Dr. Richard Davidson

And that is the set of neural changes that we most dramatically see transformed by meditation.

as a trade effect.

And it's particularly, and this is published data, this was done with long-term meditation practitioners, and we show that actually it's specifically retreat practice.

So we can have two people who are matched on the total number of hours that they've practiced in a lifetime, where in one person it is much more...

during retreat compared to another person, and it's specifically retreat practice where you're doing more intensive practice that contributes to the transformation of this emotional pain signature.

More than a couple of hours a day.

Yeah, although there are a lot of online resources for this and actually for a person who is unable for whatever reason to go physically to retreat, there are online resources.

But of course, you know, I think it's probably more beneficial to do it in person because you're more likely to comply with the expectations of like not checking your phone and things of that sort and being silent.

That's wonderful.

Well, I love those examples.

And I think you are setting an inspiring example for others.

And I think that things have gotten so bad with the deleterious impact of technology that we've been led to do those kinds of things which I think are so important and I think the more examples of that the better.

Yeah, absolutely.

And regarding self-control, I think that self-control is a trainable skill.

and it is a byproduct of flourishing and one of the central capacities... I mean, we talked about meta-awareness earlier and I think meta-awareness is really a key ingredient for self-control and self-control or self-regulation will improve as a consequence of that and that's a superpower.

You know, there was a study done by these two psychologists, Moffitt and Caspi, who are developmental sort of lifespan psychologists, and they've been studying this cohort in Dunedin, New Zealand.

It's a birth cohort, so these folks have been studied since birth, they're now I think in their 60s, but there's amazing longitudinal data on these people.

And they had a paper in PNAS a number of years ago that looked at behavioral measures of self-control in this cohort when these people were four and five years of age.

And this particular paper was looking at outcomes when they were 32 years of age.

And what they found is that the individuals who are in the upper quintile of self-control at four and five years of age