Health News: Top Stories

Meditation: Close your eyes, be quiet, improve your life
by Michael Flynn

Asheville Citizen-Times Translate This Article
26 October 2005

On 26 October 2005 Asheville Citizen-Times reported: A new Maharishi Enlightenment Center in Asheville, North Carolina will be used for instruction and practice of the Transcendental Meditation Programme (TM), a stress-reduction technique practised by over 1.5 million people in the United States. Meanwhile, according to the article, TM officials are looking to buy several acres in the Asheville area to build a much larger facility they will call a Peace Palace. It is a joy for Global Good News service to feature this news, which indicates the success of the life-supporting programmes Maharishi has designed to bring fulfilment to the field of health.

The Peace Palace will include an extensive health spa as well as a range of meditation programmes. In addition, said the article, instructors from the centre are part of a group looking for land to build a cluster of residences called a Peace Colony.

'People in Asheville are so receptive to what we're doing; this is our target audience,' Patrick Pomfrey, a co-director of the centre was quoted as saying. 'It's the demand of the time—people are looking for this.'

Pomfrey went on to explain that, 'Transcendental Meditation is a technology that allows us to have profound rest. Rest is nature's way of getting rid of stress, fatigue, and anxiety.'

A licensed clinical psychologist with Skyland Behavioral Health Associates, Pomfrey, 50, said TM can benefit patients with anxiety and depression disorders.

The article explained that the Asheville centre is a branch of a worldwide organization, the Maharishi Vedic Educational Development Corporation, a non-profit group based in Holland. Other North Carolina centres are located in Boone, Charlotte, and three other sites around the state.

Reporter Michael Flynn said that practitioners of the simple mental technique cite mental, physiological, behavioural, and general health benefits of Transcendental Meditation as part of its appeal.

'It raises your quality of life so much—everything is enhanced,' Sarah Easterling, 25, an instructor at the centre, was quoted as saying.

Flynn also talked to local practitioners, including Timothy Abell, 52, who told him the benefits were tangible. 'What became immediately apparent to me was an increased energy level and clarity of thinking,' he said. 'I felt fresh and clean.'

Flynn referred to scientific research that validated the personal testimonies, including the fact that the National Institutes of Health had granted more than $20 million to study the effects of TM in reducing high blood pressure and other risk factors for heart disease in minority populations.

He also said that studies have linked meditation and other stress-reducing techniques with lowering blood pressure and increasing longevity, and that news reports had noted that some companies are paying for instruction in the Transcendental Meditation Technique to help their employees manage stress and improve performance.

Centre co-director Linda Castillon told Flynn that the promotion of world peace remains an integral part of the group's ultimate goals. 'When individuals are more at peace within themselves, then they radiate that through every thought, word, and action,' she said.

Flynn went on to provide a list of basic questions and answers about the practice of TM, noting that the technique is a simple, natural procedure to gain deep rest—and contact that inner reservoir of creativity, energy and intelligence—to enrich your life day by day. It can be practised anywhere, and requires no effort or concentration, no special skills or change of lifestyle.

The benefits of the technique were said to include enhancement of the practitioner's energy, creativity, and intelligence and the promotion of greater health, happiness, and success in life. In addition, it was noted that research has documented greater creativity, improved learning ability, increased brainwave coherence, and improved neurological functioning of the body, among other positive results of practising the Transcendental Medication Technique.
Every day Global Good News documents the rise of a better quality of life dawning in the world and highlights the need for introducing Natural Law based—Total Knowledge based—programmes to bring the support of Nature to every individual, raise the quality of life of every society, and create a lasting state of world peace.

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