Strangers could tell who the meditators were — July AMA with Richie & Cort

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(The full AMA recording plays in the video pane above, for Dharma Lab members.)

In our 11th AMA, Kim read your questions while Cort made his way back from a retreat with Mingyur Rinpoche. Richie spoke to a study where strangers could tell who the meditators were, from a photo alone.

What’s inside

* Full recording and transcript for paid members

* The photo study: what strangers saw in the faces of long-term meditators

* You are not your beliefs: a simple two-step practice to see them clearly

* A 2-minute guided practice (free, led by Dr. Richie Davidson)

* The full hour mapped below, plus the flashcards and the recording

Strangers could tell who the meditators were

This came up during a question about moods. Richie’s point was that one consequence of long-term practice is that people generally end up in a more positive mood. To show it, he described a study his lab published.

Whenever they studied long-term meditators, they routinely took a picture of everyone, both the meditators and age- and gender-matched controls, without telling them what it was for. Then they gave all the pictures to random people who had no idea where they came from, and asked them to rate each face: how friendly the person is, how much you trust them, how happy they are.