# The Benefits of Meditation Come From Telling People That You Meditate

\[[This is an entry for lsusr’s write-like-lsusr competition.](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/dr5gZbyPqeKJCpaPL/usd500-write-like-lsusr-competition)\]

A [new study](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ) out of the University of Michigan has confirmed what many people have long suspected: the benefits of meditation do not come from retraining your nervous system to be less reactive, but instead entirely derive from the act of telling people that you meditate.

The lead investigator of the study, Dr. Susan Connor, tested this by strapping brain wave helmets to participants while they meditated. She found no statistical significance between stress levels before and after meditating. What the participants didn’t know, however, was that there was a second part of the study and it began once they finished their meditation session: a “random” passerby (Dr. Connor’s assistant) would enter the room and ask for directions to a nearby building on campus, and Dr. Connor would measure with a stopwatch how long it took for the participant to gently inform the passerby that they just meditated.

“We knew that it’s virtually impossible for people to refrain from telling others that they meditate,” Dr. Connor admitted. “It’s similar to how vegans and cyclists always find a way to mention their identity as early as possible in conversation. So we figured if there actually are any benefits to meditation, then perhaps they are to be found in the status boost meditators get by telling other less-spiritually-intuned people that they meditate.”

The study proved that the more quickly participants proudly (yet serenely) informed the passerby that they just meditated, the lower their stress levels were. Dr. Connor concluded, “So if you’re wondering whether or not to tell people that you meditated on any particular day—you absolutely should, that's the whole point.”

This aligns perfectly with my experience. [I](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Nwkzggk49Fq6knb9t/critical-meditation-theory) [have](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/JhAoRyGxZwnekNnnG/el-dorado) [written](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/KuiDgXs7Qm9YBJpAv/cyberbuddhist-jargon-1-0) [9](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/DvjJoxP6f79G9iAbE/enlightenment-ama) [posts](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/dTaDsnwuYQnYc5xvc/nsfw-the-fuzzy-handcuffs-of-liberation) [on](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/vqnpx8L6TYqzHW2ad/test-of-the-bene-gesserit) [meditation](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/J9jj2EY6kuBRJ4CXE/proselytizing) [in](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/MoH9fuTo9Mo4jGDNL/how-accurate-was-my-altered-traits-book-review) [2025](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/8pWn8oCMsBKb95Wje/stream-entry). These 9 posts have generated 421 Karma as of this writing. In the Buddhist tradition, Karma (Sanskrit for "action") is defined by your intention; your motivation behind an act determines its Karmic weight, not just the act itself. So by spreading the word that I meditate and that others should too, not only did my LessWrong Karma go up this year, but my cosmic Karma score also increased.

Why is this important?

By telling other people that I meditate, I’m proactively lowering my own stress levels. That’s all well and good. But how does this help others? Well, when I add layers of mysticism to it (by talking about things like [Jhanas](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/99PwFdz7qwHxQgwYx/awakening), [enlightenment](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/DvjJoxP6f79G9iAbE/enlightenment-ama), and [cyberbuddhism](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/KuiDgXs7Qm9YBJpAv/cyberbuddhist-jargon-1-0)), I increase other people’s interest in meditation. And when they, in turn, begin meditating (and of course start telling other people that they just got into meditation and that it’s, like, doing wonders for their sense of inner peace), it reminds non-meditators that they’re missing out on this activity that they know they should be doing, and perhaps they'll consider trying it now…

The Arahant (a fancy word for someone who tells *many* people that they meditate) Daniel Ingram in his book “Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha” essentially agrees with my approach: the only way to achieve universal peace and global consciousness is by creating a world of people all telling each other that they meditate.