You ever hear of the study that looked at the effects of weight training on people’s meditation practices?

I was recently having lunch with my friend Huy (who ran the first Integral workshop I attended) and he reminded me of this great study.

Here’s the deal: Apparently a researcher came to a Vipassana teacher and split his students into two groups: a group that meditated as usual and one that added strength training to their practice. The teacher wasn’t told who was in what group.

Fast forward a year.

The teacher was asked to rank his students in terms of his perception of the depth of their meditation practice.

Guess who performed significantly better?

Yep. The group that was doing both the meditation and the strength training.

Cool, eh?

Lots of potential reasons why. But it seems the evidence is pointing toward you getting some muscle into that meditation practice of yours!

It seems to me to be an obvious connection. We are beings of two realms, emptyness and form, and by honoring both sides, both sides are improved. By honoring only one side we become at best lop sided.

All the great truths are pretty obvious, eh? :) It’s always nice when science catches up to the obvious tho. :)