For these highly advanced meditators, the recovery from pain was almost as though nothing much had happened at all. This inverted V-shaped pattern, with little reaction during anticipation of a painful event, followed by a surge of intensity at the actual moment, then swift recovery from it, can be highly adaptive. This lets us be fully responsive to a challenge as it happens, without letting our emotional reactions interfere before or afterward, when they are no longer useful. This seems an optimal pattern of emotion regulation.
