IONS co-study (mostly) fails to find a link between yoga/meditation and psi

[Laird]

Exploring Connections: Yoga, Meditation, and Psychic Abilities

IONS Science Team
August 6, 2025
IONS Blog

The four hypotheses developed by researchers are as follows:

• H1: Forty days of continuous yoga practice (a minimum of 60 minutes daily) affect the precognitive ability of students with different histories of yoga practice.
  
• H2: Meditation influences precognitive accuracy.
  
• H3: More yoga experience is associated with better precognition results.
  
• H4: The demographic characteristics of the participants correlate with their precognitive skills.
  

No statistically significant results were revealed by these tests. However, interesting trends in the data were observed across the four studies.

Researchers found that a short-term yoga practice showed a weak correlation with improved precognitive abilities. Perhaps most interesting is that the post-hoc analysis revealed that participants chose the target image incorrectly more often than chance, which researchers suggest may reflect an unconscious resistance to psi (i.e., psychic abilities). In Study 2, results showed a shift between pre- and post-meditation performance, which suggests improved precognitive ability due to a meditation practice.

When comparing beginners to experienced yoga practitioners (Study 3), scores between the two groups did not differ in a meaningful way. However, in the fourth study, trends were observed regarding education and personality traits. Participants with less formal education or stronger beliefs in psychic phenomena tended to perform better. Certain personality traits—being less dull, more passionate, more extroverted, and more spiritually aware—were also weakly associated with improved results, though the connections remain complex and unclear.