SIT STILL. Focus on the breath.

Breathe in, breathe out. Breathe in . . . I can't help but notice that the petite blonde beside me is exhaling so loudly—with rhythmic nasal hoots—that she must have fully transcended her thoughts. Am I the only loser in the room who's not in a trance?

I'm at meditation camp. I know—I can't believe it either. If there are two things in this world I'm fundamentally incapable of, they are sitting still and not thinking. I was walking at seven months old, running at eight months. When I was nine years old, my Sunday-school teacher apprised me that I was "headed for hell" for asking impertinent questions. In college, I majored in philosophy—Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, and Heidegger were my gurus. Later, between expeditions, I spent years training myself to write, which is just thinking on paper.

There I go again.

Breathe in, breathe out. Breathe in. I lift my eyes ever so slightly and sneak a peak out the window. Freedom! All I want is to be outside, hiking, biking, mowing the lawn, even—it doesn't really matter. I just have to move.

I think, therefore I am; I do, therefore I live—my two mantras for as long as I can remember. So why subject myself to a three-day sufferfest of sitting?

I blame it partly on Grasshopper. The TV series Kung Fu caught me at an impressionable age, and its star, a martial-arts apprentice named Grasshopper, was my idea of cool. ("Grasshopper, when you can walk on the rice paper without tearing it, then your steps will not be heard . . .") He was always getting himself into some kind of exciting mess, meditating on it, then kicking ass.

Science is responsible for the rest. It's no big secret that meditation is known to reduce stress, but recent research suggests that it may also improve athletic performance. Erik Ekker Solberg, a sports-medicine specialist and cardiologist based in Oslo, Norway, has been researching the pyschobiological effects of meditation for more than a decade. Among his discoveries: For competitive marksmen, regular meditation enhances the accuracy of shooting; and in a study of 31 male runners, those who practiced meditation twice a day for 30 minutes showed significantly reduced levels of lactic-acid buildup after exercise. Lactic acid is the burning sludge that forms in your muscles when you exert yourself. You can meditate that out of your system? Sign me up!