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A radical reinterpretation of mental exercise from two New York Times bestselling authors - "What if we could exercise our minds like we exercise our bodies?" - backed by state-of-the-art scientific research

More than forty years ago, two friends and collaborators at Harvard, Daniel Goleman and Richard Davidson were unusual in arguing for the benefits of meditation. Now, as mindfulness and other brands of meditation become ever more popular, to fix even more about our lives, they reveal the cutting-edge science of how smart practice can change our personal traits and even our genome for the better.

Drawing on the kind of cutting-edge research that has made them giants in their fields, Goleman and Davidson sweep away neuromythology and reveal what we can learn from a one-of-a-kind data pool of world-class meditators. They share for the first time remarkable findings that show how meditation can cultivate - without drugs or high expense - qualities such as focus, selflessness, and compassion.

For beyond the pleasant states that mental exercises can produce, purposeful, sustained mind training can create altered traits: sustained, beneficial qualities of thinking, feeling, and acting that are accompanied by lasting, supportive changes in the brain.

Demonstrating two master thinkers at work, The Science of Meditation explains precisely how and when mind training benefits us. More than daily doses or sheer hours, we need smart practice, including crucial ingredients such as targeted feedback from a master teacher and a more spacious, less attached view of the self, all of which are missing in many versions of mind training. Exploring, too, how new technologies can really help with meditation, this is the truth about what meditation can do for us today.

Gripping in its storytelling and grounded in new research, this is one of those rare books that has the power to change us at the deepest level.

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This is a book that really can change your life. Daniel Goleman and Richard Davidson not only show the power of meditation, but also the smartest way to practice for the maximum possible benefit. The Science of Meditation is your roadmap to a more mindful, compassionate, fulfilling life - who doesn´t want that? Arianna Huffington, author of the ´New York Times´ best seller ´The Sleep Revolution´

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Goleman, Daniel
Daniel Goleman, PhD, author of five New York Times bestsellers, is best known for his paradigm-shifting book Emotional Intelligence, a global bestseller, and has a long-standing interest in meditation dating back to his two years in India as a graduate student at Harvard. His books have been translated into more than forty languages.

Davidson, Richard
Richard J. Davidson received his PhD from Harvard in psychology, and has been at Wisconsin since 1984, where he directs the Waisman Brain Imaging Lab, the Laboratory for Affective Neuroscience and the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds. He has been chosen as one of Time´s ´100 most influential people in the world´.

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