Oprah Winfrey practising Transcendental Meditation with a group of 500 other women in Fairfield, Iowa for her new TV show

Oprah’s New TV Series to Feature Show on Transcendental Meditation

18 January 2012

Oprah Winfrey’s new TV series, ‘Oprah's Next Chapter’, which launched on January 1st, is to include an episode on Transcendental Meditation, exploring how the simple technique has transformed the lives of many Americans, including those of Oprah and her 400 employees.
 

The TV star and her team learned to practise the technique at their studios in California before commencing filming in Fairfield, a small town in Iowa, where over 3000 people – a third of the population – practise the TM technique daily. In the film, which will be broadcast on Oprah's own TV network, OWN, in February, highlights will include Oprah's visit to a school in Fairfield where all the pupils meditate, and her participation in a group meditation of 500 women in a purpose-built golden-domed hall. Emerging stunned after the 20 minute experience, she declares she has never felt anything like it before.

This preview of Oprah's Next Chapter features highlights of the six part series, including her visit to 'TM Town' in Fairfield, Iowa. The series will be broadcast on the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN), with excerpts on Oprah.com


Filming took place in October 2011 and such was the positive impact on the personal and professional lives of Oprah and her closest team that within six weeks all of her 400 employees had learnt the technique.

Appearing on a leading American TV chat show in December, she told the anchor, Dr Mehmet Oz, a well-known TV medic in the USA, that twice-daily practice of the technique had transformed their workplace.

“Nine o’clock in the morning, and 4:30 in the afternoon no matter what is going on, we stop and we meditate.

“And that way of being ‘still’ with ourselves—coming back to the centre—and recognising that something is more important than you, [that] it’s more important than the work you are doing, brings a kind of energy and an intensity of energy; an intention that we have never had before.

She went on to describe the effect it had on her employees' personal lives.

"People who used to have migraines, don’t. People are sleeping better. People have better relationships. People interact with other people better. It’s been fantastic.

“So the one thing I want to continue to do is to centre myself every day, and make that a practice for myself because I am one thousand per cent better when I do that, one thousand per cent better when I take myself back to something bigger than myself.”

Watch Oprah speak about Transcendental Meditation with Dr Mehmet Oz. 

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Director David Lynch, singer Katy Perry and comedian Russell Brand attend the 'Change Begins Within' Benefit Celebration presented by The David Lynch Foundation in Los Angeles

Celebrities join David Lynch for Charity Gala following $1 million donation

21 December 2011

Ellen DeGeneres, Katy Perry and Russell Brand were among celebrities joining David Lynch and leaders in science, medicine, finance and the military for a charity gala in Los Angeles to celebrate the work of the David Lynch Foundation (DLF) in teaching Transcendental Meditation to many thousands of children and at-risk individuals around the world.

This third annual "Change Begins Within" benefit followed the announcement by David Lynch on December 2nd that he was donating $1 million via the foundation to teach Transcendental Meditation to war veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.

The host of the star-studded evening was comedian Russell Brand – himself, a practitioner of TM – but it was American chat show host Ellen DeGeneres who opened the evening, introducing Brand as the man who had turned her on to Transcendental Meditation a year before, reports the Wall Street Journal.

Brand, in turn, introduced filmmaker David Lynch who established the DLF as a charity in 2005 with the aim of teaching 1 million schoolchildren to practise Transcendental Meditation worldwide. Though best known as the director of atmospheric films like Blue Velvet, Mulholland Drive and the television series Twin Peaks, Mr Lynch has also been an avid meditator for over three decades and credits Transcendental Meditation as the source of his creativity and the ideas that become his films.

As well as teaching over 60,000 schoolchildren to meditate worldwide, the David Lynch Foundation has also taught the stress-reducing TM technique to over 10,000 war veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder in the USA. The further $1 million in grants announced at the press conference will be used to teach TM to active-duty military personnel and veterans and their families suffering from post-traumatic stress.

Speaking at the gala, Lynch summed up his thoughts about Transcendental Meditation by producing a painting of a tree and explaining to the audience, which included actors like Kristen Bell (Brand’s co-star in Get Him to the Greek) and Kelly Le Brock and hip-hop legend Russell Simmons, that the key to meditation was to “water to root” of the mind and “enjoy the fruit” of the ensuing knowledge.

War veterans and high school students described how TM had personally affected their lives, and Bob Roth, vice president of the David Lynch Foundation, spoke about the collective effects of widespread teaching of TM: “We have been planting the same seed year after year, but now it is sprouting like never before. As the fog clears, people can hear and appreciate in a new and fresh way -- and this is a great gift from Maharishi [Mahesh Yogi].”

Russell Brand, who credits the meditation technique for helping him beat addiction, rounded off the evening by interviewing quantum physicist John Hagelin — a situation that seemed to fill the actor full of glee, reports the Wall Street Journal.

The highlights of the show can be seen on video. Read the full Wall Street Journal review at WSJ website.

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Stressed high school students reduced psychological distress by 36% over four months with TM

Transcendental Meditation An Effective Antidote to Rising Stress Levels in Schools

2 December 2011

Journal of Instructional Psychology

With record high stress levels among A-level students reported by both the UK's Family Doctor Association and the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy, can a simple stress-reducing meditation technique be a viable solution?

A new study published in the Journal of Instructional Psychology found the Transcendental Meditation (TM) technique significantly decreased psychological distress in state school students in the USA by 36 percent over four months compared to controls.

The study also found significant decreases in trait anxiety and depressive symptoms.

A total of 106 students, aged 16 to 18, from four state secondary schools took part in the study, with 87 percent from ethnic minority backgrounds. Transcendental Meditation was practised in class twice a day by study participants as part of the schools' Quiet Time programme for four months. Other students had other options of how to spend the Quiet Time period.

The study focused on racial and ethnic minority groups as they are particularly subject to additional high levels of stress due to exposure to violence, pressures due to acculturation and the schooling process.

Rising Stress Levels Affect Emotional and Physical Health

In the UK high youth unemployment and the rising costs of university education are making 16- to 18-year-olds in the UK more anxious than ever, doctors, psychotherapists and headteachers say. A record number have sought medical and psychological help in the last year, with a significant rise in those on medication, according to reports by the Family Doctor Association and the BACP earlier this year.

Dr Charles Elder, MD, lead author of the Journal of Instructional Psychology study on Transcendental Meditation, and investigator at Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research (USA) emphasised how vital it was to start addressing the high levels of emotional stress being reported by high school and college students.

"Because of the association between psychological distress and both adverse school performance and poor physical and mental health outcomes, it is important for school administrators to implement programmes of stress reduction.

“The findings suggest that Transcendental Meditation instruction for adolescent students may potentially improve not only educational outcomes, but also long-term physical and mental health outcomes,” Dr Elder said, citing reduced obesity, hypertension, cardiovascular disease risk as examples.

Promising Findings for State Education

These new findings, along with recent research on TM and academic achievement gains, hold tremendous promise for state education, according to James Dierke, the National Association of Secondary School Principals’ "National Middle School Principal of the Year" (2008).

"Stress is the number one enemy of public education, especially in inner-city schools. It creates tension, violence, and compromises the cognitive and psychological capacity of students to learn and grow.

"The TM/Quiet Time programme is the most powerful, effective programme I have come across in my 39 years as a public school educator for addressing this problem. It is nourishing children and providing them an immensely valuable tool for life. It is saving lives."

In-school TM programmes are underway throughout the UK, and the Maharishi School in Lancashire, which offers consciousness-based education, the main foundation of which is daily practice of Transcendental Meditation for all students, was awarded Free School status by the UK government this year. Two similar schools are planned for London and Suffolk.

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Quiet time: children will practice TM twice-daily at a new free school planned for London

Evening Standard: Transcendental Meditation Free School in London

21 November 2011

“Children as young as four will be taught Transcendental Meditation twice a day at a new free school in London,” reported the Evening Standard on 14 November.

“Followers of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who taught the technique to The Beatles, want to open the school in Hampton for pupils aged four to eighteen. Every morning and afternoon, pupils will meditate at their desks with their eyes closed, and teachers will join in,” writes Anna Davis, the education correspondent.

The organisation behind the bid also has a school in Lancashire, the Maharishi Free School, which opened 25 years ago. It was previously private, but was awarded Free School status earlier this year and transferred to the state sector in September. The school follows the national curriculum with just the addition of a 5 to 15 minute session of Transcendental Meditation twice a day, depending on the pupils' ages.

The new school in London would open in 2013 in Oldfield House, a former special school, in west London.

Parents who may be interested are encouraged to register their interest now. Open Days will take place 10 and 15 December.

Richard Scott, a director of the school in Lancashire, is leading the Maharishi School Trust bid. He told the Evening Standard:

"Kids think more clearly, the mind is quieter and they become more responsive as a result of the meditation, and it comes through in their results."

He said the group approached every borough in London, with Richmond the first to reply and the most enthusiastic. He described the school as offering a consciousness-based education, which naturally cultivates positive behaviour.

"You may think that works only for middle-class kids. But it works with inner-city kids in some of the worst crime areas in America."

The group also hopes to open schools in more deprived parts of London.

Read more about the plans at the Evening Standard.

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Rev Koji Oshima (centre) with students who have learned TM at a monastery in Thailand

Thousands of Buddhist Monks in Asia Learn Transcendental Meditation

10 November 2011


More than 3,000 Buddhist monks in 100 monasteries throughout Southeast Asia have learned the Transcendental Meditation (TM) technique, as a result of the work of a revered Japanese Buddhist monk, Reverend Koji Oshima, who is a long-term practitioner and teacher of TM.
 

According to Rev Oshima, who has personally instructed the technique in many of the monasteries and temples throughout Thailand and Sri Lanka, the Buddhist monks appreciate the simplicity, effortlessness and profound experience of transcendence, which is gained almost immediately after starting to practise Transcendental Meditation.

Reverend Oshima adds that many of the monks begin their day with the practice of the TM technique so that transcendence provides the natural basis for their subsequent prayers and practices.


Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who introduced Transcendental Meditation to the West and other parts of the world, made many tours of Asian countries, visiting monasteries and speaking personally to Buddhist leaders. One prominent monk in Sri Lanka, who is now the leader (or “Shan Kara”) of one of the three streams of Buddhism in Sri Lanka, has been instrumental in encouraging monks throughout the country to take TM instruction from Reverend Oshima.

Reverend Oshima said the younger monks are especially inspired by Maharishi’s integration of modern and ancient knowledge. “They were particularly interested in the Unified Field chart, illustrating how the Unified Field of Natural Law, as described by modern quantum physics, is experienced directly during TM practice as the field of transcendental consciousness, the field of Absolute Being.”
 

Read the full article by Bob Roth
 

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Post image for WebMD: How to Improve Your Physical and Mental Health Naturally

WebMD: How to Improve Your Physical and Mental Health Naturally

3 November 2011

The world's leading medical website explores the considerable body of research on the health benefits of Transcendental Meditation.
 
WebMD - the Magazine

October 2011

Marisa McGinnis is one of many individuals whose life and health have been transformed by Transcendental Meditation (TM), reports Web MD, the award-winning website for medical and health information.

Two years ago, Marisa, a 63-year-old lawyer, suffered every parent's worst nightmare. Her 14-year-old son took his own life. She turned to Transcendental Meditation to help her cope with her grief and pain. She found a teacher in her hometown in California, and began practising. "It was life-changing," she says.

McGinnis credits TM not only for improving her health but also for motivating her to launch a poetry web site, which helped her move forward. "There are an indescribable number of benefits of being in the present," she says.

Web MD draws on the the findings of 300 peer-reviewed articles, to explore the effects of Transcendental Meditation:

Research shows, for example, enhanced brain activity during Transcendental Meditation, such as increased alpha brain waves, which are linked with rest and reflection. TM increases brain wave coherence too, meaning different parts of the brain work in better harmony.

This -- observes Norman E Rosenthal, MD, a clinical professor of psychiatry at Georgetown University Medical School in Washington, DC, in an interview with WebMD -- can lead to greater focus and competence in general: “In seasoned meditators, this coordinated response spills over into other parts of the day."

 

 

These TM-linked brain changes help interrupt the body’s stress response, helpful for people with problems ranging from anxiety to high blood pressure (HBP) and heart disease. A study of 60 African-Americans with HBP even showed a link between TM and reduced atherosclerosis.

Dr Rosenthal, who is the author of Transcendence: Healing and Transformation Through Transcendental Meditation, recently completed a small study of TM’s effects on veterans with combat-related post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

“Before our research was over, three of our clinicians had gotten Transcendental Meditation training,” Rosenthal told Web MD. “That’s how impressed they were with what they saw.”

"So what is Transcendental Meditation?"

"TM is one meditation technique among many," replies Rosenthal. "It has you silently and effortlessly recite a mantra, a soothing sound without meaning. As a result, muscles unwind, breathing slows, and the pituitary gland releases prolactin, a hormone thought to have a calming effect."

Research also shows enhanced brain activity during Transcendental Meditation, such as increased alpha brain waves, which are linked with rest and reflection. TM increases brain wave coherence too, meaning different parts of the brain work in better harmony. That can lead to greater focus and competence. “In seasoned meditators, this coordinated response spills over into other parts of the day,” Rosenthal says.

Want to give it a try? Dr Norman E Rosenthal offers some tips:

"Learn from an expert. Transcendental Meditation proponents suggest a customized approach to allow for feedback and ensure you’re using the technique correctly. Instruction is a series of seven steps, with teachers providing ongoing mentoring as needed.

"Go easy. With TM, there’s no need to either focus on thoughts or push them away. Simply use the mantra as the means to settle your mind.

“Stick with it," Rosenthal says. "Give yourself a few months of twice-daily meditation for it to become a habit. As with any practice, it’s a skill you need to acquire,” Rosenthal says. “It took me a month or two."

“Be careful. TM should not be used as a replacement for needed health care. Be sure to ask about the training and experience of a teacher, and determine whether TM has been researched for any health issues you need to address.”

Read the full article at WebMD

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The rate of healthcare costs of TM practitioners decreased significantly compared to those of non-meditators

High Medical Costs Decrease Significantly after Five Years of Transcendental Meditation

11 October 2011

American Journal of Health Promotion

Autumn 2011

According to a newly published Canadian study, the medical costs of treating people with consistently high healthcare needs was reduced by 28 percent after an average of five years practice of the stress-reducing Transcendental Meditation technique by the individuals, indicating a significant improvement in their general health.

This study has major implications for state and public healthcare policy, as in most populations only a small fraction of people account for the majority of health care costs.

In Canada, where all legal residents are members of the public health care system, Medicare, the highest-costing 5 percent of patients incur 43 percent of all public health costs, and the highest-costing 25 percent of senior citizens accounted for 85 percent of total expenses.

This study compared the changes in physician costs (equivalent to the cost of GP and hospital specialist consultations and treatment) for 284 users of Canada’s Medicare public health system over five years in Québec. All those participating were in the highest-costing 10 percent of health-system users at the outset of the study, many of whom had incurred consistently high medical bills over many years . 142 were Transcendental Meditation practitioners, while the other 142 made up a non-meditating control group.

During the five-year assessment period the TM group’s annual physician costs declined significantly, while the comparison group’s payments showed no significant changes. After the first year, the TM group decreased 11 percent, and after 5 years, their cumulative reduction was 28 percent.

Chronic stress is the number one factor contributing to high medical expenses. Stress reduction may help reduce these costs. Other studies, including randomized clinical trials, indicate the Transcendental Meditation technique can improve physical and mental health, decrease tobacco use, reduce substance abuse, and decrease other unhealthy habits and risk factors that lead to chronic disease and costly treatments.

The study’s author, Robert E Herron, PhD, is an independent researcher, and director of the Center for Health Systems Analysis in Canada.

In a previous Canadian study of senior citizens, the TM group’s five-year cumulative reduction for people aged 65 years and older relative to comparison subjects was 70 percent.

In a sample of American health insurance enrollees, the TM participants had reduced rates of illness in all disease categories. An eleven-year, cross-sectional study in Iowa found that subjects age 45 and over who practised the TM technique had 88 percent fewer hospital days compared with controls. Their medical expenditures were 60 percent below the norm.

Commenting on the new study, Dr Herron said that the results had major policy significance for saving state healthcare costs without cutting benefits or increasing taxes.

“Almost no [other] intervention for cost containment has decreased medical expenditures by 28 percent over 5 years from a baseline. Now, it may be possible to rescue Medicare and Medicaid by adding coverage for learning the Transcendental Meditation technique.”

American Journal of Health Promotion vol. 26, no. 1, pp. 56-60

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Students improved their English and maths by 40% in three months

Academic Achievement and Transcendental Meditation

20 September 2011

Research study shows significantly improved standards in Inner-City Schools after three months.

Transcendental Meditation improved academic achievement amongst low-performing at-risk students by over 40 percent and significantly improved classroom behaviour, according to a large study newly published online in the journal Education.

Struggling students practised TM for 12 min twice daily for 3 months

Struggling school children practising TM improved their academic results by 40 percent

The research was carried out amongst 189 school pupils, aged 13 to 14, in an inner-city school in the USA. The majority of the students were of low socio-economic status and from ethnic minority backgrounds. Only 59 percent reported English as their primary home language. All were performing below the standard grade for their school year at the outset of the study. The school was in the lower half academically of all district middle schools, which teach 10 to 14-year-olds in the USA.

A total of 125 students learnt Transcendental Meditation and practised it for 12 minutes twice daily in the classroom for three months. A further 64 students, who matched the meditating group in demographic, academic and all other factors, formed a non-meditating control group against which the meditators could be compared.

Two previous studies by members of the same team of researchers carried out in a fee-paying school in the USA indicated that practice of the Transcendental Meditation programme significantly increased academic achievement scores over a one-year period (Nidich, Nidich, & Rainforth, 1986; Nidich & Nidich, 1989).

The objectives of this present study were to determine whether the same findings could be achieved amongst at-risk urban students in state schools, and to assess whether practice of such a programme can help improve maths and English academic achievement scores in students who were below proficiency (grade) level.

At the end of the three month trial all the students retook their end of year tests.

The results indicated significant improvement in composite scale scores for maths and English amongst Transcendental Meditation students compared to the control group, who overall achieved lower scores than in the original tests.

There was also a difference between groups in the percentage of students who showed a gain of at least one performance grade in maths and English. For the meditating students, 41 percent gained at least one performance level in maths compared to 15 percent of the non-meditating control students. For English, 37 percent of the meditating students exhibited a gain of at least one performance level compared to 17 percent of the non-meditating students.

92 percent of the teachers surveyed reported that they felt the Transcendental Meditation programme was valuable for the school. They generally felt that the students were calmer, happier, less hyperactive, friendlier, and had an increased ability to focus on school-work. Observed changes in the classroom environment included students being more quiet and attentive. They also demonstrated a greater ability to work silently in academic activities.

Staff also reported improvements in the overall school environment, with fewer student fights, less abusive language, and an overall more relaxed and calm atmosphere.

The David Lynch Foundation funded this and 350 other in-school Transcendental Meditation programmes throughout the USA. In the UK the Maharishi School, where all the school students practice Transcendental Meditation in the classroom, has recently become a Free School.

Read more of the Education article:

Academic Achievement and Transcendental Meditation: a Study with at Risk Urban Middle School Students by Sanford Nidich, Shujaa Mjasiri, Randi Nidich, Maxwell Rainforth, James Grant, Laurent Valosek, Walter Chang, Ronald L. Zigler  2011

 

 

 

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The day begins at Maharishi Free School with a short session of Transcendental Meditation

Acclaimed Lancashire School Wins Free School Status

9 September 2011

A flurry of media interest greeted the new term at the Maharishi Free School in Skelmersdale, Lancashire, with radio, television & print coverage of Britain’s only school to offer Consciousness Based Education, now state funded for the first time.

Head Teacher Derek Cassells was interviewed last weekend on Real Radio, Radio Lancashire, Radio 4, Granada Television, and even by the Architects Journal, and in the interests of maintaining a non-disruptive start to the year for pupils he had to decline to allow BBC TV and a French television station to film the first day of the new term.

Granada Television was intrigued by the secret of  “the school that has double the national average of A grades at GCSE,” as reporter Ann O’Connor put it.

Cassells told the channel’s evening news programme that the school day, although broadly similar to any other school, had an additional ingredient: “When the children come in, they would go to their class, the teacher would take the register, they’d sit and close their eyes for a few minutes and practise Transcendental Meditation. Same thing in the afternoon.”

Transcendental Meditation, which reduces stress and develops mental alertness and learning ability is, said Cassells, “a very simple, natural mental technique. It works in the way the mind works, so it’s a very simple practice – which is why you can use it in schools.”

Requirements for qualifying as a Free School are rigorous.

“We’ve spent a year showing the Department of Education that we meet and exceed all the standards that they expect,” explained Cassells. “Plus, for this particular school, we have a 25-year record of excellence.”

Local parents, well aware of the school’s record of academic excellence and the personal development of pupils, have caused the new year’s intake to be over-subscribed. 140 local parents and children have learned Transcendental Meditation in preparation for the new term, with many families saying that they have wanted their children to attend the school for years, but until now have been unable to afford it.

Maharishi Free School Headteacher, Derek Cassells

Headteacher Derek Cassells: "We have a 25-year record of excellence."

 

The Maharishi Free School will have 134 pupils this year, rising to 180 in two years time. 

Although criticised by Wigan MP Lisa Nandy, who told local newspapers that “people will be shocked that their taxes are going on teaching Transcendental Meditation,” the new Maharishi Free School status is widely approved in the region, with a poll run by the Liverpool Echo revealing 70% in favour.

And the Liverpool Post responded with a feature headlined “Let’s give children free space to spread their wings and fly, Lisa!”

“I’m a taxpayer, and I am not shocked. Nor am I angry,” announced the feature writer.

“To my untrained (and indeed un-transcended) brain, the idea of timetabling meditation and yoga into the school day seems entirely sensible… as life skills go, meditation is arguably more useful than certain mainstream subjects.”

“And,” clarified Cassells, “no government money is funding the teaching of Transcendental Meditation.”  He added that Lancashire County Council had gone on record to say that local schools would not be affected.

 

 

 

 

 

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Social cohesion requires brain cohesion

Brain functioning determines behaviour

5 September 2011

As doom turned to broom on our screens recently, every news source was filled with analyses of the riots in some of Britain’s major cities: Why had they happened? What is wrong with our society? How can they be prevented from happening again?

And to accompany images of youngsters making off with bottles of wine, flat-screen televisions, computers and mobile phoness, social commentators were quick to point out that moral decay isn’t restricted to teenage looters.

How many smashed windows and stolen Nike trainers, it was asked, added up to the billions lost from the world economy by reckless banking practices aimed at securing individual bonuses at the expense of global financial stability? Or from the questionable expenses of certain MPs, all within the letter, if not the spirit, of the law?

Much was made during the riots of how certain areas and “feral youth” within our cities, have become cut off from mainstream society, seeing no prospect of growth, feeling no empathy or affinity with an Establishment which has seemingly abandoned them.

But there’s a curious parallel in modern neuroscience.

In the brains of those convicted of crime, it’s been found over the past decade or so that there are often EEG abnormalities, and even “functional lesions,” areas unused and cut off - literally - from mainstream brain activity.

All experience changes the brain, and connections between neurons is maintained when those connections are regularly stimulated. If they’re not, they wither away and the connections are lost. Stress, particularly chronic stress, damages those connections, and reduces integrated functioning of the brain.

In particular, stress can overload the frontal regions of the brain, where rational evaluations and careful decisions made. That region then “opts out,” leading to impulsive, inappropriate and even violent behaviour. Such as looting. Or destabilising the economy for personal gain.

In other words, when the activity of the brain isn’t properly integrated, the activity of society isn’t properly integrated either.

Other factors come into play as well: Low serotonin levels in particular, but also inappropriate cortisol responses, unstable autonomic nervous system responses; all predispose individuals to crime. Yet all of these, along with brain functioning abnormalities, have one thing in common: they are by-products of stress.

Transcendental Meditation

This General Stress Theory of crime was outlined by author and attorney Jay Marcus in his 1996 book The Crime Vaccine; and in it, he recommended taking a close look at a simple antidote, a simple vaccine: Transcendental Meditation (TM).

TM involves sitting comfortably, closing the eyes, and using an effortless technique to settle the attention beyond thoughts to a silent field of restful alertness. This field is experienced as an unbounded ocean of consciousness, common to everyone. The Big Society doesn’t come any bigger than that.

The experience of transcendence nourishes connections throughout the brain, producing a global, integrated state of functioning not achieved when simply sitting with eyes closed, or when concentrating on a task.

It’s deeply refreshing, removes the effects of stress and strain, and rapidly restores balanced brain functioning - as well as increasing serotonin levels, improving cortisol, stabilising the autonomic nervous system and reversing other symptoms of stress.

Dramatic Improvements

The results can be extraordinary, even in the harshest circumstances.

“We had some of the toughest groups, or gangs I guess you could call them, in the world at Folsom Prison,” recalled Ernest Merriweather, a prisoner who learned Transcendental Meditation and is quoted in The Crime Vaccine. “There was the Aryan Brotherhood, the Black Gorilla Family, the Mexican Mafia and others ... they were bent on destroying themselves and everything else around them. ... Prior to [the Transcendental Meditation programme] coming to Folsom Prison, if you looked at some of these people the wrong way, you were dead the next morning, or if you talked to someone the wrong way, you were dead, or if you borrowed a pack of cigarettes from someone and didn’t give it back you were dead. And [the TM programme] brought us all together. ... It really was a miracle to see some of these tough groups getting together in the same room and embracing one another ... it’s still hard to conceive but it happened.”

Hoyt S. Chambles, supervisor of the Correctional Education Programs at Folsom, added his comments. After TM instruction, he said, “there is a calmness and ability to discuss and talk a problem out rather than use physical means to achieve their goals ... these men are willing to meet life head on, but without any physical or violent confrontation.”

Folsom Prison’s programme of Transcendental Meditation in the 1970s was followed by other successful courses involving 30,000 inmates in Sri Lanka, India, Kenya, Chile, Spain, Paraguay, Mexico, Korea, and, notably, in Senegal, where 11,000 prisoners and 900 correctional officers learned the technique and recidivism fell by 80%, allowing the closure of three prisons.

The same dramatic improvements have been found with the use of Transcendental Meditation in schools, even those in deprived and violent inner city areas - an initiative being promoted with huge success around the world by the David Lynch Foundation, which has funded courses in the technique for over 100,000 at-risk young people in the past three years.

Stress-free Society?

And such groups may offer a solution to stress for society as a whole.

Why?

Because, says Marcus, Transcendental Meditation can act as a crime vaccine, through a principle known as critical mass.

“If you keep the number of at-risk individuals below the threshold level by vaccinating a certain percentage of a population, the incidence of disease starts to decline and continues to decline until no one or nearly no one gets the disease.”

And what threshold level practising Transcendental Meditation can create social improvements?

It could be astonishingly small.

Just one per cent of a population using the technique has been found to generate measurable improvements in community life, including reduced crime rate - a finding which 23 published studies has made one of the best-researched phenomena in the social sciences.

So when looking for the root causes of riots why not add Transcendental Meditation to the list of possible solutions, along with better job opportunities, improved sporting and social facilities, and all the other conventional programmes which produce highly positive effects?

With simple techniques to banish stress and nourish brain integration, it may be possible to go far beyond the remedies of the past. Perhaps even to “vaccinate” our whole society against stress and the negative behaviour - from rich and poor - which comes from it.

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