Post by Laurel Chaisson on May 18, 2005 8:39:21 GMT -5
Meditation in the Classroom
by Ken Chawkin
by Ken Chawkin
Walk into most schools and you're bound to see a lot of unhappy faces. It's not easy being a teenager these days. Students are under a lot of pressure, loaded up with schoolwork and extracurricular activities. They vie for each other's attention, are constantly influenced by the latest fashion, and under peer pressure to experiment with alcohol and drugs. A growing number are on medication for stress-related disorders like high blood pressure, depression or ADHD. Incidents of truancy, bullying and fighting are a common occurrence, and in some cases lead to disastrous consequences.
Now visit a small Midwest school and marvel how each classroom starts their day. Imagine students sitting quietly, eyes closed, not fidgeting, not joking around, just meditating in a group for five or 10 minutes depending on the grade level. Stick around and you'll see them focus on the subject at hand, paying attention, responding to their teacher's questions, challenging the teacher for more knowledge with their own probing questions. Students are happy, harmonious and engaged in the learning process.
This is what you find when you visit any classroom at the Maharishi School of the Age of Enlightenment (MSAE) in Fairfield, a small city in Southeast Iowa. Every day students, faculty and staff practice the Transcendental Meditation (TM) technique together as part of their daily routine. Some of the older students participate in the more advanced TM-Sidhi Program including Yogic Flying in the Golden Domes on the adjoining campus of Maharishi University of Management (M.U.M.) to help create world peace.
Maharishi School
Maharishi School of the Age of Enlightenment is accredited by the Independent Schools Association of the Central States and is a member of the National Association of Independent Schools. It is one of only five schools in the state to have been granted college preparatory status by the Iowa Department of Education in recognition of its long history of having more than 95 percent of its graduates accepted at four-year colleges. Classes in grades 9-12 consistently score in the top first percentile in standardized tests such as the Iowa Tests of Educational Development. In addition, during the past five years, the school has produced more than 10 times the national average of National Merit Scholar finalists.
Maharishi School students have won more than 100 state, national and international championship titles in the past decade in the arts, sciences, photography, theater, speech and other categories. They have won more Critics Choice Awards than any other school in the state for Choral Reading, Group Mime, Reader's Theater and One-Act Play.
During his recent visit to Fairfield, Hollywood film director and 30-year meditator David Lynch met with students from both MUM and MSAE. He even attended the Maharishi School Theatre Cavalcade where the students were performing their recent state-winning numbers. He was taken by surprise.
"I've seen some great performances in film and in theater," he remarked, "but I've never seen anything like I saw that night. Such honesty, naturalness, intelligence -- it was phenomenal! And these weren't actors, these were students."
In extracurricular activities each year, MSAE sends many teams to competitions like Odyssey of the Mind (OM) and Destination ImagiNation (DI). In DI, an international competition that challenges students to think out of the box and come up with creative team-based problem solving strategies, MSAE has placed more top-10 winners at the global finals than any other school in the world. This year, the Upper School boys' team received the coveted Renaissance Award, given for exceptional engineering, performance and "awesome teamwork and cooperation."
When it comes to sports, the golf team became state champions in 1996, just two years after they got started under the tutelage of their founding coach, Ed Hipp, and were featured in Sports Illustrated (Dec. 23, 1996). The Iowa High School Golf Coaches Association honored Ed Hipp as Coach of the Year for 2003. And for the first time in the 70-year history of Iowa high school tennis, Maharishi School won the celebrated Triple Crown by winning first-place in State Class 1-A titles in singles, doubles and team competitions two years in a row, 1999 and 2000. The Iowa Tennis Association (ITA) chose Lawrence Eyre Coach of the Year for 2000. The tennis team was later featured in the August 2002 issue of Tennis magazine, the year they celebrated their first undefeated season. In the article, coach Eyre was quoted as saying that, "Seventy percent of a tennis match is between points and whoever recovers better and can return to a steady state is going to do better." TM helped his players recover quicker from unforced errors and then move on to the next point without getting upset or distracted.
A few years ago, Teen People magazine chose Maharishi School as its "Cool School of the Month," and this year, Worth magazine's May feature story, "Embracing our Alternatives," listed MSAE as one of seven alternative private schools promoting leadership, values and the family mission (http://tinyurl.com/2yvbs).
Perhaps all this success may have something to do with the Consciousness-Based® education (CBE) model, which utilizes techniques for developing the total brain of the student. One of the main techniques is Transcendental Meditation. Research has shown that regular TM practice enlivens hidden reserves of the brain physiology, develops latent creative intelligence of the students, increases hemispheric brain coherence responsible for moral reasoning, decision-making, and enhances mind-body integration. What is TM, and how do the students feel about doing it every day?
TM Technique
While there are many forms of meditation, the one most widely practiced and researched in our time is the Transcendental Meditation® technique. Whereas most employ some form of effort, contemplation or concentration, TM is unique in that it is effortless, relying on the natural tendency of the mind to go to finer, more charming levels of experience. Although students practice the technique anywhere from five to 15 minutes, adults do it for 20 minutes twice a day. Regardless of age, during the practice the active thinking mind settles down to quieter levels of thinking until it transcends, goes beyond the thought process and arrives at the silent source of thought within. The body also settles down to a state of least excitation allowing for deep rest, twice as deep as sleep, dissolving deeply rooted stresses. This state of inner restful alertness triggers the body's innate intelligence and allows the physiology to repair itself naturally.
TM's founder, His Holiness Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, began teaching this meditation practice 50 years ago and brought it to the West in 1959. Derived from an ancient Vedic tradition, this simple mental procedure is practiced twice a day for 20 minutes while sitting comfortably in a chair. More than five million people worldwide have learned TM in a standardized seven-step course taught by qualified teachers. TM's inclusion into the curriculum at Maharishi School has set the standard for other educational institutions to follow. Students and faculty at schools in Detroit, Ill., Augusta, Ga., Silver Spring, Md., and Washington, D.C., and elsewhere around the world are experiencing the same beneficial results. It's becoming a growing trend in education.
Maharishi School has an open admissions policy, accepting students with a wide range of academic skills and social backgrounds. Families have either moved to Fairfield or have sent their sons and daughters to live as boarding students or with families they know. Young children begin a simple, eyes-open walking meditation technique, known as their Word of Wisdom, as early as kindergarten. When they turn 10, they learn the adult, sitting, eyes-closed technique, but only practice it for five, 10, or 15 minutes, depending on their grade level. The kids find it easy to do and enjoy practicing together in class.
But what is it really like for new students? How are they accepted into their classrooms, into the community? How has meditation affected their lives?
Student Experiences
Interestingly, the students at MSAE say they feel clear, alert, happy and self-confident as a result of their regular TM practice in school. They are not as clique-ish as in other schools and tend to get along well together. This allows them to excel at whatever they put their attention on -- academics, sports, extracurricular activities. It wasn't that way for some before they got there, whether they had meditated or not.
Katy Kirbach grew up in Fairfield, Iowa. "Prior to regularly practicing TM," she said, "I felt alienated and alone. I was shy, quiet and didn't know who I was or what I wanted to do with my life. I didn't have faith in myself. I felt like I was being packed into a box and a way of life that didn't have many possibilities ahead for me. Practicing TM, and experiencing the Unified Field twice a day, every day, has opened my eyes to the infinity that is around me and in me. I now see that I have all possibilities in front of me, and, at 18, am entering into the world with optimism and enthusiasm. I have become much more grounded in my Self, and comfortable with who I am."
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Copyright © 2004 Ken Chawkin