Meditation leads to well-being and virtue, which lead to health and longevity

Findings from Davidson’s lab clearly suggest that a sense of well-being should not be considered as the simple absence of disease or depression, but rather as the presence of a distinct profile of emotional reactivity and emotion regulation characterized by a pattern of unique neurobiological substrates. Moreover, these patterns of brain function appear to influence peripheral biology in ways that may be consequential for health....“There are many other ways to change the brain, but we know that meditation is a family of procedures that yields virtuous change: we now know that we can learn to cultivate compassion, kindness, altruism, and cooperation, largely through meditation, which produces change in specific brain surfaces,” Davidson said.

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