Nazareth Castellanos

Nazareth Castellanos is a neuroscientist who studies meditation and the relationship between brain and body. She trained in theoretical physics and holds a doctorate in Neuroscience from the Faculty of Medicine of the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. She is research director of the Nirakara laboratory and of the extraordinary chair in Mindfulness and Cognitive Sciences at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. She also directs the project "Interacción cerebro - cuerpo en meditadores" (brain-body interaction in meditators).

Her Insight Timer page says she has spent more than 20 years in neuroscience research, working in Spain, Germany, England and the United States. She is also a science communicator and writer.

Her books gather results from the neuroscience of meditation and explore how the body affects neurons. She has also written children's stories. Her YouTube channel offers talks and short videos on body neuroscience, including brain-body interaction, the neuroscience of meditation and the neuroscience of Qigong (Chikung).

She teaches online courses through La Escuela de Epicuro. Recorded courses include "La respiración, el corazón y el cerebro", "Neurociencia de la danza: del cuerpo individual, al cuerpo social" and "Coherencia emocional: de la neurociencia a la práctica". Her longer course, "El Cerebro como Aliado", covers brain anatomy and function, attention and mind-wandering, meditation, emotion, memory, the body, attachment, gut microbiota, breathing, and the heart and brain. Guest specialists join some of its sessions.