Medha Suktam: Can Mantra Chanting Rewire Your Brain? | Neuroscience | Dr. Sweta Adatia

[00:00:00]Namaskar. Thank you so much for being with us on the journey of limitless brain lab. Thank you for liking, subscribing, and sharing. Today I am going to bring you something which is super free, easy, very readily available from the ancient wisdom, but which can directly impact your memory. It has been shown to improve your verbal memory, your visual memory, your attentional scores by miles. And [music] this is a very simple Sanskrit. I call it the Sanskrit technology. It's a Sanskrit is not just a language. It is a language which gives form. No other language has the capacity to give the form. [music] A particular mantra, something which is so deep in our tradition from the Taittiriya tradition, particularly in the Upanishads and the Vedas and the Shastras, all these techniques [music] have been found where chanting of these things have been shown to create [music] massive changes in the brain. If you have been struggling with brain fog, if you have attentional issues, your memory is a problem, then [music] this particular chant is for you. The chant's real meaning is also intellect. In fact, this particular chant was dedicated to Lord Saraswati, Ma Saraswati, who's the goddess of knowledge. Now, neuroscience does not have any direct correlation of deities presence or the grace and the blessing and the faith which comes in, but definitely neuroscience has a direct [music] correlation to when you chant a certain mantra, the effect on the brain becomes very clear. Today we are going to talk of Medha Suktam and my congratulations to a beautiful paper on Shri Raksha Srinivasan, the impact of Vedic chanting intervention [music] on sustained attention and working memory.

[00:01:42]Shri Raksha's paper has uh collected 30 to 40 volunteers between [music] the age of 30 and 60, divided them into two groups, experimental group and the group which is going to be chanting the [music] Medha Suktam for nine times every single day, about 40 minutes for a month, and they have seen a statistically significant [music] difference when it comes to verbal memory and particularly visual attentional [music] tasks also. Now, this has also been shown by Dr. Hertzel in particularly Sanskrit and the chanting effect on the [music] brain. If we do see Hertzel's paper, mind-blowing to see that the hippocampus volume, which means the part of the brain which is allowing you to keep memory, gets exploded. It's It's grown in size. It's grown in volume. Its connections improve and also the frontal cortex, which is very, very important for attention and focus. So, small little mantra, but massive effect when [music] it comes to the changes in the brain. In fact, Kalyani and colleagues in 2011 has shown [music] that experienced practitioners when they chant Om out loud, they have a significant There was a significant deactivation in the fight-flight-fear zone, and particularly the anterior part of the brain, which means your frontal cortex started to light up better. So, the mind wandering was stopped, fog was stopped, the chanting activated the parts of the brain which allowed them to cool, take a control over the life. Many such papers have work where the chanting has been shown to impact the default mode network. Now, default mode network is one part of the brain inside, deep inside, which is self-referential.

[00:03:18]When I'm not doing any activity, either I'm in the past, I'm in the future, I'm always worried what is happening to me, how is it happening, all the self-referential continuous thoughts are driven [music] by the default mode network. And it has been shown that particularly chanting diminishes and reduces this default mode network. Look at the pool. This pool is [music] going to be buzzing with underwater meditation. I'm Dr. Shweta Rawat, a neurologist and founder of Limitless Brain Lab. We [music] are going to conduct underwater meditation with Dr. Arpit and team which is going to happen 27, 28, [music] and 29 in this beautiful resort Lonavala. So, I welcome each of you for not missing this wonderful opportunity to stay together for 3 days, have lots and lots and lots of fun, lots [music] of sun, lots of brain exercises, lots of music, lots of experiences, lots of senses, lots of manifestation hacks, peak performances, so much more with four other faculties. Go ahead and book your seats today because we are running very limited discounts and limited seats because we are already full and I would hate hate to say no to any of [music] you. Welcome each one of you across the globe for this retreat Limitless Brain 3.0.

[00:04:40]Let us come back to the effects of Medha Suktam. If you have been chanting Medha Suktam, please write in the comment section. We really conducted a very small analysis. It is not a published paper, a small pilot where we asked the volunteers to chant the Medha Suktam.

[00:04:55]A very simple set of experiment and we wanted to see what is happening in the electroencephalogram.

[00:04:59]Because at the lab our expertise is to review the electroencephalogram and tell you what parameters are working, what is not working, how to improve your brain particularly from the perspective of electrical organization of the brain.

[00:05:13]So, what did we see? We saw two powerful changes which were happening when people were chanting Medha Suktam. In fact, I also tried to learn. I had never got exposed to Medha Suktam in my earlier days, but I've been an avid Gayatri [music] mantra chanting person. And you will ask me at this point whether I chanted out loud or chanted in my mind where for the brain effects to see when we do these experiments, we do chant [music] it out loud. But as spiritual benefits have also been seen when you have been chanting in the mind [music] or you have been chanting something called as Ajapa Japa as well. Now, we will We'll about that a little later, but what is very important, let us focus on the Medha Suktam. It showed us two prominent findings in [music] the EEG scans. It showed us that alpha coherence improved. Now, alpha coherence was uh very easy to quickly introduce when Medha Suktam was chanted, which means you will remain focused and [music] calm both at the same time. This was also a similar finding which we saw when Lalita Sahasranama's chanting was being done. Of course, Lalita Sahasranama did show some other findings as well, which is there in the topics in one of our video libraries. Please go ahead and see that also if you have not seen that video. Now, the second part what happened was there were uh also brain waves which were coming and going, which is like partial gamma or fast frequency brain waves, and this allows the person to have building of long-term memory, working memory circuits get better. These are the brain waves which allows in consolidation or packaging of the memory [music] as well, which means all in all, your intellectual capacities can expand. Medha itself means intellect. [music] Veda itself means knowledge. What a beautiful traditional Sanskrit [music] influence which we had in the ancient tradition. Now, Sanskrit does not belong to a particular religion. Sanskrit is a uniform, I would say not a language, but a superfast neuroscientific technology which is >> [music] >> able to rewire, repair, and regenerate the brain cells. If you have a tonoscope at home, and if you don't have, just go ahead and make one tonoscope. Show it to your children how when you speak any other language versus when you speak Sanskrit, how the language takes the shape, how the language takes that form.

[00:07:30]It is so important, the exact same frequencies what we do outside is taking a turn in the brain as well. When these Yajurveda pandits who exclusively have studied every single day, who have been chanting Yajurveda for long period of time by Professor Herzl, which is called the Sanskrit effect. The functional MRI suggested the volume expansion. Exactly the same thing can happen for you and me as well. So, go ahead and chant Medha Suktam if you have been having the attentional issues, focus, memory, and please do give it to your children. Make it a habit that you have one mantra, one breath technique, one meditation, one visualization technique, one exercise which we call it the movers, m o v e r [music] s in your daily life, which allows you to keep your brain sharp, intellectually [music] capable, and also manifesting things in your life becomes very easy. We wish health, wealth, and happiness [music] for every single individual on this planet Earth.

[00:08:27]If you have been chanting Medha Suktam, then go ahead and please write down [music] in the comment section below, and we have posted the paper from the Shrirakshas paper.

[00:08:38]Very beautifully done paper, but this is just a pilot. This is just the beginning to understand of what is the power of a 3,000-year-old intelligence technique which our ancient wisdom and rishis were capable to know even without the MRIs and all the modern scans that we have right now. So, please do join us on this journey of limitless brain lab where we bridge science and spirituality and bring in important papers to your review where you can bring simple practices which can go a long way for your health, wealth, [music] and happiness.