When you like, bring the meditation to an end. Notice how you feel, and take in the good of your meditation. - Rick Hanson

It’s a remarkable fact that the people who have gone the very deepest into the mind — the sages and saints of every religious tradition — all say essentially the same thing: your fundamental nature is pure, conscious, peaceful, radiant, loving, and wise, and it is joined in mysterious ways with the ultimate underpinnings of reality, by whatever name we give That.

In your body, the gradually accumulating burden of reactive experiences is called allostatic load, which increases inflammation, weakens your immune system, and wears on your cardiovascular system. In your brain, allostatic load causes neurons to atrophy in the prefrontal cortex, the center of top-down executive control; in the hippocampus, the center of learning and memory; and in other regions. It impairs myelination, the insulating of neural fibers to speed along their signals, which can weaken the connectivity between different regions of your brain, so they don’t work together as well as they should.

Cortisol — released by the adrenal glands during the stress response; stimulates the amygdala and inhibits the hippocampus.