The Brain-Based Approach to Peace
(a.k.a. the Consciousness-Based Approach to Peace)
Violent behavior is rooted in the brain. The most direct—and ultimately only—way to transform violent and criminal behavior is to restore balanced brain functioning. The Brain-Based Approach to Peace* restores balanced neurological functioning, and thereby promotes balanced, harmonious behavior on the individual and societal scale.
The Brain-Based Approach to Peace: At a Glance
- Behavior is directly linked to brain functioning.
- Stress negatively impacts the brain. It shuts down the prefrontal cortex (the “higher brain”) and overstimulates the amygdala (“fear center”), causing fear-driven, aggressive, violent, antisocial behavior.
- Acute stress on a societal scale similarly impacts the brain and behavior of everyone in society, fueling crime, social violence and conflict.
- Extensive research shows that a simple, easy-to-learn, evidence-based meditation practice, the Transcendental Meditation® (TM®) technique, markedly reduces individual stress and its deleterious effects on brain and behavior.
- Twenty-eight published studies have also shown that TM practice—and particularly group TM practice—by a significant subportion of a population, or by embedded groups within a population, effectively defuses acute societal stress and markedly reduces associated violence and social conflict, including war and terrorism.
The Global Union of Scientists for Peace is dynamically implementing this Brain-Based Approach to Peace on a national, regional, and global scale, and is conducting large-scale research on its global effects—together with the deep physical, neurophysiological, and sociological mechanisms that underlie these effects.
*This Brain-Based Approach to Peace is also referenced elsewhere in the scientific literature as the Consciousness-Based approach, or as the unified field-based approach—for reasons outlined later in this section