November 2024
Dear Friend,
November has come round once more, with its drifts of fallen golden leaves. Amid the tumult of the upcoming election and the challenges of harsh weather, we can find within ourselves cause for peace, joy, and gratitude.
We are pleased to send you our November issue, including:
- Last month’s blog written by women for women
- Articles
- TM brings fulfillment to the International Day of the Girl
- The TM program for Survivors of Military Sexual Misconduct
- Honoring Amy Ruff and welcoming the new national director of TM for Nurses
- Q&A: What is the evolutionary force and how does it support our growth?
- What women say: “like a life raft thrown out to me”
Have you had a few minutes to read the articles posted on our blog in October? If you haven’t, the links are below. You can also visit our blog homepage at any time to use our search feature for topics as diverse as Why We Love to Shop (and What That Has to Do With Meditation) from 2022 and Intuition From the Field of Consciousness from 2013.
Enlightenment: Life Free From Suffering
(This interview of Maharishi is excerpted from Robert Oates’ book Celebrating the Dawn, originally published in 1976.)
Q: What’s the goal of Transcendental Meditation?
Maharishi: “The goal of the Transcendental Meditation technique is the state of enlightenment. This means we experience that inner calmness, that quiet state of least excitation, even when we are dynamically busy.”
Next President of the United States
(excerpted and adapted from our blog post of March 3, 2014)
Article 2 of the U.S. Constitution states: Before he enters on the Execution of his Office, he shall take the following Oath or Affirmation – “I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
The TM Program as a Resource for Girls Everywhere
According to UNICEF, “Evidence shows that with the right support, resources and opportunities, the potential of the world’s more than 1.1 billion girls is limitless. And when girls lead, the impact is immediate and wide reaching: families, communities and economies are all stronger, our future brighter.” Annually, girls are celebrated on October 11th—the International Day of the Girl.
The Transcendental Meditation technique has been proven to help girls and young women around the globe. Research and experience has shown that with the TM technique, stress and anxiety are reduced, depression and emotional imbalances diminish, focus and clarity increase, and self-confidence is strengthened.
From California to Thailand, girls have learned Transcendental Meditation as part of the school curriculum. Teen girls have also learned on their own as university students or along with their families when they were younger. All the girls are unique but the benefits they experience are universal.
For example, in a violence-ridden at-risk San Francisco school system, where the Superintendent endorsed TM in the classroom, girls were found to have more harmonious relationships, improved grades and decreased absenteeism.
TM was also introduced to orphaned girls educated in Thailand’s award-winning Dhammajarinee School. Almost immediately, the girls experienced increased motivation, creativity, and academic success. The students have risen out of poverty and neglect to win regional and national awards and to go on to college. The TM technique is now practiced daily by the entire student body.
Girls everywhere have started to realize their full potential and live happier lives after learning the TM technique. With TM, every day can be the day of the girl, as each girl becomes more creative and capable, preparing her for the future she desires.
Check out our page written for teens and young women, including videos by and about meditating girls.
TM for Survivors of Military Sexual Misconduct
The aim of the Canadian Women for Wellness Initiative (CWWI) is to introduce the Transcendental Meditation technique to groups affected by traumatic stress—including police, first responders, families of veterans, nurses, and at-risk women and youth.
In 2020, CWWI received funding from Veterans Affairs Canada (through the Veterans and Family Well-Being Fund) to teach the TM technique to veteran families.
Due to the success of that program, Canada’s Department of National Defence invited CWWI in November 2022 to apply for funding through their Sexual Misconduct Support and Resource Centre.
In April 2023 CWWI was awarded a three-year grant to provide TM training for 140 Canadian Armed Forces members and Department of National Defence personnel who are survivors of military sexual misconduct.
By the end of September 2024, CWWI had instructed 70 individuals, marking the halfway point of the project.
Assessment
Participants are being assessed for perceived stress and self-compassion and how TM has contributed to their growth and well-being. Key themes emerging from the interviews include:
- TM is an additional resource that enhances well-being.
- Once learned, TM has no barriers to continued use: no travel, no cost, and it can easily be practiced at home.
- The main benefits include increased self-kindness, a sense of connection, and feeling grounded.
- The individualized instruction and attention from teachers greatly impact the program’s success.
Comments from participants include:
- [TM] really helps me focus and connect with myself and find the truth of who I am. I can feel that connection and then I have a more peaceful life.
- The ultimate goal for me was to help calm me down, now I am at total peace—complete peace and so beautiful. Not bothered as much and able to filter and keep the thoughts passing through.
Director of TM for Nurses Retires; Welcome to our New Director
Upon the retirement this month of Amy Ruff BSN, RN as national director of TM for Nurses, we would like to take this opportunity to congratulate her for founding our nurse organization in the USA in 2010. Her work was the source of the worldwide inspiration to teach the TM technique to nurses in Australia, Canada, China, Great Britain, Jamaica, New Zealand, and Uganda.
Amy was essential to the success of the David Lynch Foundation’s Heal the Healers project. She established accredited continuing education courses for nurses in the USA, made presentations on the benefits of the TM program for medical practitioners at over 30 universities and medical facilities, offered the TM program to nurses in 24 hospitals to date, was author of many articles, and was key to the publication of six scientific research papers on the benefits of TM for nurses.
We would like to express our gratitude and honor Amy for these outstanding achievements, which have greatly enhanced the quality of life of an ever-growing number of nurses as well as the effectiveness of the nursing profession in its role of maintaining the health and well-being of society.
Stepping into this role in November is Sarah Sica. Sarah is a powerful force in the world of consciousness-based education. She learned the children’s TM “Word of Wisdom” technique at age four followed by instruction in the regular Transcendental Meditation program at age ten. She attended Consciousness-Based Education schools, culminating in a BA in Maharishi Vedic Science from Maharishi University of Enlightenment. Sarah trained and was certified as a TM Teacher in 2012 after which she taught in TM Centers in many states in the U.S.
Sarah also worked for the David Lynch Foundation, first as a Site Leader for four years, implementing the TM program in various schools in Los Angeles, and later for six years as Director of Programs in New York City, overseeing the DLF Center for Health and Wellness as well as corporate and government programs. One of Sarah’s outstanding accomplishments was teaching TM to more than 700 survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault.
Sarah’s organizing power, teaching skills, and especially her dedication to helping others find inner peace—specifically populations with trauma and Post Traumatic Stress—is truly inspiring. We are sure that TM for Nurses will flourish under her leadership.
Q: Is there an inherent evolutionary force and how can we take advantage of it to develop most quickly?
A: Observation of everything around us indicates that there is a structure and direction to life. From galaxies to atomic particles, order is located within the life of everything. Albert Einstein said that the “strongest and noblest driving force behind scientific research is a deep faith in the rationality of the structure of the world.”
Underlying all phenomena in the universe is an unbounded field of creativity, intelligence and organizing power that allows all structures to evolve toward their highest level of evolution.
All living thing, including humans, develop in accord with a norm toward which they grow, with organized systems of structures and functions. For example, in our own lives, we trust that when we eat something, it will nourish us and allow us to progress and grow. Our digestive system breaks down what we eat into a myriad of molecules and distributes them, and then builds them into the system, with each unique nutrient being vital in the growth of the whole.
Dr. Edmund Sinnott was a Harvard educated Yale botanist and biologist who said,
“Development is not an aimless affair; each stage follows precisely is predecessor…. Each organism has its particular series of norms, it’s special cycle of progressive and creative development. Continual change is the keynote of this cycle; not unguided change but change that moves to a very definite end—the mature individual and the completion of the cycle.“He adds, “This tendency in every living system to integrate its materials and processes and conformity with a norm which it persistently seeks to reach, emphasizes the essentially teleological character of development and function. The unity of the organism seems to inhere in the end toward which it is moving.”
The order that is evident everywhere in nature as well as within our own bodies and our own minds displays the intelligence and creativity at the core of our existence. Located at the source of all matter, it is also the foundation of all thoughts within our minds. The Transcendental Meditation technique expands the conscious capacity of the mind to incorporate this inherent underlying field by direct experience. This process gives us the benefit of what Maharishi called “a natural and balanced development of all aspects of individual life.”
The ultimate state of life—in which stress and suffering are left behind, peace and joy are natural to us, and our unity with all things is realized—is inherent within; all the stages and changes we pass through during our lifetime are part of our progress to the development of that ultimate state of unity.
Dr. Sinnott illustrated this tendency within everything with the example of a plant. He revealed that when you cut off a growing shoot tip and put it into water, it will regenerate its entire root system. A stem can do this, but also often leaf stocks, flower stocks, or bits of the leaf blade can regenerate the whole plant. In fact, an entire plant can grow from just a single cell when proper conditions are provided.
So every human being, especially with the proper conditions of stress reduction and expansion of consciousness enabled by the TM technique, will eventually generate totality from within herself.
(With gratitude to Jack Forem, author of Transcendental Meditation: Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and the Science of Creative Intelligence, whose book introduced us to the writings of Edmund Sinnott.)
“Transcendental Meditation has been like a life raft thrown out to me in the midst of the overwhelming stress that I was treading.
The fact that it was easy was uplifting and reassuring. There was no pressure, and I think I needed that more than anything.
I have noticed after six weeks that I have much clearer thinking and I’m not as emotional. I feel more creative and I do have more energy, something I thought would not be possible.
I am very grateful that the American Holistic Nurse Association endorsed Transcendental Meditation for Nurses as an approved course. It has been instrumental in helping me with my personal life and my professional career.”
~Kimla Stewart, RN, CHPN, HN – BC, CHTP, IAC, CHEP
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
