Archive for January, 2024

Transcendental Meditation is featured in three BBC/GWI-made videos In the Pursuit of Wellness

January 31, 2024

BBC Studios and Global Wellness Institute created short informative client videos for their In Pursuit of Wellness Series (GWI Series 2). Three videos featuring Transcendental Meditation (TM) were produced for the Dr. Tony Nader Institute, one for each chapter on GWI: Nature, Self, Community.

This first video (6:05) features Dr. Tony Nader at Maharishi International University (MIU) in Fairfield, Iowa talking about the need for TM in today’s stressful world. The video opens with students meditating with Dr. Nader. Using EEG, Dr. Fred Travis demonstrates the increase in brainwave coherence of a subject as she starts meditating. Students also discuss the practical benefits from their TM practice.

The second video (7:50) takes place in Medellín, Columbia at one of Father Gabriel Mejia’s shelters for rehabilitating homeless children with addiction problems. One of them went on to become a TM teacher and returned to teach the students how to meditate. They were inspired by the positive transformation and growth in his life. 

The third video (5:02) was filmed in a Rhode Island hospital where medical staff were still dealing with the stressful repercussions from the Covid-19 pandemic. TM provided welcome relief from the traumatic loss of life and continues to be taught there. Dr. Nader mentions the David Lynch Foundation’s Heal the Healers Now campaign. They provided the funding for TM instruction, which helped thousands of healthcare professionals during the pandemic. Many continue to meditate regularly.

Embedded below are the videos with their short descriptions posted on the GWI site. Each title and chapter also take you to the BBC StoryWorks pages with the same videos plus 3 slides selected from each per chapter: Nature, Self, Community.

1. TM: Listening to your inner rhythm: Dr Tony Nader has been researching the mind and meditation since he was a medical student. Discover his methods for finding peace in a busy and ever-changing world.

2. TM: A healing journey: For Breiner, meditation had a transformational effect on his life, a lesson which he is now passing on to younger generations.

3. TM: The calm in the storm. Finding a peaceful moment to recalibrate. Ongoing strains on health clinicians from the Covid-19 pandemic are still apparent in hospitals. These medical doctors are finding strength in the moments of peace that Transcendental Meditation can provide.

See the scientific results from some of the DLF Heal the Healers Now initiatives that have been published so far in medical research journals. New study shows Transcendental Meditation significantly reduced PTSD and anxiety in frontline nurses during COVID-19 pandemic by more than half over a 3-month period | Recent study shows Transcendental Meditation reduced burnout and enhanced well-being in nurses during the Covid-19 pandemic | Transcendental Meditation reduced healthcare workers’ burnout symptoms during Covid crisis

— Written and compiled (citing sources) by Ken Chawkin for The Uncarved Blog.

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Posted in David Lynch Foundation, Health, Maharishi University, Peace, Videos | 2 Comments »

Attentive to and delighting in her surroundings, Mary Oliver lived a life writing astonishing poetry

January 15, 2024

In her poem, Sometimes (pt 4 of 7), Mary Oliver teaches us how to live a life — especially as a poet — in 3 short, powerful sentences. 

4.
Instructions for living a life:
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.
“Sometimes” by Mary Oliver from Red Bird. © Beacon Press, 2008.

Mary Oliver exemplified this essential message in her poem, Mindful. 

Everyday
I see or hear
something
that more or less
kills me
with delight,
that leaves me
like a needle
in the haystack
of light.
It was what I was born for —
to look, to listen,
to lose myself
inside this soft world —
to instruct myself
over and over
in joy,
and acclamation.
Nor am I talking
about the exceptional,
the fearful, the dreadful,
the very extravagant —
but of the ordinary,
the common, the very drab,
the daily presentations.
Oh, good scholar,
I say to myself,
how can you help
but grow wise
with such teachings
as these —
the untrimmable light
of the world,
the ocean’s shine,
the prayers that are made
out of grass?
“Mindful” by Mary Oliver from Why I Wake Early. © Beacon Press, 2005.

Another example of this theme is in this earlier post: Mary Oliver’s poem, Praying, is a lesson on attention, receptivity, listening and writing.

She did tell Krista Tippett in a long interview for The On Being Podcast that “I got saved by poetry, and I got saved by the beauty of the world.”

See this remembrance of Mary Oliver (1935-2019) and her astonishing poetry, with links to articles, interviews, and readings, as well as more of her favorite poems I’ve loved and posted over the years.

— Written and compiled (citing sources) by Ken Chawkin for The Uncarved Blog.

Related: In Billy Collins, The Art of Poetry No. 83, The Paris Review Issue 159, Fall 2001, editor George Plimpton asked him what makes a poet. Collins summarized his four attributes of a poet: attentiveness, a love of language, a sense of gratitude for being alive, and laziness. For more on that interview, see the second part of this post where Plimpton asks Collins how he starts to write a poem: Billy Collins discusses the value of getting to the end of a poem and what can happen afterwards.

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Posted in Mary Oliver, Other poems, Poetry, Writing | 2 Comments »

Mary Oliver’s poem, Swan, awakens us to the transformational power of nature’s beauty

January 13, 2024

Mary Oliver’s poem, Swan, asks us if we see, hear, and feel what she does, drawing rich references to the beautiful aspects of a swan, culminating in two powerful questions.

Swan
by Mary Oliver

Did you too see it, drifting, all night, on the black river?
Did you see it in the morning, rising into the silvery air —
an armful of white blossoms,
a perfect commotion of silk and linen as it leaned
into the bondage of its wings; a snowbank, a bank of lilies,
biting the air with its black beak?
Did you hear it, fluting and whistling
a shrill dark music — like the rain pelting the trees — like a waterfall
knifing down the black ledges?
And did you see it, finally, just under the clouds —
a white cross streaming across the sky, its feet
like black leaves, its wings like the stretching light of the river?
And did you feel it, in your heart, how it pertained to everything?
And have you too finally figured out what beauty is for?
And have you changed your life?

From Swan: Poems and Prose Poems. Copyright 2010 by Mary Oliver. Published by Beacon Press.

She did tell Krista Tippett in a long interview for The On Being Podcast that “I got saved by poetry, and I got saved by the beauty of the world.”

The questions that Mary Oliver asks her readers at the end of the Swan poem remind me of the one she asks at the end of The Summer Day (aka “The Grasshopper”).

See this remembrance of Mary Oliver (1935-2019) and her astonishing poetry, with links to articles, interviews, and readings, as well as several of her favorite poems I’ve loved and posted over the years.

— Written and compiled (citing sources) by Ken Chawkin for The Uncarved Blog.

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Posted in Literature, Mary Oliver, Other poems, Poetry | 1 Comment »