Dr. Richard Davidson

That was the most predominant experience I had, just intense, intense physical pain.

And then in this style of practice, after the third day, you had to make a vow that you're not going to move during...

each hour-long session, so the meditation sessions were hour-long, and you had to make a vow that you're not going to move.

Man, the pain was so intense, the physical pain.

And eventually, after the fourth day, there's a kind of breakthrough that most people have.

which is this remarkable kind of experiential insight where you directly look at the pain and you see that it's not exactly what it's cracked up to be.

And it's actually much more differentiated.

And you begin to see all of its constituents.

And that's when there's a kind of release.

The other thing to say is that

We've done imaging work with physical pain and meditation.

It's one of the most robust kind of probes that you can use to interrogate the quality of

the practice and also the longer-term trade effects, if you will.

And I liken it, by the way, when you go to a cardiologist, you often do a cardiac stress test.

And so one of the best ways to probe the integrity of the system is by challenging it and not just looking at it at baseline, so to speak, and it's true of the mind and the brain.

and one of the best challenges is physical pain.

So we've done work where we've primarily used heat as a painful stimulus because it can be delivered very precisely and very safely.

In imaging data there is a signature that is quite specifically tied to the physical pain itself and that there's another signature that is associated with the emotional reaction to the pain.

The interpretation.

And when we subjectively experience distress in response to pain, it's actually mostly contributed by the secondary response, that is the emotional response to the initial noxious stimulus itself.