Meditation and alertness

Today's New York Times reports on one of the benefits of meditation in an article entitled "Performance: Researchers Test Meditation’s Impact on Alertness". Here's part of what it says:

Meditation is often credited with helping people feel more focused and energetic, but are the benefits measurable?

A new study suggests that they are. When researchers tested the alertness of volunteers, they found that the practice proved more effective than naps, exercise or caffeine. The results were presented at a recent conference of the Society for Neuroscience.

Do click through and read the whole article if you'd like to see how the study was designed. Interestingly, they did not use experienced meditators for the study. They took non-meditators and taught them how to meditate in two short sessions. So you don't have to have been meditating for years to get the benefit of increased alertness.

I found the last sentence of the article amusing:

They said they did not know if caffeine and meditation combined would be even better.

Ha! I definitely vote for both!