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Taiwan: Overall intelligence increases in students who learn Transcendental Meditation
by Global Good News staff writer

Global Good News    Translate This Article
28 October 2013

'One of the great problems in the educational process is the first fundamental of education: receptivity. If students are feeling great stress in their lives . . . either at home or with bullying or whatever is going on in school, then they cannot learn very well.'

In a recent interview, Dr Michael Dillbeck, editor of the latest in a many-volume series of scientific research on Transcendental Meditation,* described the results of one of the studies reprinted in the volume. This study, published in the journal Intelligence, looked at groups of Taiwanese students, some of whom learned Transcendental Meditation; others learned a contemplative meditation or were simply allowed to take a nap each day.

See previous article in this series: Taiwan: Transcendental Meditation increases students' academic performance

The results show growth in many areas of intelligence and academic performance in the Transcendental Meditation group, compared to the controls. The areas affected were very diverse, indicating that Transcendental Meditation increases a very holistic kind of intelligence, Dr Dillbeck commented.

'It is also interesting that the control groups used a contemplative meditation and taking a nap to show the distinction between the experience of transcending** [during Transcendental Meditation] and either contemplating or sleeping,' he added.

The study averaged the result of all the groups and found, overwhelmingly, that those students who were randomly assigned to learn Transcendental Meditation increased their overall intelligence very significantly.

The researchers looked at effect size in combining results of the three studies. Dr Dillbeck explained, 'The effect size is independent of the number of people you have in your study, so it allows you to compare one study to another. . . . When [scientists] do these meta-analyses and combine the results of many studies, then they look at effect size—in that way they can look at Study One and Study Two and compare them, because they have a common measure that underlies both.'

Taken together, these studies in Taiwan give clear evidence of the link between Transcendental Meditation and growth of intelligence.

Educators are increasingly interested in these findings, Dr Dillbeck commented, adding that studies like this one support the experiences reported in many countries by students, teachers, and administrators in schools where Transcendental Meditation is practised.

Related articles:
Scientific research on Transcendental Meditation covers wide range of benefits, new volume shows
Are all meditation techniques the same? Study outlines EEG differences among types of meditation

* Dr Dillbeck is an International Research Professor at Maharishi University of Management and a widely published researcher on the physiological, cognitive, and sociological effects of the Transcendental Meditation technique. He is editor of several volumes of Scientific Research on Maharishi's Transcendental Meditation and TM-Sidhi Program: Collected Papers, including the recently published Volume 7.

** Transcending is the process of the mind settling down to experience quieter levels of the thinking process, eventually going beyond thought to experience pure awareness, the silent, unbounded field of pure consciousness (transcendental consciousness), the basis of the mind's activity. Transcendental Meditation promotes the effortless process of transcending in a systematic, reliable, repeatable manner.

Copyright © 2013 Global Good News Service



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