Russell and Katy Brand back Transcendental Meditation project for US war veterans

Russell Brand and Katy Perry joined filmmaker David Lynch and other Hollywood stars in New York on 13th December to launch an initiative to teach Transcendental Meditation to US war veterans suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Brand, together with Martin Scorsese and Clint Eastwood, endorsed “Operation Warrior Wellness” with testimonies of how Transcendental Meditation had helped them personally.

Using the technique, said Brand, allowed him to feel “a beautiful serenity and a selfless connection”.

“I have a tendency towards selfishness which I feel has been exposed as a superficial and pointless perspective,” he added. “[Now] I feel a very relaxed sense of oneness. I feel love - a sort of love for myself and also for everybody else, which is unique because normally I’d express that in my nocturnal activities! But now it feels absolute, without initiation or conclusion; a constant state of absolute love between all of us.”

Brand learned Transcendental Meditation last year in the USA.

Operation Warrior Wellness, launched by the David Lynch Foundation, will fund 10,000 veterans with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder to learn Transcendental Meditation.

The David Lynch Foundation was established four years ago, through the inspiration of Hollywood film maker David Lynch, to raise funds to teach Transcendental Meditation to millions of young people around the world.

“We believe Operation Warrior Wellness has great potential for treating post-traumatic stress syndrome,” says David Lynch Foundation spokesman Robert Roth. “Transcendental Meditation isn’t introspection or re-living the past; it affects the neurophysiology that underlies the disorder, eliminating rather than masking its symptoms.”

US veterans who have used the technique added their endorsements at Monday’s event. Russell Brand, pointing out how trivial his problems were in comparison, said that experience and research had shown that Transcendental Meditation is just as effective with individuals who “have endured phenomenal and terrifying experience”.

“If there is anything we can do to assist people, if there is any technique that can make their suffering temporarily or permanently alleviated, this is something we have to research and learn even more about,” Brand said.

“What I have discovered is that Transcendental Meditation is useful for me, not because of a unique set of circumstances,.. but because I am a human being, and it is applicable to all human beings, in all situations. No matter how extreme, trivial or mundane our concerns, someone, everyone, can draw from it.”

Later he and his wife, Katy Perry, who has also learned Transcendental Meditation, attended the second annual Change Begins Within fundraising gala dinner at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. Last year’s event, also organised by the David Lynch Foundation, brought together Sir Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr on the public stage for the first time in 30 years.

NOTE FOR EDITORS

• Transcendental Meditation is a simple, effortless mental technique practised for a few minutes twice daily. It is unconnected with any religion, philosophy or lifestyle.

• The technique was introduced 50 years ago by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, and has been learned by over 6 million people worldwide, including 200,000 in the UK.

• Over 600 scientific studies, many published in the world’s leading peer-reviewed medical journals, have detailed a wide range of mental, physical, emotional and social benefits from regular practice of Transcendental Meditation - including significant improvements from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

• Transcendental Meditation is taught throughout the UK by the Maharishi Foundation, a registered educational charity.