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Meditation Helps Homeless Children | NBC Los Angeles

By Beverly White and Julie Brayton  |  Tuesday, Jun 7, 2011

Transcendental Meditation is helping traumatized Kids at the Children Of The Night Shelter recover and heal

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Thousands of adults and children live on Southern California streets, and so did Kelsey.

She was cast out by her abusive Midwestern family.

“I been kicked out of my house since I was nine, on and off. This last time, my father was sexually abusing me,” said Kelsey, who is 17 years old.

Living on the streets in Los Angeles was so horrifying and dangerous, Kelsey sought shelter at Children Of The Night, where she was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress and introduced to Transcendental Meditation.

“When you take like twenty minutes sit down and do TM, and calm yourself and be peaceful you’re not crabby. The daily things that make your day more frustrating, just kind of go away,” Kelsey said.

Hollywood filmmaker David Lynch and his wife Emily were confident traumatized kids could benefit from Transcendental Meditation.

“I myself meditated, and I thought this would be a good tool for them. So we brought them the Transcendental Meditation program,” said Emily Lynch, a volunteer and philanthropist.

“My first meditation blew me away. It curled my hair,” said David Lynch.

The David Lynch Foundation works to demonstrate the benefits of Transcendental Meditation worldwide.

“Stress goes. Anxiety, sorrow, suffering, anger, fears start to lift away,” said David Lynch, “and in its place, because they dive into the bit treasury within, all this happiness comes.”

Transcendental Meditation is deeper than closed eyes and calmed minds, according to Children Of The Night founder Lois Lee.

“Sometimes they’ll burst into tears, and they’ll talk about their dad abusing them, or something that someone did to them on the streets, and they learn through the process of being able to bring it up, put it out, pause, think about it and be done with it,” said Lois Lee, founder of Children of the Night.

Also see: LA Daily News: Children of the Night, movie director David Lynch expand work and MSNBC: Meditation Helps Homeless Children.

This entry was posted on June 7, 2011 at 9:55 pm and is filed under Articles, David Lynch Foundation, Education, Health. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.