Is Meditation an active or passive state? Anyone who observes the meditator would say “passive”. All the meditator seems to do is sit still, doing nothing.

There are many arguments in support of meditation being an active state!  They would point out that you can actually burn calories by doing meditation. Visit http://www.livestrong.com/thedailyplate/fitness/exercise/meditating/ and you will be told that meditation helps you burn 66 calories per hour for an average person–average being a person who weight 145 pounds.  http://caloriecount.about.com/calories-burned-light-meditating-a148 says that you can burn 70 calories  per hour if you weigh 150 pounds by doing light meditation.

You may then,  turn round to argue that even people who are sleeping burn calories. Of course, you do that in the assumption that sleep is not an active state! Well, it must again be pointed out that the active or passive state of sleep is itself in question.  However, studies show that you burn 60-72 calories an hour(per 150 lbs weight) during sleep. So sleep too is an active state for the purposes of our thesis.

Of course, we do not have to believe all this. We can look to scientific proof. Siebert, Gessner and Klasser who studied the energy consumed by the central nervous system when a person sits down to do some deep thinking reveals that the brain burns 230-270 calories an hour. {Energy supply of the central nervous system.PMID: 3516137 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE] Bibl Nutr Dieta. 1986;(38):1-26.].

While this is not much when compared to calorie loss during exercise, it is certainly a large amount for a small organ accounts for such a small part of the body weight! Also, it is a clear indication that “thinking” is activity that burns calories. It follows, that meditation which is a kind of focused and concentrated thinking, is an active physical state and not a passive one.

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