October 2024
Dear Friend,
We hope you will enjoy and share our October mini-magazine in the refreshing days of early Autumn. In this issue:
- Last month’s blog written by women for women
- Articles
- Stress and the November elections
- Transcendental Meditation for Women Abroad: Programs in Canada and Zimbabwe
- Dr. Candace Badgett addresses the World Association of Vedic Studies Conference
- Q&A: What gives the TM technique its potential for positive change?
- What women say: More than I would have imagined….
If you haven’t read our September blog posts, the links are below. You can also visit our blog homepage at any time to read articles we’ve posted in the past, covering topics as diverse as “Let’s Talk About Relationships” from 2014 and “Pass the Wine or Pass Up the Wine” from 2021.
Relax! How to Calm Down Successfully
Never in the history of calming down has anyone calmed down by being told to calm down.
Do you tend to be high strung, stressed, anxious, over wrought, or tightly wound? Do people tell you to “take it easy” or “calm down” or “just relax” sometimes?
The Gardener’s Guide to Effective Meditation
As any serious gardener can tell you, there are a lot of parallels between the principles of gardening and life in general. By getting your hands in that soil, cultivating and watching your garden grow, you recognize real life lessons: plan—but embrace the unexpected; nourish living things; be patient, watch, and allow each plant to be itself; work with nature; and weed out what doesn’t support growth.
Similarly, as sometime-gardeners and as women who have been practicing the Transcendental Meditation technique for decades, we recognized that these and other principles of gardening apply to effective meditation.
How to Stay Calm Heading to Election Time
Research shows that regular TM practice leads to lower levels of stress hormones, such as cortisol and adrenaline, which are associated with a wide range of health problems including high blood pressure, insomnia and anxiety. By reducing stress hormones, the TM technique helps to create a more balanced and harmonious internal environment, supporting better physical health and mental well-being.
According to Dr. Fred Travis, the lead neuroscientist in the study of the Transcendental Meditation program, the fight or flight system—that system which is activated by stress—is reset during TM.
According to the Mayo Clinic, the sympathetic nervous system is best known for its role in responding to dangerous or stressful situations. In these situations, the sympathetic nervous system activates to speed up heart rate, deliver more blood to areas of the body that need more oxygen or other responses to help one get out of danger.
Meta analyses have found that when you test sympathetic activation in a TM meditator and also in a person who hasn’t learned TM, you find that in the person who has been practicing TM—even for just a few months—it’s more at rest. That means she’s not experiencing worry or anxiety.
Reducing stress, tension and anxiety is easy during the TM technique as the body relaxes deeply. One tangibly feels relief. The important benefit to note is that the calm effect remains after meditation time is over. The duration of that inner calm grows longer over time as TM is practiced regularly, until it becomes a permanent reality of day to day life—even around election time.
TM Abroad: Helping Women from Africa to Canada
A program that began in May 2021 in Zvishavane in the Midlands Province in Zimbabwe, Africa, has been successfully helping at-risk women. The program includes instruction in the Transcendental Meditation technique and training in sewing and design.
The women hear about this opportunity through word-of-mouth, community outreach or an advertisement. Once enrolled, that are able to learn valuable sewing, design, and pattern making skills. They also learn business management principles, which can help them start their own businesses or find employment in the fashion industry.
The results of their experience with TM is evident: the ladies often report increased confidence, improved family relationships, and a sense of empowerment. Many also mention greater clarity of mind and personal growth.
The TM and Sewing and Design Programs continue to be a valuable resource for women in Zvishavane. A significant number of college students have enrolled through the recommendations of these women. Notably, two of the program’s graduates are now pursuing training to become certified teachers of the Transcendental Meditation program.
Ongoing success in Canada: Single mothers and the TM program
The Canadian Women for Wellness Initiative—a registered charity serving women whose lives or jobs are at risk due to high stress levels—recognizes that single mothers often face very stressful situations that overwhelm them, exhaust them, and impact their entire family.
Today, over one-fifth of Canadian children are being raised by a single parent. Since February of 2019, the CWWI, in partnership with the YWCA Single Mother’s Support Services in Vancouver BC, has been teaching the TM technique to single mothers.
TM has decreased the impact of stress in their lives, allowing them to maintain greater balance in relationships, feel happier, more settled and grounded within themselves, and less reactive in stressful situations. The program is so successful, as indicated by subjective reports from the participants and by objective scientific research, that it will continue in 2025.
Be sure to read our full article to be posted on our website blog on October 26th to learn more about the issues and experiences of the single mothers.
Head of TM Women’s Organization Speaks at World Association of Vedic Studies Conference
Candace Badgett, PhD, the head of our International TM Women’s organization in the US, Canada, and Australia, recently presented a paper at The World Association of Vedic Studies (WAVES) Conference, held this year in the greater Orlando Florida area.
The presentation was titled : “The Fundamental Dynamics of Conflict Resolution within the Structure of Consciousness Itself: the Eternal Reality of our own Conflict-free Nature.” This address highlighted the tendency of the mind to seek out and identify with its underlying unified field of pure intelligence that pervades and unifies all the diverse, and even contradictory, aspects of creation.
Candace became a Board member of WAVES in 2012 after giving a presentation at the WAVES conference at University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth, Massachusetts. Candace then hosted the 2014 WAVES Conference at Maharishi International University.
Regarding WAVES, Candace commented, “It is a wonderful opportunity to share the fundamental principles behind the Vedic technologies of consciousness, such as Transcendental Meditation (TM) and the advanced TM-Sidhi program. The knowledge from the Vedic tradition holds the universal keys to solving every problem facing the human race today. “
Q: What gives the Transcendental Meditation technique such great potential for positive change?
(From a 1993 interview of Maharishi published in Science of Mind magazine.)
A: To answer that, we must look at the nature of creation itself. Creation has two sides: intelligence, which is the cause of everything, and manifestations of intelligence, which are the physical and psychological features of the everyday world. Because Transcendental Meditation directly approaches intelligence, rather than the manifestations of intelligence, it solves problems by introducing harmony and well-being at the most basic level, and not by dealing with problems themselves. That’s why it is so effective.
Consider this example: The gardener supplies water to the root of a tree. That water, that nourishment, then reaches all parts of the tree—leaves, branches, flowers, fruit—through the sap. We can think of the sap as analogous to intelligence and the green leaves or yellow flowers as analogous to the manifestations of the intelligence. The leaves and flowers are the intelligence of the sap, after it has been transformed. So intelligence—like the leaves and flowers of a tree—appears as the many different forms of manifest life. Those manifestations include every aspect of existence, from the material and physiological, through the psychological, intellectual, and spiritual. All of those features of life come from transformations of intelligence.
In (this) meditation, we directly meet this essential intelligence. Therefore, we have the possibility of nourishing all of its other levels, and thus all levels of manifestation, in a way that is harmoniously related to the whole universe.
“I feel that TM has given me just the tool I needed, at exactly the right time in my life to do this. It has given me focus, courage, strength and commitment in more ways than I would have ever imagined.”
– Donna, San Diego
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
