Integral Life Practice: The Four Core Modules, Explained
Four core modules, short daily practices, and what the evidence can and cannot show for each part
What is Integral Life Practice?
Integral Life Practice (ILP) is a modular practice framework from Integral Institute, built on Ken Wilber’s integral framework. Its ILP Starter Kit asks you to choose one practice from each of four core modules (Body, Mind, Spirit and Shadow) and to add optional auxiliary modules as you wish. This page found no outcome study of the whole system, so the evidence it cites is for individual kinds of practice the framework includes, such as exercise, perspective-taking and meditation.
Integral Life Practice is a practice framework that Integral Institute developed around Ken Wilber’s integral framework (the AQAL model). Its ILP Starter Kit, a 2005 design guide, lays out four core modules: Body, Mind, Spirit and Shadow. Each module is a set of practices for one part of a life, and the Starter Kit recommends choosing one practice from each to begin. Auxiliary modules such as Ethics, Work, Emotions and Relationships can be added later. Shorter forms, called 1-Minute Modules, are meant for busy days. The framework was later presented in a 2008 book by four of its authors, which this page could not read in full. The Shadow module, which the Starter Kit describes as work on the parts of yourself you have disowned, is named here but its best-known practice is not described on this page. The practices below are ones the Starter Kit names, each set against the research for that kind of practice, with the gap stated where there is no research on ILP itself.
Practices
- Pick one practice from each of the four core modules
Choose one practice each for body, mind, spirit and shadow, instead of trying to work on every area of life at once.
- Do a Body module practice: aerobic or strength work
Pick one physical practice, such as aerobics or weightlifting, and do it on a fixed schedule you can keep.
- Take multiple perspectives on one disagreement
Write the strongest version of a view you disagree with, in its own terms, before you answer it.
- Meditate for a set time each day
Sit for a fixed, short period, notice when attention wanders, and bring it back to the breath each time.
- Use a one-minute module on a crowded day
Do a condensed version of a practice you already know, in about a minute, at a fixed moment of the day.
- Add an auxiliary module for the area you neglect most
Once the four core modules feel steady, add one auxiliary module, such as Work, Relationships or Ethics.
- Audit which core area you keep skipping each week
Once a week, check which of the four core modules you did and which you skipped, and write down the first reason for each skip.
How these practices connect
Each practice trains one part of a person on purpose: the body through movement, the mind’s frame through taking other views, attention through meditation or prayer, and disowned feelings through shadow work. The Starter Kit’s stated aim is to work across these parts together rather than on one at a time, and the practices differ mainly in which part they train and how much time they ask for.
How do the four core modules of Integral Life Practice relate to each other?
The Starter Kit treats Body, Mind, Spirit and Shadow as four separate areas of one practice, and recommends one practice from each to begin. Body practices train the physical side, Mind practices train the way a person frames and weighs views, Spirit practices train attention through meditation or prayer, and Shadow practices work with feelings and parts of the self a person has disowned. These are the Starter Kit’s descriptions, not the results of a comparison, so the page does not claim that any one module improves the others.
Is there research behind the body and mind parts of Integral Life Practice?
For the body part, the strongest research on this page concerns exercise and depression: a 2016 meta-analysis of 25 randomized trials in people with depression found a large adjusted effect of exercise on depression. For the mind part, the research is laboratory experiments on perspective-taking, which found reduced stereotyping and reduced in-group favoritism in laboratory tasks. Neither study tests Integral Life Practice itself, and neither tests a practice that combines the four core modules.
What does the research say about meditation in Integral Life Practice?
The Spirit module of Integral Life Practice lists meditation and prayer. A 2014 systematic review of 47 randomized trials with 3,515 participants found moderate evidence that mindfulness meditation programs improved anxiety, depression and pain, and low evidence for improved stress and distress. It found no evidence that meditation programs were better than other active comparison treatments. Those trials studied meditation programs, not the list in Integral Life Practice’s Spirit module.
Is a shorter daily practice as good as a longer one in Integral Life Practice?
The Starter Kit says the 1-Minute Modules are condensed versions of its Gold Star practices, and that the short form can more frequently evoke similar benefits. That is the authors’ expectation, and the Starter Kit reports no measured comparison between the short and extended forms. A fair test is to learn one practice in its longer form, then do the short version at the same moment each day and compare notes after several weeks.
How do I choose which Integral Life Practice module to work on first?
Start with the four core modules and choose one practice in each that you could actually do this week. If one module keeps getting skipped, that is the place to look first, because the Starter Kit describes each module as one room of a whole practice. Add an auxiliary module only after the core four feel steady.
How do you choose between these?
Begin with the four core modules and choose one practice in each that you could do this week. If one module keeps getting skipped, look there first, and add an auxiliary module only once the core four feel steady and one area of life still feels untouched. Choose a physical practice when energy and mood are low and you want a routine to build, a perspective practice when you are stuck in a disagreement, a meditation when the wandering of your attention is the problem, and a one-minute module when a full session is not possible today.
What these approaches do not settle
No study tested Integral Life Practice as a whole, and this page found no outcome data for its four-module structure. The research cited here comes from other interventions: exercise trials in people with depression, laboratory perspective-taking experiments, and meditation-program trials in diverse adult clinical populations. The Starter Kit is a 2005 design guide written by the framework’s own team, and the 2008 book, which this page could not read in full, may describe the framework differently.
Practice this with IX Coach
Related concepts
- Ken Wilber’s Integral Theory (AQAL), Made Practical
Five elements for catching what your view of a situation leaves out, held as a map rather than a truth
- Using Wilber’s Four Quadrants on a Real Problem
Eight ways to put the I, It, We, Its map to work on a problem you actually have
- Waking Up, Growing Up, Cleaning Up, Showing Up: Four Kinds of Growth That Do Not Move Together
Why awakening, maturity, shadow work and everyday embodiment can each grow without the others — and how to notice which one you have left behind
- States vs Stages of Consciousness: Wilber, Combs and O’Fallon
Why a powerful experience and a lasting change are different things, and how each one grows
- First, Second, Third and Fourth Person Perspectives
How the number of viewpoints you can hold grows, what the research does and does not show, and how to practice it in a real disagreement