A new study from the University of North Carolina-Charlotte suggests that a single hour of training spread out over a three-day period can produce analgesic effect regarding pain.

“This study is the first to demonstrate the efficacy of such a brief intervention on the perception of pain,” said UNC-C’s Fadel Zeidan. “Not only did the meditation subjects feel less pain than the control group while meditating but they also experienced less pain sensitivity while not meditating. [...] We knew already that meditation has significant effects on pain perception in long-term practitioners whose brains seem to have been completely changed — we didn’t know that you could do this in just three days, with just 20 minutes a day,” Zeidan said.

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