Education News: Top Stories

Getting into our minds

CBS News Translate This Article
24 April 2006

On 24 April 2006 CBS News reported: The practice of meditation and its many benefits for both mind and body are 'gaining mainstream attention' across the US. CBS featured the Maharishi School and Maharishi University in Fairfield, Iowa in a report on the benefits of meditation. It is a joy for Global Good News service to feature this news, which indicates the success of the life-supporting programmes Maharishi has designed to bring fulfilment to the field of education.

The Transcendental Meditation Programme is a part of the curriculum at Maharishi School and Maharishi University in Fairfield. Students of all ages practise the TM Technique and say that it helps them to be calm and happy. Students at the school have also enjoyed great success over the years, winning numerous awards in areas as diverse as sports, drama, math, and science.

Ashley Deans, headmaster of Maharishi School, says: 'I've been here 15 years. And I'm amazed every single day at what these students accomplish. When I go to a tennis competition, they'll say, 'Oh you're a tennis academy.' We've won 17 state tennis championships in the last 16 years. If I go to speech and drama, they say, 'Oh, you're a theater school.' We've won more of the top awards than any other school in the history of the state.'

Mr Deans explains that the success of the school does not lie in an emphasis on memorizing more facts or working harder, which he says increases stress and 'actually damages the brain physiology'. He says the school takes the opposite approach: 'We have the children do nothing, literally for a few minutes of the morning and the afternoon. It allows the mind to settle down to its quietest level. And just that experience enlivens the brain physiology and prepares them for activity.'

Maharishi University psychology professor, Fred Travis, explains that during the practice of the Transcendental Meditation Programme, brainwave activity in different parts of the brain becomes coherent. Mr Travis explains that this means the front and the back of the brain are 'not doing separate things, they're completely integrated. And what happens over regular TM practice is we begin to see this type of pattern, even when people are engaged in tasks. So when you're engaged in the task, you—you no longer have tunnel vision, you're no longer lost in the project, you actually have a broader awareness.'

CBS included other forms of meditation in the article and reported that research on meditation is increasing. According to the article, the National Institutes of Health is now providing 'tens of millions of dollars' to fund meditation research, which 'was unthinkable 25 years ago'.
Every day Global Good News documents the rise of a better quality of life dawning in the world and highlights the need for introducing Natural Law based—Total Knowledge based—programmes to bring the support of Nature to every individual, raise the quality of life of every society, and create a lasting state of world peace.

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