Feeling of cool during mental silence meditation

It was important to determine whether the state of mental silence is physiologically different from that of relaxation (one of the most prevalent definitions of meditation in the West literature).

Participants in the meditating trials in fact reported that during mental silence meditation, they experienced cool sensations on their glabrous skin.

This perception seems paradoxical, since it directly contradicts the Western understanding of meditation as a typical state of reduced autonomic arousal (i.e. para-sympathetic activation and sympathetic deactivation).