.  Therefore, the viewer is not only imagining the effects of stress, but is also

observing them (often at microscopic levels - God presumably sees smaller, as well as bigger, pictures). 

The benefits of mindfulness and meditation practices are also convincingly addressed.  In one of these videos, Deepak Chopra refers to “over 800 published studies on the benefits of meditation.”  Neurobiologist Daniel Siegel then states that mindfulness training strengthens the circuits of the brain which regulate emotion, attention, interpersonal interactions, immune functions, and stress response.  He asserts that the structure of the brain is actually changed by such training.

It’s no wonder that Alexander Tsiaras concludes:  The magic of the mechanisms inside each genetic structure saying exactly where that nerve cell should go – the complexity of these mathematical models is beyond human comprehension.

Resources

http://www.ted.com/speakers/alexander_tsiaras.html

http://www.thevisualmd.com/read_guide.php?idu=1033608845&idc=144


Copyright April 15, 2012 by Linda Van Slyke   All Rights Reserved