Multifaithworld.org

Five years ago, Adi Flesher began teaching campers at Tel Yehudah  about their brains.

Today at RRC we had the privilege of learning from Adi, a longtime Jewish educator who believes that educating  teens about the brain can be a  doorway for them to explore the spiritual dimensions of their lives.

Adi grew up in a family with strong Jewish connections and he spent his college years studying Judaism. Yet, it was only as a young adult  living in a Buddhist monastary in the Rocky Mountains that Adi found a connection to the world of prayer and spirituality.

In recent years, Adi has worked with Paul Grobstein of Bryn Mawr College whose amazing website  Serendip is as good a place as any to begin learning about the recent explosion in knowledge in the field of neuroscience and its potential implications for understanding human beings. (Adi has his own website  http://aspiritualbrain.com/ –also an excellent resource.)

In the very short time alloted to him, Adi  convinced us of his thesis: people who care about spirituality should learn more about brain science. Moreover, his dynamic powerpoint presentation(only a portion of which we had time to view) left us inspired to find new and better ways to open the hearts and minds of teenagers.

I was struck with how well Adi knows adolescents and how thoughtfully he shapes the material to reflect their interests. For example, Adi uses the illuminating metaphor of the “muscle, ” nothing that religious  practices can  be understood as exercises(muscle builders) to cultivate spiritual emotions such as gratitude, compassion and awe.

Adi stresses the empowering idea that we can shape our brains and actually change the way they work. Only recently have neuroscientists learned the extent of neuroplasticity, and Adi is excited to share the wealth of new research demonstrating, for example, the effect that meditation can have on the structure of the brain.

Rather than asking teens the non-starter question “Do you believe in God,” Adi  prefers to guide students to an awareness of their own brains as meaning makers, creating stories from the raw, ambiguous data of  experience. (Adi shows slides to illustrate this point—although the classic picture on the right  is not one of those he includes.)

In the fall  Adi  will be studying at the Harvard Graduate School of Education in the Mind, Brain and Education program.