Zen Blog

The following is written by Karlie Everhart and originally published on her blog.

 
I started meditating ten years ago. At the time, I had suffered from intermittent bouts of anxiety and was looking for a way to calm the surmounting pressure I constantly applied to myself. The only new-agey person I was familiar with was Gabrielle Bernstein, so I bought her book and her companion meditation CD and that’s how I started.

I listened to Gabby’s meditation tracks until I got bored of hearing the same voice over and over and then I switched to the Calm app and random youtube videos of Oprah and Deepak Chopra. In 2015, I was trained in Transcendental Meditation (TM) and that is what I’ve been doing ever since.

Meditation has been a saving grace to me in many ways. It keeps me focused, grounded, and sane. Over the years, when I’ve felt nervous, anxious, and scared I’ve turned to meditation. I’ve meditated in my car before job interviews, before big events – my wedding, my bridal shower, speaking engagements, and I’ve meditated for months in a small broom closet at one of my corporate jobs. I would be let in by our IT guy every morning and afternoon to practice my TM for 20 minutes.

I often get asked by clients or people new to meditation what the benefits of meditating are and I always stumble through some prescribed answer that I found on the internet, which is all true but feels a bit sterile to me. So let me tell you about what happened when I stopped meditating because I think that identifying what you don’t want helps you to clarify what you actually desire.

Brandon Locher is a multimedia artist and music producer who currently lives and works in New York, NY. Since 2006, he’s had more than 60 releases under various names and artistic media, including audio recordings, visual art, multimedia art, and sound art. He’s been practicing the Transcendental Meditation technique for the past two years. Here’s what we learned about his creative work and how his TM practice enriches his life.

What are your passions? What does a typical day in your week look like?

One of my biggest passions in life is simply process. I am often reminded of a passage from “Confessions of a Mountain Climber” by the artist Agnes Denes. “I am a mountain climber, and there is no way out but up. Not for the peak–I have long since understood about that–but for the mountain. You create the mountain, and then you climb it. Not for the final peak; the challenge is the process and the journey, and the unattainable answers are the lure.”

This statement has always resonated with me because I feel process is absolutely essential to everything in life. I’ve discovered I enjoy the fruitful results more profoundly when I take time enjoying the process and journey to completion. Process is about the here and now and waking up to this very moment.

I’ve been playing piano, reading books, and watching films for entertainment lately. Generally, I’m working on music or artwork in my studio for at least 6-8 hours a day. I’ve found it very helpful and beneficial to structure my day but to allow tons of variety within all of the different components. Day-to-day I’ll be making radically different music, eating different foods, and experiencing inspiration and beauty in unknown places.

In 2014, Caitlin Carlson of Women’s Health magazine wrote, “Far from the hippy dippy stigma it used to carry, meditation is starting to be viewed as hip—and healthy.” The field of meditation has come even further since then, but what has remained the same are the time-tested, scientifically-backed benefits of the TM technique.

Here’s more on 6 particular benefits of Transcendental Meditation practice, from Carlson’s original article:

It can amp up your workout
Not only does a regular Transcendental Meditation practice increase energy, improve your focus, and help you sleep sounder every night, it also increases your pain tolerance, says a study in the journal NeuroReport. Higher tolerance for discomfort means higher tolerance for banging out another mile or another set of reps.

It can slash your risk for heart disease and stroke
A study published in the journal Circulation found that practicing Transcendental Meditation can lower blood pressure and your risk for heart attack and stroke. It could also cut your risk for Alzheimer’s Disease by strengthening the communication between different parts of your brain.

It can help you thrive at work
Research shows that regular TM practice improves productivity and creativity. So if you’re struggling to come up with a solution to a tough work dilemma or need a fresh idea to impress your boss, devoting time to meditation each day can certainly help give you that clarity of mind necessary to break through mental barriers.

Last year, in an effort to support medical providers and first responders on the brink of burnout, we launched Heal the Healers Now.

More recently, Hadley Barndollar of the Providence Journal spoke with Dr. Tony Nader – a medical doctor and head of the international Transcendental Meditation organization – about this initiative to provide meditation to those battling the COVID-19 pandemic, and the profound benefits of regular TM practice.

The following is an excerpt from that article, which was originally published on www.providencejournal.com.

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Dr. Brad Collins was among those who held up iPads as dying COVID-19 patients said their final goodbyes to loved ones.