The Financial Times recently had an article about meditation in finance:

Backed by clinical trials and married with neuroscience, the idea that meditation can help anyone find a greater sense of equanimity is well established…. For Sean Hagan, chief legal counsel of the International Monetary Fund who began meditating 30 years ago while a junior lawyer at JPMorgan, it is a question of priorities. “You come into the office every morning and there is a host of things to do, which is overwhelming and can cause a sense of panic. But meditation helps you focus, which is a good skill, and it encourages a one-thing-at-a-time approach, which helps slow things down,” he says. “Therefore, it’s really straightforward for me. It gives me a lot of benefits, so I prioritise it.”

Others, such as Philipp Hildebrand, vice-chairman of BlackRock and a former head of the Swiss National Bank, who has meditated for seven years, slot it into their schedules when they can – in aeroplanes or while being chauffeured between meetings. “In a world of screens, texts, cell phones, information all over you, spending 20 minutes purposefully not thinking of anything is a wonderful thing,” he says. “It’s a pause that refreshes. In some ways in the financial world, it is a must.”

There’s been some interesting work by neuroscientists on emotion in finance (particularly Cambridge researcher John Coates‘ work, described in his book The Hour Between Dog and Wolf and a number of articles on the physiology of risk-taking (you can find links to them on his Web site), and the article makes a vivid though anecdotal case for how contemplative practices, by helping people control their mental and emotional states, contribute to improved decision-making in high-stress environments. Of course, in the wake of the samurai, or the history of the Jesuits, this should be no surprise.