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

  1. Behavior is directly linked to brain functioning.
  2. 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.
  3. Acute stress on a societal scale similarly impacts the brain and behavior of everyone in society, fueling crime, social violence and conflict.
  4. 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.
  5. 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