Podcast
10% Happier with Dan Harris
The speakers discussed their new joint book, which took a clear-eyed look at the body of research on meditation, attempting to sort quality science from less rigorous studies. They systematically categorized expected benefits based on the experience level of the meditator: beginner, intermediate, or 'Olympic level'.
The book is called Altered Traits and the authors again, Richie Davidson and Danny Goldman and here they are.
— Episode: Daniel Goleman, Dr. Richard Davidson, 'A...
Episode: Daniel Goleman, Dr. Richard Davidson, 'Altered Tra...
The speakers discussed their new joint book, which took a clear-eyed look at the body of research on meditation, attempting to sort quality science from less rigorous studies. They systematically categorized expected benefits based on the experience level of the meditator: beginner, intermediate, or 'Olympic level'.
The book is called Altered Traits and the authors again, Richie Davidson and Danny Goldman and here they are.
Let me say that the title Alter Traits was really harking back to conversations we had in those days where we were pondering the fact that there seemed to be lasting qualities that were the fact and maybe the goal of meditation practice and that people were pretty enamored of altered states in those days but we thought there was something more to look at.
We wanted to show that there is now evidence, meditation, trains your attention as it helps your stress handling stress. It helps in innumerable ways that have been shown by rigorous studies.
It seems the point was of the book is to sort the wheat from the chaff, just to show there's a lot of science that maybe isn't as strong as it should be when we're going to talk about why people should meditate.
Our aspiration that this book can help promote the kind of mental exercise that we are talking about as meditation and that mental exercise will become as commonly practiced in the future as physical exercises today.