If you want to get a flavor of what this book is about, check out the Tavis Smiley PBS national television interview with co-author Mark Waldman. If you google "tavis smiley pbs waldman" you'll easily find on the Public Broadcasting Station's site the brief interview that aired on April 10, 2009. It captures Waldman's and Newberg's "mission" to use neuroscientific research in practical, pragmatic ways, especially when dealing with conflicts between people who hold different points of view, be they relational, political, or religious. When you engage in any form of gentle contemplative spiritual practice meditation, prayer, even positive thinking and affirmations the brain-scan studies clearly show that you can permanently change its neurological structure and function in ways that improve memory, cognition, and compassion, while simultaneously suppressing anxiety, depression, anger, fear, and rage. To paraphrase the authors, "spiritual practice, be it religious or secular, helps to bring a little more peace into one's personal life, and if you take that sense of peacefulness into conversations with others, it may even help to bring a little more peace into the world."

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