Book Review: Altered Traits

I have just finished the book Altered Traits, which deals with meditation, and specifically, from a Western point of view, the potential for altered traits, in contrast to more temporary altered states. Whilst the book doesn't explicitely say this, they define altered traits as something that is a baseline and changed, however does require regular practice to maintain. So for instance, an altered state would be the high from taking a drug, and an altered trait would be increased muscle mass after weight training. If the training isn't kept up, the trait will be lost - so it's not like riding a bike for instance where you 'do it' then you 'have it' for life.

I found the book fairly interesting. For the first few chapters it had a very low signal-to-noise ratio for a non-fiction book, more detailling their backstory, and less so the actual altered traits from meditation. I found also they tooted their own horn quite a lot.

Once the book eventually got onto the topic, it was quite interesting. The book didn't exactly cover what I wanted it to - which was more of the specifics of the neurophysiology of meditation - but still gave some fairly useful insight. They stressed the lack of robust scientific evidence and research as of publishing (2018).

Some of the positive takeaways of meditation appear to be:

• Lessened markers of inflammation after a mere thirty hours of training;
• Stronger selective attention;
• A reduced attentional blink
• Less self-obsession and attachment;
• Shows promise for treating depression and, (of interest to me) social anxiety;
• Increase in telomerase, potentially reducing cell aging;
• Potentially effective for combating Alzheimer's disease;

A decent list!

I think this will be best paired with a book that (if it exists) deals with the existing neurphysiological research in greater detail, or one that at least attempts to understand it through that lens.

I do think it would be wise of me to take up meditation. In myself, I notice a few things that meditation could definitely help on. For instance, I am prone to becoming stressed about things in anticipation. I almost certainly have social anxiety (or malaise as I tend to call it) and often tend depressive, and so it could benefit me in that sense, too.

One thing I noticed was about time - I am very concerned about not finding the time to take up a meditative practice. However, the book talked of a man Mingyur Rinpoche, who at the age of 41 had the mind of a 33 year old. He had at that time practised for 62,000 total hours, or around seven years. In that way, he had make back his time through the years he gained mentally!

All in all, a ... not incredible book, but which has a very interesting topic and is still definitely worth a read. It has In a nutshell sections at the end of each chapter, which summarise the findings and topics of the chapter. At the very least, it's worth going into a book store and just skimming these summary sections (I doubt it would take more than five minutes).