In this interactive workshop neuroscientist Clifford Saron and cellist Barbara Bogatin will explore the intersection of contemplative practice, neuroscience, and music practice, three distinct yet intertwined disciplines. They will talk about how meditation can inform and complement whatever it is that we practice in our lives, and learn about aspects of brain function that help us understand neuroplasticity, as well as how we perceive and respond to music. Audience members will experience a performance of Bach Prelude in G major leading into a guided meditation. The great American composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein said, “Music speaks when words cannot; it can name the unnameable and communicate the unknowable.” Music has the power to connect people, to change our brains, to incite anger or make us calm, to heal our pain.…
About Speaker
Clifford Saron, PhD is a Research Scientist at the Center for Mind and Brain and MIND Institute at the University of California at Davis. He received his Ph.D. in neuroscience from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in 1999. Dr. Saron has had a long-standing interest in the effects of contemplative practice on physiology and behavior. In the early 1990s he conducted field research investigating Tibetan Buddhist mind training under the auspices of the Office of H.H. the Dalai Lama. A faculty member at Mind and Life Summer Research Institutes in the US and Europe and a former member of the Mind and Life Institute Program and Research as well as Steering Councils, he received the inaugural Mind and Life Service Award in 2018. Dr. Saron directs the Shamatha Project, a multidisciplinary longitudinal investigation of the effects of intensive meditation on physiological and psychological processes central to well-being. In 2012, Dr. Saron and his research team were awarded the inaugural Templeton Prize Research Grant in honor of H.H. the Dalai Lama. Currently his research team is investigating how meditation experience may mitigate the effects of the pandemic on chronic stress and cellular aging, as well as examining consequences of compassion vs. mindfulness training on engagement with suffering. His other research area focuses on sensory processing in children with autism spectrum disorders to better understand how these children experience their everyday sensory environments.
Barbara Bogatin has been a member of the San Francisco Symphony since 1994. Before joining the orchestra, her varied career included playing with the New York Philharmonic, Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, Aston Magna Baroque Festival, Connecticut Early Music Festival, and as principal cellist with Milwaukee and New Jersey Symphony Orchestras. Her chamber music appearances have included New York Chamber Soloists, Chamber Music Northwest, Tiburon Chamber Players, Music at Kohl Mansion, Classical Tahoe, and the Lucerne, Spoleto, and Casals Festivals. Along with her neuroscientist husband, Barbara has led workshops on meditation and music practice at Stanford University Symposium for Music and the Brain, Spirit Rock Meditation Center, the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, Telluride Compassion Festival, and conferences in Italy, Spain, and South Africa. She has also taught seminars on meditation for music students at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, University of Nevada, and the Juilliard School, where she received Bachelor and Master of Music degrees. She has published articles on music in The San Francisco Chronicle, Strings Magazine, and SF Classical Voice.