Here is another positive TV News report on Transcendental Meditation. This one aired yesterday on Spectrum News in Rochester, NY. Reporter Jillian Parker cited the scientific research and interviewed meditator Jessica Cowie to learn how TM significantly improved her health. Jillian also interviewed TM teacher Peggy Brix who told her why people come to learn. They used clips from the DLF Change Begins Within video. This was so well done it felt like a free TM infomercial! Click on the title below to watch this news piece on their website.
There’s a 20 minute meditation technique improving sleep patterns, reducing stress and improving overall health.
Transcendental Meditation (TM) is a technique that was introduced to the United States in the 1950’s. It’s being called one of the most effective techniques to help people sleep, settle the mind, relieve stress, anxiety, and depression.
Jessica Cowie once suffered from anxiety, depression and addiction. She says this technique has been life changing.
“I’m much calmer, I don’t have as much of an anxious disposition and wasn’t suffering as many anxiety attacks anymore,” Cowie said. “I also was diagnosed with fibromyalgia and suffered with severe chronic migraines. My pain has significantly lowered. I’m off of all my medications for those illnesses. I literally take nothing.”
Young people spend more than six hours a day stressed out according to a mental health study released this year. Practicing TM is known to reduce the stress hormone by 30 percent and it’s the main reason Peggy Birx says people walk into a session for the first time.
“We’re just living in this crazy, high pressured time where people are on call 24/7. They’re connected all the time and expected to be performing constantly. I think so many people have become disconnected with their quiet inner self,” said Birx, Rochester Transcendental Meditation teacher.
In 20 minutes of meditation, someone can gain as much rest that’s required from six to eight hours of deep sleep.
“I used to need to take something to sleep. I don’t need anything to sleep anymore. My dreams are more vivid, I wake up refreshed. My mind is more alert and I don’t have brain fog as much,” said Cowie.
TM is a practice that the American Heart Association has endorsed as the only technique proven to help heart disease reducing the chances of heart attack, stroke and death by 48 percent.
Teachers are based all over the country, including Rochester.
Other cable TV news stations that reported on the health benefits of TM this year are: WTNH New Haven 8 and WXYZ Detroit 7. On December 21, 2021, WTHR 13News Indianapolis also reported on the health benefits of Transcendental Meditation.
Yesterday, July 18, 2018, TV news station, WTNH in New Haven, CN, reported on the health benefits of Transcendental Meditation. News 8 Medical reporter Jocelyn Maminta filed this report for their Weekly Wellness section: Meditation can do more than ease your stress.
Seeking inner peace and wellness in life can start with the simple, natural and effortless Transcendental Meditation. Longtime TM teachers Richard and Gail Dalby are seen teaching and meditating with their students in this wonderful medical news segment.
Explaining how effortless it is to practice TM, Dalby says, “There’s no control of the mind, we’re not concentrating or reflecting on anything. In fact if someone is meditating, you wouldn’t even know they were meditating.”
Some of the meditators interviewed share how TM helped improve certain medical conditions and their overall wellness.
Maminta concludes: “There are numerous studies validating the health benefits of Transcendental Meditation – including research that it lowers the risk of high blood pressure, reduces anxiety, and optimizes brain function. It is acknowledged by the American Heart Association and is part of a clinical program to minimize hypertension.”
Transcendental Meditation significantly reduces PTSD in African refugees within 10 days
This is lead author Col. Brian Rees, MD, MPH, US Army Reserve Medical Corps
African civilians in war-torn countries have experienced the threat of violence or death, and many have witnessed the abuse, torture, rape and even murder of loved ones. Many Congolese living in Ugandan refugee camps are suffering from severe posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
New research shows that Congolese war refugees who learned the Transcendental Meditation® technique showed a significant reduction in posttraumatic stress disorder in just 10 days, according to a study published today in the February 2014 issue of the Journal of Traumatic Stress (Volume 27, Issue 1, pages 1–119).
“An earlier study found a similar result after 30 days where 90% of TM subjects dropped to a non-symptomatic level. But we were surprised to see such a significant reduction with this group after just 10 days,” said study author Brian Rees, MD, MPH.
The subjects were assessed using the Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Checklist for Civilians, (PCL-C), which rates the severity of PTSD on a scale from 17 to 85. A score below 35 means the symptoms of PTSD have abated.
Eleven Congolese refugees who had been tested three times over a 90-day period on the PCL-C, which rates the level of PTSD on a scale from 17 to 85, began with an average score of 77.9. They learned Transcendental Meditation within 8 days of the third test and after 10 days their average score dropped to 48, which was highly clinically significant. They were retested 30 days later measuring an average score of 35.3. With scores below 35 considered non-symptomatic, they were practically symptom free.
The subjects in the study initially tested with an average score of 77.9. After just 10 days of practicing the Transcendental Meditation technique, their PTSD test scores dropped to an average of 48, which was highly significant clinically.
Thirty days later the subjects were tested again with their PTSD scores falling to an average of 35.3 — meaning that they were nearly without symptoms of PTSD.
“What makes this study interesting is when we tested them in the 90 days before they began the TM technique, their PTSD scores kept going up,” said coauthor Fred Travis, director of the Center for Brain, Consciousness, and Cognition at Maharishi University of Management. “During that period their scores were rising, from 68.5 at the beginning to 77.9 after 90 days. But once they started the Transcendental Meditation technique, their PTSD scores plummeted.”
According to the researchers, during this particular meditation technique one experiences a deep state of restful alertness. Repeated experience of this state for 20 minutes twice a day cultures the nervous system to maintain settled mental and physical functioning the rest of the day. This helps to minimize disturbing thoughts, sleep difficulties, and other adverse PTSD symptoms.
In this video, Dr. Travis explains the neurophysiology of trauma and how TM relieves it. He says, “Something very profound is happening. Because experience changes the brain, and trauma locks in a specific brain functioning (the over stimulated amygdala), you’re stuck in a specific way of thinking and feeling, (vigilance, fear and mistrust) and appreciating the world.” He further explains how the experience of transcending, with Transcendental Meditation, calms the amygdala, relieves PTS symptoms and frees the individual “to see more possibilities.”
Congolese refugee Esperance Ndozi and her 5 children
Esperance Ndozi was one of the Congolese refugees traumatized by the civil war. The 35-year old mother of 5 was part of the group of refugees that learned TM. Before learning the effortless technique, Esperance couldn’t find relief from a flood of dark disturbing memories. She could hardly sleep. After a week of meditating 20-minutes twice a day she describes increasing relaxation and relief from PTSD symptoms. “Your mind, your body relaxes. You feel you are out of the outside world. You are just in your peaceful world. No negativity. It doesn’t come near me now.” Like other refugees in the study the calm and peace grew to last throughout the day. Watch the video.
A previous study of Congolese refugees, which involved 42 subjects found that the Transcendental Meditation group had an average Checklist score of below 35 after 30 days, a non-symptomatic level, while the average score of the control group actually worsened over the same period.
“This is now the fourth study to show an improvement in PTSD,” said Dr. Rees, a colonel in the US Army Reserve Medical Corps. “The Transcendental Meditation technique is increasingly being seen as a viable treatment by the US military.”*
###
Study co-author Dr Fred Travis is a professor of neurophysiology at Maharishi University of Management, an accredited university to the PhD level, where Transcendental Meditation is incorporated into its curriculum and practiced by faculty and students. This provides a way for students, including veterans, to reduce the effects of past stress and trauma, and make learning easier and more enjoyable. www.mum.edu
*Two earlier studies have shown the Transcendental Meditation (TM®) technique to effectively lower post-traumatic stress in veterans of Vietnam and Iraq/Afghanistan wars.
African war refugees practicing Transcendental Meditation®, a simple and effective stress-reducing meditation technique, experienced immediate and dramatic reductions in severe posttraumatic stress symptoms to a non-symptomatic level in just 30 days, according to a new study published this week in the April 2013 issue of the Journal of Traumatic Stress (Volume 26, Issue 2, pp. 295-298.)
A significant percentage of veterans are returning home from wars exhibiting symptoms of posttraumatic stress (PTS). It is now recognized as a serious health problem that can trigger suicidal tendencies. But what about the victims of such violence? Homeless refugees live with the constant reminder of what war has done to their lives and those of their families.
While studies have shown the Transcendental Meditation (TM®) technique to effectively lower posttraumatic stress in veterans of Vietnam and Iraq/Afghanistan wars, this is the first (randomized/matched) study to look at PTS in African war refugees. It measured the severity of posttraumatic stress symptoms before and after learning the TM technique, and the reductions were immediate and dramatic.
The Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Checklist scores in the TM group went from high PTS symptoms at baseline to a non-symptomatic level after 30-days TM practice, and remained low at 135-days, while scores in the control group trended upward from baseline to the two posttests.
In the past 20 years, 18 African nations have been ravaged by war. Tens of millions of Africans have been victims of violence or witnessed horrific acts of terror—and now suffer from post-traumatic stress. The DLF Africa PTSD Relief Project was set up to raise funds to teach the TM program to many more African refugees. Here is a short documentary with actor, director Bill Duke, Ambassador for African PTSD Relief. Please visit http://www.davidlynchfoundation.org/africa to learn more.
The Uncarved Blog 