Dr. Martin Picard

And what sleep might do is actually shut down all of those stress processes.

When you sleep, heart rate variability increases, right?

Parasympathetic tone increases.

Sympathetic nervous system goes very quiet.

And then all of the stress-related expenses

then become quiet, then that piece of the energy budget can be allocated to growth, maintenance, and repair.

And when you meditate, and there's this beautiful study that shows expert meditators can go into a deep state where their energy expenditure goes down by 40%.

Wow.

So 10% to 15%, we said earlier, that's how much you can save energy by just sleeping.

Meditating, it seems, and some trained people can bring energy expenditure down by 40%.

This is more than sleep.

So they're able to shut down or quiet down maybe vital processes.

Like we know the heart rate can go down extremely low.

Probably stress processes.

We know this from measurements and meditators.

And then maybe that energy can be reallocated to growth, maintenance, and repair.

So if you do more of GMR in your waking life because you live more mindfully and you don't stress yourself out, think about the future or the past or self-related thoughts, then maybe you can do more GMR during meditation or during your daily life.

And then you don't need as much sleep if the purpose of sleep is to reallocate energy towards growth, maintenance, and repair.

Yeah, so I suspect that's accurate.

And if you're...