American Heart Month rolls around again this month, reminding us to take charge of our heart health. TM for Women is partners with organizations including Million Hearts, Harboring Hearts, Women’s Heart Foundation, and the Preventive Cardiovascular Nurses Association. We offer women and girls the Transcendental Meditation program, which scientific research repeatedly verifies to be a natural effective means of reducing risk factors and recurrence of heart disease. Think this isn’t relevant to you? The majority of women who have heart attacks had no noticeable symptoms to warn them. An ounce of prevention….
In this issue, we feature a new in-residence five-day course for women meditators, some prominent studies on TM and heart health, and recent media buzz about TM for nurses.
Last month’s blog posts written by women for women
Articles
An inspiring list of published studies on TM and heart health
Buzz about TM for nurses @JONAonline
Women’s April retreat at The Raj Manor: experience Ties to the Universe
Q&A: Will being skeptical affect my TM experience?
What women say: peace, restoration, and knowingness
Our posts cover a broad range of women’s interests and issues in the light of the development of consciousness. You can visit our blog home page to search for any topic. If you haven’t read the January 2024 posts, the links are below.
Because I have women friends and relatives who have become incapacitated to varying degrees from strokes, I take preventative steps to avert having one myself. There is abundant information on everything about strokes—you have only to start looking. Below is a summary of the knowledge on this topic that I have gained.
“Perhaps its greatest benefit is that it’s relatively quick to learn and easy to master. No waiting weeks or months of practice before you see results….” — FORBES (an American business magazine)
If you have a job, are you bringing the most you can to it and getting the most you can from it? If you’re one of the 74+ million women in the job force then you certainly deserve job satisfaction, advancement opportunities and career success.
The Transcendental Meditation program is a scientifically validated, holistic approach that effectively counters a wide variety of influences that negatively impact a woman’s cardiovascular system.
For example, the TM technique reduces the three major risk factors for heart ailments: high blood pressure, high cholesterol and diabetes. TM significantly reduces stress, helping to stabilize blood pressure, and decrease inflammation. The TM technique also curbs smoking, substance abuse, and other common risk factors for heart disease.
Research has been published for decades on the benefits of TM to heart health. Studies ranged from Decreased Congestive Heart Failure Symptoms to Reduced Cardiac Events to Reduced Hypertension in College Students. Here are five of the most recent:
Reduced Hypertension: Commentary on ‘Effects of Transcendental Meditation on blood pressure: a meta-analysis. The Journal of Cardiovascular Nursing 2023; 3/4 38(2):114. doi:10.1097
Stress reduction in the prevention of left ventricular hypertrophy: a randomized controlled trial of Transcendental Meditation and health education in hypertensive African Americans. Ethnicity & Disease 2019; 29(4):577-586
Effects of cardiac rehabilitation with and without meditation on myocardial blood flow using quantitative positron emission tomography: a pilot study.Journal of Nuclear Cardiology 2019; Online
TM had a greater effect on systolic BP among older participants, those with higher initial BP levels, and women, respectively. Investigating the effect of transcendental meditation on blood pressure: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Journal of Human Hypertension advance online publication, 2015; doi:10.1038/jhh.2015.6
Reducing stress and hypertension in adolescents and adults. Prevention and treatment of cardiovascular disease in adolescents and adults through the Transcendental Meditation Program: a research review update. Current Hypertension Reviews 2012; 8(3):1-16
Journal of the American Nurses Association Online Talks TM
The Journal of the American Nurses Association is the oldest and most honored nursing journal in the world. Our TM for Nurses outreach has been dedicated to bringing the Transcendental Meditation technique to nurses in hospitals, clinics and other medical settings for more than a decade. With five research studies published based on our work with nurses, we are happy to see this recognition posted on X of our recent study which was published in the Journal of Nursing Administration:
Leaders must proactively focus on mitigation of stressors in the work environment while simultaneously empowering nurses with strategies to protect themselves from the psychological injury of persistent and high-level stress. @tweetAONL
Meditation before and after clinical shifts may allow nurses the opportunity to pause and center for a healthy separation of personal and professional roles. @tweetAONL
Transcendental Meditation® (TM®) is a simple, easy, effective, low-risk, low-cost, and evidence-based strategy that may improve the health of nurses, patients, and organizations. @tweetAONL
This important study on TM for nurses had over 4200 views on Eurekalert in the first month as well as being reported on 25 media sites.
Be Together with Women Meditators in a Residential Course on Ties to the Universe
Our residential course for women who practice the TM technique will be held in the beautiful Raj Manor near Maharishi International University in Iowa. This will be a time for you to take a break from your routines and responsibilities for a special course dedicated to deep rest through extra meditation and to the growth of understanding of our connection to each other and the universe.
The course includes daily yoga asanas, personal and group practices of the TM (and TM-Sidhi program for Sidhas), and short tapes of Maharishi along with a focus on 16 fundamental principles of individual and universal life. Participation in Ties to the Universe awakens a deep, intuitive appreciation of how eternal fundamental principles operate intimately within our personal nature and in the nature of the world around us.
Our connectedness is revealed by observation and then analysis within each beautifully illustrated lesson—we find that the source of all the laws of nature is our own pure consciousness. As a bonus, through the structure and interaction during the course, participants experience a growing warmth, appreciation and unity with each other.
“I was enamored with each individual principle and how deep and meaningful it was; when tied together and presented in this way, they offer much, much more: a roadmap I will have forever to better comprehend both the vastness of the universe as a whole, and the simplicity and genius of each part. ‘Ties to the Universe’ is a gift that offers insight, strength, and hope:16 beautifully illustrated and described universal principles to live by, to grow by, to guide my path to enlightenment.”
Course dates: Five nights beginning Tuesday April 23 and ending Sunday, April 28th
Course fee: $1200 pp, including a private en-suite first or second story guestroom and fresh organic vegetarian meals daily.
Only 15 rooms available, so apply soon! For more information, contact Janet at jhoffman@tm-women.org
Q: Will TM work if I’m skeptical about it?
The effectiveness of the Transcendental Meditation technique is the same whether you believe it works or are completely skeptical. The technique is mechanical, and therefore not based on belief or faith or even on having an understanding of the process.
The TM technique is automatic, using principles of functioning that are already established in our minds and bodies. Your doubt or belief in the technique does not affect TM’s mechanical nature any more than skepticism about gravity can affect its pull, or doubt about electricity can stop the bulb from lighting up when you flip the switch.
Working in accord with our nature, TM technique doesn’t make us strain at all mentally or physically. Cars have wheels so gravity is an open invitation for a car to roll downhill—after you take your foot off the brake. In the same way, the TM technique, once simply begun, flows effortlessly.
“Learning TM is probably the best thing I’ve ever done for myself. It’s allowed me to tap into a reservoir of peace and restoration that I’d only previously had glimpses of. All of my life, I’d hoped there was something below the surface that could bring me this sense of calm and a feeling of knowingness that TM has now brought. It has been a tool for healing myself ever single day since I started the practice. TM is an incredible gift and I am truly grateful for all the ways it has, and continues to, improve my well-being.”
– Miwa F., New Jersey, Realtor
Editor’s note: We’d love to hear your comments on the benefits you’ve received from the TM practice. And, with your permission, we’ll publish them here for other women to enjoy. Send your comment to info@tm-women.org
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