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Science Reveals How Meditation Changes Your Mind, Brain, and Body
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Two New York Times–bestselling authors unveil new research showing what meditation can really do for the brain.
 
In the last twenty years, meditation and mindfulness have gone from being kind of cool to becoming an omnipresent Band-Aid for fixing everything from your weight to your relationship to your achievement level. Unveiling here the kind of cutting-edge research that has made them giants in their fields, Daniel Goleman and Richard Davidson show us the truth about what meditation can really do for us, as well as exactly how to get the most out of it.
           
Sweeping away common misconceptions and neuromythology to open readers’ eyes to the ways data has been distorted to sell mind-training methods, the authors demonstrate that beyond the pleasant states mental exercises can produce, the real payoffs are the lasting personality traits that can result. But short daily doses will not get us to the highest level of lasting positive change—even if we continue for years—without specific additions. More than sheer hours, we need smart practice, including crucial ingredients such as targeted feedback from a master teacher and a more spacious, less attached view of the self, all of which are missing in widespread versions of mind training. The authors also reveal the latest data from Davidson’s own lab that point to a new methodology for developing a broader array of mind-training methods with larger implications for how we can derive the greatest benefits from the practice.
           
Exciting, compelling, and grounded in new research, this is one of those rare books that has the power to change us at the deepest level.
Two New York Times–bestselling authors unveil new research showing what meditation can really do for the brain.
 
In the last twenty years, meditation and mindfulness have gone from being kind of cool to becoming an omnipresent Band-Aid for fixing everything from your weight to your relationship to your achievement level. Unveiling here the kind of cutting-edge research that has made them giants in their fields, Daniel Goleman and Richard Davidson show us the truth about what meditation can really do for us, as well as exactly how to get the most out of it.
           
Sweeping away common misconceptions and neuromythology to open readers’ eyes to the ways data has been distorted to sell mind-training methods, the authors demonstrate that beyond the pleasant states mental exercises can produce, the real payoffs are the lasting personality traits that can result. But short daily doses will not get us to the highest level of lasting positive change—even if we continue for years—without specific additions. More than sheer hours, we need smart practice, including crucial ingredients such as targeted feedback from a master teacher and a more spacious, less attached view of the self, all of which are missing in widespread versions of mind training. The authors also reveal the latest data from Davidson’s own lab that point to a new methodology for developing a broader array of mind-training methods with larger implications for how we can derive the greatest benefits from the practice.
           
Exciting, compelling, and grounded in new research, this is one of those rare books that has the power to change us at the deepest level.
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  • From the book One bright fall morning, Steve Z, a lieutenant colonel working in the Pentagon, heard a "crazy, loud noise," and instantly was covered in debris as the ceiling caved in, knocking him to the floor, unconscious. It was September 11, 2001, and a passenger jet had smashed into the huge building, very near to Steve's office.

    The debris that buried Steve saved his life as the plane's fuselage exploded, a fireball of flames scouring the open office. Despite a concussion, Steve returned to work four days later, laboring through feverish nights, 6:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m., because those were daytime hours in Afghanistan. Soon after, he volunteered for a year in Iraq.

    "I mainly went to Iraq because I couldn't walk around the Mall without being hypervigilant, wary of how people looked at me, totally on guard," Steve recalls. "I couldn't get on an elevator, I felt trapped in my car in traffic."

    His symptoms were classic post traumatic stress disorder. Then came the day he realized he couldn't handle this on his own. Steve ended up with a psychotherapist he still sees. She led him, very gently, to try mindfulness.

    Mindfulness, he recalls, "gave me something I could do to help feel more calm, less stressed, not be so reactive." As he practiced more, added loving-kindness to the mix, and went on retreats, his PTSD symptoms gradually became less frequent, less intense. Although his irritability and restlessness still came, he could see them coming.

    Tales like Steve's offer encouraging news about meditation. We have been meditators all our adult lives, and, like Steve, know for ourselves that the practice has countless benefits.

    But our scientific backgrounds give us pause, too. Not everything chalked up to meditation's magic actually stands up to rigorous tests. And so we have set out to make clear what works and what does not.

    Some of what you know about meditation may be wrong. But what is true about meditation you may not know.

    Take Steve's story. The tale has been repeated in endless variations by countless others who claim to have found relief in meditation methods like mindfulness-not just from PTSD but from virtually the entire range of emotional disorders.

    Yet mindfulness, part of an ancient meditation tradition, was not intended to be such a cure; this method was only recently adapted as a balm for our modern forms of angst. The original aim, embraced in some circles to this day, focuses on a deep exploration of the mind toward a profound alteration of our very being.

    On the other hand, the pragmatic applications of meditation-like the mindfulness that helped Steve recover from trauma-appeal widely but do not go so deep. Because this wide approach has easy access, multitudes have found a way to include at least a bit of meditation into their day.

    There are, then, two paths: the deep and the wide. Those two paths are often confused with each other, though they differ greatly.

    We see the deep path embodied at two levels: in a pure form, for example, in the ancient lineages of Theravada Buddhism as practiced in Southeast Asia, or among Tibetan yogis (for whom we'll see some remarkable data in chapter eleven, "A Yogi's Brain"). We'll call this most intensive type of practice Level 1.

    At Level 2, these traditions have been removed from being part of a total lifestyle-monk or yogi, for example-and adapted into forms more palatable for the West. At Level 2, meditation...
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Science Reveals How Meditation Changes Your Mind, Brain, and Body
Daniel Goleman
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