Can meditation really improve reaction time? Research conducted at the University of Kentucky suggests that it does, even more than caffeine, exercise, or napping. The New York Times reports that 12 students who did not meditate were taught the basics in two short sessions. Then, over a series of weeks, the students were asked to come in and take a test devised to measure skills like reaction time. The Times reports that the students were asked to take the tests in mid- to late afternoon,
when people tend to be sleepiest. They did so before and after 40
minutes of meditating, napping or exercising, or after taking caffeine.
Napping produced poor results, presumably because of “sleep inertia.†Caffeine helped, and exercise was unpredictable.
Health, fitness and lifestyle tips for people over 50 who still like to play hard
Saturday, May 31, 2025
You can find a deep-level answer to your question by studying D.T. Suzuki’s book Zen in Japanese Culture and he goes even deeper in his essay in Zen Buddhism and Psychoanalysis (by Fromm, Suzuki, and De Martino). The picture is filled out by Eugen Herrigel in Zen in the Art of Archery. Thinking to ourselves in words gets in the way of responses that have been trained into us by long practice. We need to be able to put the conceptualizing part of our minds into the deep background when a crisis-reaction demand comes up. Zhuang Zi talks about the fully realized human with the same needs in mind