David Lynch: Kids and Meditation

David Lynch, the creator of Twin Peaks and the director of the Elephant Man, is launching a campaign in the UK to promote the practice of Transcendental Meditation in schools.

Lynch believes that Transcendental Meditation helps to develop creativity and academic ability as well as improving the emotional well-being, health and stress levels of children.

He has already launched a similar campaign in the United States with approximately 20,000 schoolkids practising the two 20 minute sessions every day.

Read more about Transcendental Meditation here.

Health Benefits of Meditation

Here are a couple of articles detailing recent medical research into the health benefits of meditation.

Click to read full article: Meditation Fools The Brain

This article outlines recent research studies carried out by universities in the United States into the health benefits of meditation which include boosting the immune system, improving memory, controlling binge eating (and increasing happiness!)

Click to read full article: Transcendental Meditation and Congestive Heart Failure

This article discusses a study carried out by the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine with African American men and women in their sixties. The study demonstrated that Transcendental Meditation significantly improved the quality of life and emotional state of the participants as well as reducing the physical factors that contribute to heart failure.

More about the benefits of transcendental meditation on the Creative Healing Meditation website.

War and Psychics

It has been revealed that in 2002, the Ministry of Defence funded secret tests to see if a group of people could psychically see into remote hidden objects.

At first, the researchers tried to recruit established psychics for the experiments but when all refused they had to use volunteers.

The subjects were asked to identify contents hidden in brown sealed envelopes. 28% of the volunteers made some close guesses. But for the most part, the volunteers did not even come close. One reportedly fell asleep during the testing.

The Ministry of Defence did not disclose their reasons for spending approximately £18,000 on these tests.

Because of the timing and the nature of the experiments, there has been speculation that the defence experts were looking at the possibility of using remote viewing in the hunt for Osama Bin Laden or the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Their study concluded that remote viewing could not be put to great use for the purposes of the nation's defence.

Mind Readers

In the sci-fi movie, Minority Report, police could read criminal minds and stop crimes from happening before they were committed.

Now a team of neuroscientists from the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Germany, University College London and Oxford University have developed a powerful technique.

Using high-resolution brain scans to identify patterns of activity in the brain, they are learning which patterns are associated with which particular thoughts, emotions, wishes and ideas.

They believe they are developing the ability to discover people's intentions before they carry them out.

This has huge ethical implications for the future - not only in the area of crime prevention - but for society as a whole.

Blind Faith

Speaking at an international seminar entitled '21st Century and Buddhism' in India this week, the Dalai Lama said, "Buddhist faith must come from analytical meditation. Analyse using our intelligence maximum way, throughout that way. Faith should not just be blind faith or without reason."

We don't switch off our brains when we meditate.

Meditation can make us more focused and alert, improve our learning ability and our memory skills and increase our sense of awareness and perception.

In a wider context, we need to apply common sense and judgement when being introduced to new systems of thought.

We don't need to accept fads or gurus blindly and without discernment nor should we reject unusual (to us) ideas with dismissive cynicism.

It is sometimes a challenge to remain open-minded and grounded at the same time.

"Believe not because some old manuscripts are produced, believe not because it is your national belief, believe not because you have been made to believe from your childhood, but reason truth out..." Buddha