Effects of jhana/concentration practices

For those of you who are experienced with this (seems to be quite a few of you here), would you say that there are positive effects on one's well being, general mood and happiness that continue for a period of time after a sitting?

When I've done concentration, jhana or similar practices (such as bliss-generating chanting or breath work), it definitely carries over a sense of peace, bliss or relaxation for a few minutes, hours or days, depending on how consistently I do the practice. I agree with Chris it's very different from vipassana type sitting, which doesn't have that effect.

I'm asking specifically about concentration/samatha and not vipassana

why?

because for the first time I've somehow managed to get pretty concentrated and I noticed a subsequent change in mood for hours later and I wondered if more experienced people had that two or if maybe something else had caused it.

I like feeling settled, focused, happy.

Thanks for adding the clarification, Mike-- and thanks to Chris for eliciting it-- I saw 'jhanas' and thought, 'Don't know nothin' 'bout no jhanas, don't know what nirodha samipatti's for...'

But reading what you've written, Mike, about the effect of spending time in concentration states, on the post-meditation [majority of life!]-- that IS something I have noticed. And another question on one of my other forum activities reminded me that I started meditating in 1965, when Jerry Jarvis came around on his second sweep through Berkeley organizing the Students' Meditation Society, and I got my Transcendental Meditation mantra and started meditating 20 minutes, twice a day. I did it for a decade, on my own-- and it has only just dawned on me: that COUNTS as part of my path!

And it did have the effect of stabilizing me in all sorts of ways that I stopped noticing and took for granted in fairly short order. I just wove it into the narrative about 'how I am and have always been'-- unusually calm and generally cheerful [to a sometimes annoying degree]; immune to the allure of extremes of lifestyle. If I try to remember 'before', I'd have to say, 'Whoa! That's a real change from the hardscrabble kid with a very fragile sense of belonging anywhere and a pervasive pessimism about the planet...'

So maybe I'm way overdue to being grateful to Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, RIP.

I'm a puppy at concentration stuff, but it really does linger and effect my mood for hours/days. And it effects other people's mood around me, like they get a contact high. Which makes me feel good, which perpetuates it even more. I think that a little bliss does wonders for our circuitry and makes it harder to fall into old negative patterns. My mind just doesn't want "ill will" if it has recently known the alternative.

Yeah, there's something about feeling good or great mixed with relaxed openness that's pretty cool. Who would have thunk it?