Scientific Research on Transcendental Meditation

Scientific research solidly supports claims made for health (and other) benefits of Transcendental Meditation. No wonder half of Hollywood does TM!

These benefits range from reductions in anxiety and depression, improvements in memory, IQ, ADHD, mental health and moral reasoning to reductions in heart disease and stroke and improvements in general health and even the health of society.

I first heard this at an introductory lecture in 1975. Later I learned more on my teachers training course in 1978.

I was fascinated that a simple behavior change could have such a broad and positive impact on my life and wanted to know why. So I (and my new wife, Vicki) enrolled at the University of South Africa for three years of psychology. In due course I added a psychology major to my engineering degree.

Having an MBA and psychology credits I then launched into a doctoral program at the University of Cape Town. During the next ten years I I dived into the scientific research. I read hundreds of studies on stress, stress management and the effects of Transcendental Meditation practice on mind, body, behavior and the environment surrounding the meditator.

Since receiving my doctorate (abstract here) from UCT, hundreds more papers have been added to the scientific research on Transcendental Meditation and other techniques. My conclusion is that Transcendental Meditation has the largest published research of any self development technique on earth. The literature on TM is said to run to over 600 studies from over 200 institutions published in scores of journals. There are good studies and there are not-so good studies. And there are quite large numbers of very good studies. “Very good” means the researchers are known to be neutral towards TM, they have used good research design and accepted statistical tools, they have published their work in reputable scientific journals and it has been subjected to review by their peers. Furthermore their work is replicable by other scientists and their observations are explainable by a plausible theory. And in some cases their systematic modern observations are supported by the testimony of the vedic literature thousands of years old. So anyone  saying that TM’s claims are not supported by research either does not know what they are talking about or has a hidden (usually fundamentalist) agenda.

Finally, there are some very VERY good studies – studies of studies actually – meta analyses that compare TM outcomes with those from other forms of meditation.

The conclusions of these studies seem very clear: TM is different. Effect sizes are generally seen to be larger than for other forms of meditation, which in many cases demonstrate effect sizes which do not differ significantly from those seen during simple eyes-closed rest. Which is not a bad thing at all – but TM is clearly better.

If this is true, why should this be so?

Probably because TM is “transcendental”. This means it is a technique that involves neither active thinking nor any artificial manipulation of the mind-body from external sensory inputs. Somehow TM re-sets the mind-body to a state of ideal balance – which may have been disturbed by external lifestyle factors.

If you are a student you will find a fabulous annotated  bibliography of TM research papers here.

If you would simply like to see what research there is on your area of interest start here.

And if you prefer a more visual  approach go here.

And if you want a list of celebrities who are open about their TM practice, lets start with just the few Vick and I could come up with:

Bette LaVette

Sheryl Crowe

Howard Stern

Russell Simmonds

Hugh Jackman

Laura Dern

Steve Collins

Ellen DeGeneres

Martin Scorsese

Mehmet Oz

President Joachim Chissano

Graca Machel

Heather Graham

President Dilma Rousseff of Brazil

President Juan Manuel Santos of Columbia

Oprah Winfrey

Jerry Seinfeld

Mike Love

David Lynch

Ringo Starr

Pau McCartney

Clint Eastwood

Moby

Gwyneth Paltrow

And no less than 179 notable individuals who have learned are listed on Wikipedia here.

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