The Science of Meditation: The expert guide to the neuroscience of mindfulness and how to harness it

by Daniel Goleman

The Dalai Lama’s emotional life seems to include a remarkably dynamic range of strong and colorful emotions, from intense sadness to powerful joy. His rapid, seamless transitions from one to another are particularly unique—this

Constant stress and worry take a toll on our cells, aging them.

“If meditation was good for all health problems, I’d be free of pain in my knees.”

on average the yogis had twenty-five times greater amplitude gamma oscillations during baseline compared with the control group.

Astonishingly, this sustained, brain-entraining gamma pattern goes on even while seasoned meditators are asleep—as

Some of the yogis later explained that their training imbued them with preparedness for action, so the moment they encounter suffering they are predisposed to act without hesitation to help the person. This preparedness, along with their willingness to engage with someone’s suffering, counters the normal tendency to withdraw, to back away from a person in distress.

practice “on whatever harms come your way,” adding, “When sick, practice on that sickness …. When cold, practice on that coldness. By practicing in this way all situations will arise as meditation.”9

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.

This indicates an extraordinary selectivity of attention: a brain effortlessly able to block out the extraneous sounds and the emotional reactivity they normally elicit.

compassion was very much an embodied state, with tight links between the brain and body, and especially between the brain and the heart.

compassion in the yogis sharpens their sense of other people’s emotions, especially if they are distraught, and heightens sensitivity to their own bodies—particularly the heart,

Science’s view of these yogis’ altered traits is akin to the parable of the blind men and the elephant.

To lose the way to this inner expertise would be a world tragedy.

Rather than just the sheer hours of practice put in, Ericsson’s research reveals, it’s how smart those hours are. What he calls “deliberate” practice involves an expert coach giving feedback on how you are doing, so that you can practice improving in a manner targeted to your progress.

the data suggests that meditating for one session daily is very different from a multiday or longer retreat.

the greatest increase in prefrontal-amygdala connection correlated with the number of hours a meditator had spent in retreat but not with home hours.

A meditator’s hours of retreat practice most strongly correlated with slower breathing, much more than daily practice.

Amateurs learn the basic moves of the skill—whether golf, chess, or, presumably, mindfulness and the like—and very often level off after about fifty hours of improving through practice. For the rest of the time their skill level stays about the same—further practice does not lead to great improvements. Experts, on the other hand, practice differently. They do intensive sessions under the watchful eye of a coach, who suggests to them what to work on next to get even better. This leads to a continuous learning curve with steady improvements.

These findings point to the need for a teacher, someone more advanced than you are, who can give you coaching on how to improve.

A more scientifically based optimal matching could start by using existing measures of people’s cognitive and emotional styles,

the three levels of practice well studied so far—beginner, long-term, and yogi—are grouped around different kinds of meditation: mainly mindfulness for beginners, vipassana for long-term (with some studies of Zen, too), and for the yogis, the Tibetan paths known as Dzogchen and Mahamudra.

both science and religion share common goals: pursuit of the truth and serving humanity.

when given the choice of a puppet to reach for, almost all infants choose one of the friendly ones.

As meditation migrates from its original setting into popular adaptations, what has been abandoned is ignored or forgotten.

Personalized guidance. A knowledgeable teacher who coaches you on the path, giving you the advice you need to go to the next step. Cognitive science knows that attaining top-level mastery requires such feedback.

The metaphor of our ordinary consciousness as a kind of sleep, and an inner shift leading to becoming “awake” has a long history and wide circulation.

Just as math and poetry are different ways of knowing reality, science and religion represent disparate magisteria, realms of authority, areas of inquiry and ways of knowing—religion speaking to values, beliefs, and transcendence, and science to fact, hypotheses, and rationality.

We envision a world where widespread mental fitness deeply alters society for the better.