January 2025
Dear Friend,
The beginning of a New Year can be the inspiration for positive change. As the wise Dr. Seuss wrote:
You’ll never get bored when you try something new.
There’s really no limit to what you can do.
With the Transcendental Meditation technique to support our evolution on a daily basis, the growth of consciousness—of joy, intelligence, love, and profound peace—has no limit.
Welcome to 2025.
- Last month’s blog written by women for women
- Articles
- TM meditator and Grammy nominee Chandrika Tandon performs at MIU
- New Book: SuperHabits for Success
- New radio station: Vedic technology promotes harmony in Ukraine, Russia and Middle East
- Q&A: What is pure consciousness
- What women say: “It’s already made my life waaaaaaaaaaaaaay better.”
If you missed our December blog posts, the links are below. You can also visit our blog homepage at any time to use our search feature for previous topics which are as diverse as Feeling Alone from 2023 and Women Artists and the Freedom to Create from 2016.
How to Stay Cool, Calm and Collected Amid December Celebrations
It’s almost Christmas. Or perhaps you celebrate Gita Jayanti? Observe Ashura? Revel on Krampus Night? Mark St. Nicholas Day? Commemorate Bodhi Day? Honor St. Lucia? What about Chanukah? And Zartosht no-diso? Kwanzaa?
New Report Focuses on Women’s Risks for Stroke
I was happy to see that there was a recent increased focus on women and their risk of stroke, as gender is a factor that can significantly affect risk, prevention, treatment and compliance.
Grammy Nominated Artist’s Performance at MIU
Chandrika Tandon is a renowned business leader, humanitarian, and Grammy-nominated artist with a passion for elevating human happiness through music and education. As a woman who learned the Transcendental Meditation technique around 15 years ago, she has twice visited Maharishi International University in Iowa, where all the faculty and students practice TM to unfold their learning potential. Last month, in early December, she performed for a huge assembly on campus, and the audience found her singing to be sublime.
Chandrika has released six albums and has performed for sold-out audiences at the Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center, Nassau Coliseum, and premier European venues, and performed at Washington DC’s National Mall for the World Culture Festival. She performed with the Young People’s Chorus of NYC at Diwali at Times Square, for an audience of 300,000, and for India’s Prime Minister and 13,000 people at Nassau Coliseum.
Chandrika received the Grammy nomination for her New Age album “Triveni,” in collaboration with Grammy-winning South African flutist Wouter Kellerman and Japanese-American cellist Eru Matsumoto. She was previously nominated in 2011 in the Contemporary World Music category for “Soul Call,” a melding of Carnatic, Hindustani, and Western influences.
Among her many accolades and accomplishments, Chandrika was the first South Asian-American woman to be elected partner at McKinsey; she is founder and chair of Tandon Capital Associates and the Krishnamurthy Tandon Foundation; she is a Trustee of New York University and Board Chair of NYU Tandon School of Engineering; she is a Trustee of NYU Langone Health, a New York Academy of Sciences Governor, and member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Chandrika has received numerous awards, including the Gallatin Medal, NYUʼs highest honor; the Walter Nichols Medal for leadership and integrity; and the Polytechnic Medal recognizing her contribution to science and engineering. She was inducted into the Horatio Alger Society of Distinguished Americans, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and received the Ellis Island Medal of Honor and The Town Hall’s Friend of the Arts Award.
Click here to listen to a sample of Chandrika Tandon’s music.
“Congratulations on Triveni. It is a masterpiece, which weaves ancient mantras and expressive flute and cello sounds into a transcendent soundscape that bridges cultures, offering a deeply meditative and healing musical journey.” — Sunday Times
New Book launch: SuperHabits for Success
On Wednesday, December 11th, Tony Nader, M.D., Ph.D., the head of the global Transcendental Meditation organization, launched his new book: SuperHabits for Success. This book offers a simple yet powerful approach to habit change based on
- Ancient knowledge of consciousness and AyurVeda,
- Latest neuroscience and psychology research, and
- Practical habit change tips and tools, personalized for different ayurvedic mind-body types.
Dr. Nader introduced this book to the world in an effort to help millions to cultivate the habits they want and create the life they deserve. The book is available for order on Amazon in print or Kindle.
TM for Women Sponsors Radio for World Harmony
Gandharva music is described as the eternal music of Nature.
In Gandharva music, all the notes, melodies (ragas), and rhythms are expressions of notes and rhythms of nature. These melodies and rhythms are also present in the physiology of all creatures and can rectify all imbalances—by listening to a particular melody at a specified time, all imbalances (activity not in accord with nature) are brought back into balance.
These rhythms and melodies of nature originate in the Vedic tradition (tradition of living in accord with Natural Law). The Vedic sages of India cognized the inherent intelligence of these frequencies and mirrored them through music. Maharishi Gandharva Veda is a restoration of Gandharva music to that purest form. The coherent flow of sound, enables the promotion of balance, inner peace and better health for individuals, neutralizes stress in the atmosphere, and creates a harmonizing influence for the whole world.
RadyoHarmoni.org is a new online station, established to create waves of harmony in Ukraine, Russia and the Middle East. Maharishi Gandharva Veda music will play continuously, 24/7, but is only accessible to those who can connect from timezone UTC+3. RadyoHarmoni is sponsored by the Academy of Arts for Enlightenment [ArtsforEnlightenment.org] in association with Transcendental Meditation for Women [tm-women.org].
Q: What is Pure Consciousness?
You may have heard words like Samadhi, Being, the Self—these are all synonyms for the experience of the completely silent settled state of mind that lies beyond thought.
People are aware of the commonly encountered states of consciousness that we call waking, dreaming and sleeping, but most are unaware of pure consciousness at the base of all other experience.
The self-sufficiency of pure consciousness is experienced as complete inner alertness without mental or physical activity. It is supported by a particular style of the nervous system which is cultured over time through repeated experience of transcending thought and the concurrent dissolving of stress.
Mind is defined as vibrant consciousness. The Transcendental Meditation technique trains the nervous system so that the mind can transcend to subtler levels of vibration, or thought, and then go beyond thought. In this way, the mind can appreciate and retain an inner calm collected state in which all vibration has settled.
Consciousness itself is silent, abstract, and hidden deep within all activity. It just takes opening our awareness to it and pure unbounded consciousness is known to itself, by itself. In TM, we witness increasing states of restful alertness until there is unboundedness alone. Individual breath becomes cosmic breath—our individuality is not lost, but becomes universal. The blessing of this experience is that the value of universality begins to be lived alongside all the values of individual life, giving us fulfillment, peace, joy and connectedness to all there is.
All of these words may seem foreign to you or very grand, but, in fact, the transcendent is the most intimate and natural state of all experience. It is as familiar and close as oneself.
“I originally started it [TM] to help me with anxiety & insomnia. It’s already made my life waaaaaaaaaaaaaay better & even with my stage fright…which I used to think there was no cure for…Last night was the first night I’ve slept 8 hours naturally in my entire life. I felt the best I have in ages. It’s better than any medication or all of the other nonsense I’ve tried.”
— Sky Ferreira, accomplished American singer-songwriter, model, and actress.
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
