If you look at telomeres, which are like a marker of our genetic aging, the little caps on the end of our chromosomes that stop the DNA from unraveling.

With stress, they shorten and get whittled away fast.

It's like a marker of our biological aging.

We now know that meditation, it actually has an effect of s- switching on the repair enzymes, slowing down the rate of aging at the level of the DNA of the cells.

How can you use these practices to help us to understand ourselves better? But I mean, the research shows changes in the default mode network and so on, but also the, the stress circuitry.

And we're starting to completely rethink our understanding of compassion and empathy.

Mm.

"But I'll just, just watch what happens in the body, the mind, and without any attitude to it." So I just sort of sat and just in a sense felt as still as I could just in that sort of quiet witnessing sort of attitude.