Dr. Richard Davidson

They don't all do the same thing.

They have different effects on the brain and the body.

And so I think it's really important that we not lump all of meditation together.

So that's one really important thing.

So yes, we can create some broad bins.

And we've done that.

We've published some papers that offer typologies for classifying different meditation states.

So one kind of meditation we call focused attention meditation.

And focused attention meditation is...

where you are narrowing your aperture of awareness to a specific object.

It could be an external object, it could also be an internal.

It could be, for example, your respiration, it could be a sound, and there is a narrowing of the aperture.

And this is all broadly within the category of practices that we would say are cultivating aspects of awareness.

So another awareness practice is what we call open monitoring meditation.

And open monitoring is where there is no specific focus, but rather the aperture is broadened and there is no specific intention to focus on any one thing or another.

the invitation is to simply be aware of whatever is arising as it arises.

One of the aspirations there, or the invitations, is not to try to get rid of thoughts because

Our minds and our brains are built to generate thoughts, so there's no goal, if you will, to get rid of thoughts, but rather to, if thoughts arise, that's another object that you can be aware of.

You know, we talked about sleep and sleepiness and that earlier.

You can even, you know, you can be aware of being sleepy, you can be aware of being distracted.