Well with Arielle Lorre - 72: Emily Fitz Randolph - Transcendental Meditation and Its Effects on Mind, Body, Anxiety and Aging

Episode Date: August 26, 2020

In this episode I talk to Emily Fitz Randolph, certified Transcendental Meditation teacher and Co-Director of the Santa Monica TM center. We discuss the power of Transcendental Meditation; the physiological and mental effects of TM; the science behind the anti-aging benefits of TM; how it differs from other modalities of meditation; how to learn TM and how to do it; the scientific research supporting TM; how to transcend the mind to reach pure consciousness and so much more.   www.BLUblox.com/BLONDE for 15% off your order plus Free Shipping www.eatenlightened.com/BLONDEFILES for 10% off plus Free Shipping www.helloned.com/BLONDE for 15% off your first one-time order or 20% off your first subscription order plus free shipping.     Produced by Dear MediaSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Go to your rise-adviseur or Sunnycars. The following podcast is a Dear Media Production. Hey, welcome to the Blonde Files podcast. I'm your host, Ariel Lori, and I'm here to talk all things wellness. From how to achieve optimal health and well-being to the best beauty tips and everything in between, no topic is off limits. I know there is so much information out there, so I'm here to help you navigate it all and live your best life.

Thanks for listening. Let's get into it. Hi, everybody. Welcome to this show. I am so, so, so. excited for today's episode. As you know, I have been doing Transcendental Meditation for a few years now, and it literally changed my life, like right from the get-go. So profoundly transformative. And whenever I mention it over on the internets, I get tons of questions. Usually, like, what is it? How do you do it? Where do I learn? Is there an app for that? Why do I have to pay for it? And so on. So I figured rather than me just try to explain it to you guys, why not bring on a teacher? So that's exactly what I did today. I'm talking to Emily Fitzrandoff. She is a certified transcendental meditation teacher. And she's the

co-director of the Santa Monica TM Center. And you guys, this is such a fascinating episode, whether you meditate or not. In this day and age, I really can't think of a reason why anybody wouldn't when we have all the science and personal anecdotes supporting how, impactful it is, but that's just my unsolicited opinion. So anyway, in this episode, we discuss everything from the physiological effects of TM, what it does to the brain, the scientific research behind it, why it's different from other forms of meditation, why you have to pay to learn it, and how to transcend the mind and reach pure consciousness, how it reverses aging, what it does to neuronal pathways and so much more. We also take listener questions at the end, so make

sure you stay tuned for that and enjoy the episode. Welcome, Emily. Thank you so much for being here. So happy to be here. Thanks so much. People are fascinated by meditation. They're fascinated by transcendental meditation. It's probably one of the number one things that people ask me about. I'm very vocal about how it's impacted my life in the last two years that I've been doing it. I'm kind of an evangelist. I tend to be about things that I'm passionate about, but it's just been so profoundly transformative for me. But, you know, I'm not an expert. And so that's where you come in. And I'm so excited to have you kind of break it down for everybody. But to begin, I would love to hear how you got into TM and how it's impacted your life.

Perfect. So firstly, I love that you're so passionate about TM. And it is. It's so simple and it's so profound, which I'm really excited to get into today. So my background of PM, I actually have a kind of unique experience because my parents practice TM. So I actually grew up with parents who had learned in the 70s. There was sort of an initial wave of people learning in the 60s and 70s. And so I learned the technique when I was 10 years old. And that's another thing I can talk about later. that it's amazing that kids as young as 10 can actually learn this technique. Even earlier, children as young as 4 or 5 can learn. So I've been practicing for a long time, and I kind of grew up with this meditation practice, practiced right up until I went to college. And then I went to college, and I went out into the world. And it was one of those things where, you know, I grew up in the kind of thing were probably similar ages, 80s and 90s.

And PM, meditation wasn't normal. right? It wasn't a thing that people talked about. So I had this desire to be normal. And I kind of let go of my practice. I wasn't regular. And I got to a point sort of later where I found I was doing something else. I was living in New York. I had a very busy career and life. And I was practicing TM, maybe here and there, maybe once in a while. And I started thinking, God, I wish there was some easy, natural, effective thing I could do right now that would help manage my stress. And so I I came back to my technique. And it was a total game changer.

It was something I realized I could fit in in this really busy part of my life, do it twice a day, mostly. We can talk about that too. And it was such a game changer that I ended up actually deciding that teaching TM would be even more fulfilling than what I was doing. So I started teaching TM about a couple years ago now. Amazing. Yeah, it's so interesting because I was,

introduced to it. It seemed like I was at a point in my life where I was getting really overwhelmed with things. I was dealing with some new anxieties and I had been trying meditation apps and this and that and just nothing was really sticking and I'm in recovery. You know, I'm friends with people who are 50, 60, 70, 80s. I have friends. So my husband and I went to dinner with this couple who were like maybe late 80s, early 90s. And they are like the most youthful, buoyant people that I know. And they're so energetic and they're just so amazing. And I asked the woman, what's your, what's your secret? And she said, TM. And that got my attention. And then all of a sudden, like, once I heard about it, I started noticing that all these people in my life were doing it.

My wedding planner did it. My, you know, all these people. And I was like, okay. So I can't imagine starting at 10. I mean, that's amazing. Yeah, it's young. But I love that story, right? There's, there's something, I think, a lot of people who have a practice specifically like TM. There's something about them, right? You can't quite put your finger on. There's something unique. And I love that. I want to mention, I'll mention this later too, but there's a really great study where they looked at people who've been practicing TM for longer than five years, and they noticed they were able to check sort of the typical standard signs of aging. And people who've been practicing TM for five or more years have a biological age

that's 12 to 15 years younger than their chronological age. I think every single person who's listening right now is like, say no more. Sold. Yes, right? And it's amazing. And those are just the standard at sort of hearing, vision, blood pressure. But we feel the effects of TM too. So yes, you know, children as young as 10 can learn.

And that's a really important time to learn. You don't have to learn at 10 years old, right? Whenever you learn TM, it's going to be exactly the right time for you. And your body will feel the effects of that breast release. But there's some really amazing things that happen to a child at 10 years old. PM actually can start to expand some neural pathways in brain. So when we learn at that early age, there's some neural pathways that actually. stick around longer, they don't go through this myelination process that happens typically

when we're 10 years old. So fascinating when it comes to aging when it comes to that real shift in our whole physiology when we learn. You know I am super attached to my blue light blocking glasses. Like I don't know how I ever used to go bare when I looked at a screen. If I do it now, I feel the effects almost instantly. So I am talking eye strain, headache, watery eyes, tension, anxiety, insomnia, not fun. Thankfully, Blue Blocks has us covered. So Blue Blocks were created to fix these problems and block out blue light with high quality evidence-backed lenses. Unlike other blue light blocking glasses that are popping up on Instagram, these are backed by the latest science and made under optics laboratory conditions in Australia. And this is super important because a lot of these other

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B-L-O-N-D-E. Again, you can go to blueblocks.com. That's B-L-U-B-L-O-X.com with the code blonde, B-L-O-N-D-E for 15% off and make sure to tag us when you get your pair. Hey, this is Alexis Haynes. Join me every Monday for a new episode of my podcast, We're covering from reality, whether you're on the road to recovery, seeking self-care techniques for surviving the capitalist machine, or just need a moment to remember that you're not alone in your loneliness. I'm here to deliver intimate conversations and expert insights to empower you on the road towards authentic wellness. So are you ready to recover from reality? Yeah, I mean, that's such an, I mean, 10 or any age, probably before like young, young adulthood, I would think would be

a time when it would be really impactful because your brain is still developing. So why don't we kind of take a step back and just tell everybody what exactly TM is and then we'll get into how to do it and all of the specifics. Great. So I'll first say this, transcendental meditation. It's one specific technique. It's not like an umbrella term like mindfulness, which has a lot of different types of meditation underneath it. TM is a very simple mental technique and it's practiced 15 to 20 minutes, twice a day, sitting comfortably with eyes closed. So we don't do this while we're out walking or doing other things. We sit down, we close our eyes.

We ideally are in a quiet space, but I used to live in New York. I used to practice on the subway. You can practice at the beach. You can really do this anywhere, which I always say it's portable, right? It's DIY. You really can take this anywhere, which makes it unique because we don't need candles and incense and all of that to get into the practice. So we practiced a couple times a day.

And again, you know, this is, I use the words, I'll continue to use these words, easy, effortless. And I'll talk later about how to distinguish TM from other types of meditation. But the key with practicing TM is in its innocence. We're just using the nature of our mind. And we don't need to have any beliefs. I've taught the most skeptical people, this technique. You know, people will be brought in, friends doing it, or their wife wants to learn. I don't believe in meditation.

It doesn't work for me. I have a crazy monkey mind, right? I can't sit still. But I've taught people in that space and it works for them because you don't need to get into some mindset. You don't need to be good at meditation or have any kind of belief system, which is amazing. And it's very unique. So totally the meditation for the skeptic.

It works every time. And it's very heavily scientifically researched, which I love about it too. It's one thing for me or you to say, wow, this technique is amazing and we love it and we feel the benefit, right? But we also have science to back it up because TM, it's repeatable. It can be measured. We can measure people's brainwave activity. We can measure everything that's happening in the physiology during and after TM. And there have been really profound results to our minds, to our bodies, to our health, to how we interact with others just from this practice.

Yeah, that's something that I love to. It really validates it in people's minds, I think. But I want to go back to the monkey brain thing because prior to starting TM myself, that was the thing that I was the most intimidated by, I think. I was like, I can't sit in silence. My brain is freaking crazy. And I always thought that meditation was about quieting that or shutting it off even. And so I was very judgmental. And that's something that a lot of people send me messages saying, too. They're like, well, I don't know, I can't sit still. I can't sit in silence for two minutes. And we're so distracted nowadays and kind of bombarded with information all the time that it's kind of scary to be alone with our thoughts. So can you speak to that a little bit? Yes. So that I think is absolutely the number one reason people shy away from TM or just like you, maybe you've tried an app. Maybe you've tried one of these guided meditations or some kind of meditation that's required. you to sit still, shut things down, and you feel like, well, I can't do this. This is frustrating. It's hard. So the experience isn't soothing and rewarding and nourishing like it should be.

So TM is very different. First of all, if you've Googled TM or you've done a little research, you probably know this analogy we like to use of the mind like an ocean. I love this analogy. So you can think about an ocean, right? Very active, very busy at the surface. Lots of waves. but down at the depth of the ocean, very quiet, very calm, right? You'd have no idea what's happening on the surface if you were down at that level. Now, our mind is like the ocean. We have all these layers in the mind. So we experience life, 99% of the time, up on the surface level, right?

Making lists and plans, decisions, always going. That's that articulated level of thought. We're kind of communicating and navigating. But as we settle down the mind, as we go beyond, transcend literally means to go beyond. As we practice this technique, our mind very naturally and very spontaneously starts to settle to these quieter and quieter and quieter levels of thought, our own thinking process. We go from articulated level to this more abstract level of thinking, to this fine feeling level. We could call that level of intuition or perception until we actually transcend all of those.

And we can have this experience of pure consciousness, pure awareness, pure being. And that is the fundamental level of our mind from which all thoughts come. Now, if I were to tell you, okay, do that, you can say, well, how do I do that, right? How do I get my mind there? So TM is a technique very simply that just allows a mind. to go there. Now, this doesn't mean that we are trying to have some experience of complete quiet or stop the thoughts, right? The mind is designed to think, 70 to 80,000 thoughts every single day. It's designed to think and produce ideas to engage with the world, right? That's how we process

information. But this technique is just allowing all of that to happen and then spontaneously, the mind begins to settle on its own. And I'll get into that a little bit more detail about how that's happening. But quite simply, when people come in and they say, well, how do I get there and stop the mind? You don't have to do anything. This technique, if that's right, essentially does that for you. Let's talk CBD, okay? I have been missing out on this one because, I mean, frankly, I didn't want to get like a CBD smoothie. Those are really big in L.A. and end up getting high or something. There's always been some concern over THC content and not knowing a exactly what you're going to get with CBD, but not with Ned. So Ned is the highest quality,

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You make it sound so appealing. But yeah, it's so true. It is so simple. And it happens, or at least in my experience, I won't speak for anybody else. But it happened so quickly for me. I mean, I went to the four day, you know, it's four days, right? I can't remember. Yep, yep. Of just a couple hours a day, learning from a certified teacher. And it was on like the second day that I was like, oh my God. I mean, and it's effortless. That's the amazing thing. That's the key. Yeah. And, you know, you bring up a good point. So T.M is, you know, some people will say, and maybe you've gotten this question, why can't you learn TM from a book, right? Why can't I just go online and find out how to do it? T.M is, firstly, it's not a new thing. This has been around for 5,000 years. This is a really ancient technique. And it was brought to the West by Maharishi Mahashoggi, who was the founder of this technique. He was a monk and also a physicist. And he brought this technique out and then trained teachers to teach in this very systematic way. And the reason that we teach in this systematic way is because we want to keep that integrity of this entire 5,000-year tradition that's been passed down, teacher-to-student, we want to keep that pure and intact, right, so that there isn't that risk of the game of telephone, right, where you're going to do something wrong or miss some part of it. So TM is always taught by a certified teacher, always over four consecutive days. So first day is the instruction like you had one-on-one with your teacher. Then the next day you come back.

And now we're going into sort of more detail. How do I know if I'm doing this correctly? What should I experience? What should I be doing, right? How can I tell that this is working for me? Then the next day you come back. And now we're talking about consciousness and our nervous system. So what's actually happening in the mind and body when we meditate?

What are the effects, right? And then the final day you come back and now we're talking about how can TM be part of your life going forward, right? Because again, we're not just meditating for 20 minutes so we can feel good and then we're back into the craziness. We want that effect to continue, right? We're meditating so that we can have this amazing life where we feel good and peaceful and not gripped by everything else around us. We want to have that calm all the time. So those four days are really important. It's this sort of great combination of your personal experience, right?

I don't tell you what to experience. You have a completely unique personal experience. And then the intellectual understanding. So experience and understanding by the end of the four days, you're completely solid, right? You can meditate on your own like you have forever, right? Yeah. So let's get into what actually happens. you mentioned what happens to your mind and to your body. And I remember, I remember my teacher

talking about like inward and outward strokes, I think. I may be remembering wrong. And something that I experience, like, I experienced such profound stress release and like trauma release over the years, not immediately. And I think I could be totally butchering this, but that was an outward stroke, right? Things releasing your body and also simultaneously releasing your mind. So, Can you talk about that? Absolutely. So when you learn TM, first of all, we would get way more in depth about this. But I can speak really generally about this process because it's an important key component

of what we're doing here. And I love that you said that, you know, stress relief. So I always say this isn't a stress relief technique. It's a stress relief technique, right? We don't care how the stress got in there. We are just wanting it gone, you know. And we use this analogy. a lot of a washing machine.

We're essentially, when we practice this technique, we are allowing the body and the mind to operate together, sort of like a washing machine. Now, during the wash cycle, things could get pretty wild in there, right? And there's the rinse and the spin. But at the end of the wash cycle, the clothes are clean. So during the practice of meditation, essentially what we're doing at a very fundamental level

is we are giving the body very profound rest. So our sympathetic nervous system, which is always in that, you know, that's that fight or flight response we're familiar with, that sympathetic nervous system, which is pumping out the adrenaline and the cortisol, starts to downregulate in the practice of TM. And our parasympathetic nervous system, which is responsible for conservation and rest, starts to upregulate.

So during the practice, we can actually be flooded with our own, internal pharmaceutical of dopamine and serotonin as a sort of reset to the system. And just like you mentioned this inward and outward stroke, when we meditate, mind and body settle down together. They're intimately connected. We start to release deep-rooted stress. Now stress, we could think of as something foreign to the system, right? It's not supposed to be there. In our culture today, in our society, there's a lot of emphasis on running on adrenaline and we have to work really hard we do this stuff get results now people are starting to realize oh wait you know that's not the right

way to go about things maybe if I you know struggle and suffer maybe I'm going to feel worse so what TM does is it takes that pressure off we do not have to try we do not have to do or to push the rock up the hill, we're actually letting the mind and body work together. So when the mind and the body work together, we get this profound rest and we start to release stress. And then that's that outward stroke. We have some experience in the meditation, which can be indicative of stress release. So it's this beautiful process that happens. Again, naturally, we kind of stay out of the way and we let it work for us. Whether you're looking to cut down on sugar, load up on protein, or you may be going keto or plant-based,

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we're all expected to operate on, people are suffering the ramifications of having this overload of stress all the time. And so it seems like everybody is dealing with some kind of health issue, dealing with emotional issues, and they're all looking for the solution. And I see this meme, or maybe it's like a, I don't know if you follow Dr. Mark Hyman. I don't know if he does TM, but he talks about meditation a lot. And he's like, if there were a pill that could improve your sleep, improve your mood, alleviate stress, you know, do all these things that TM does because it's, it's tentacles reach every aspect of your life.

you would take it, right? And I think like, at least for the people who follow me and people who I talk to, I think the thing that gets them about TM, well, there are two things. And I'm sure you hear this all the time. Nobody has 20 minutes twice a day. They feel like they don't have 20 minutes twice a day. And the payment structure. Totally.

So can we talk about this? Let's talk about it. Absolutely. So let's talk first about this 20 minutes twice a day. So, yeah, I mean, I get it. And, you know, when I, again, I had this unique background in TM, but then I was busy working and I felt like that's a lot of time. It's very easy to get in that mindset that 15, 20 minutes is too much time to spend away from being productive.

So I'll say this. You know, TM is practiced ideally 15, 20 minutes twice a day. And the reason that it's twice a day is because, like I mentioned before, we're not doing this technique so that we have this relaxation period and then we just kind of forget about it and go back into life. The idea with TM is that it's cumulative so that you practice in the morning, then you go out into whatever activity you're doing and you have that, again, outward stroke of life. And then at the end of the day, you come back in. And what's happening is the body is getting used to this experience of diving within and settling down. And so over time,

And that's where now we have a physiology that can maintain that inward, we could call it restful alertness or that inner wakefulness, that silence, that coherence all the time. But I tell people all the time, even if you can't do 20 minutes twice a day, no, even one meditation a day will be effective. But ideally it's twice a day. Now, it's just like anything, right, if we're going to start a new exercise program. We can't just exercise once a week and feel like we're going to get results. So ideally we want to do twice a day. But people find often that just making that commitment to themselves of taking the time, for one thing, it doesn't feel like a struggle when you sit down and do it, you know,

compared to other meditations or just, okay, sit still for 20 minutes. It feels really good. So it starts to become something where people find quite quickly like, yeah, I actually feel it when I don't meditate. I feel it when I just sort of am constantly outward. I don't take that time for myself. So it's just a habit, right? Like we all brush our teeth.

We wouldn't think about leaving the house without brushing our teeth. It feels off. And so the same thing can happen with meditation and does happen where, you know, if I somehow, you know, miss a meditation, very rare. Or I go a few hours without meditating. I just feel like off, right? Not to say we become dependent on it, but it becomes something that feels so good. So it can be manageable. I also, you know, we teach people surgery.

right or doctors, nurses, people who don't have that time. They're on the clock all the time. And even, you know, people will, people, we've taught people, they'll say, you know, I'll go into a file closet and I'll sit on the floor for five minutes, just to get that little bit of reset. And that's absolutely okay. But I like to say that it's not like a quick fix, this technique. It's not like, okay, I'm feeling really anxious and stress. I'm just going to meditate and then that's it. It's something that builds over time. Yeah. Yeah. My dad, my parents, started doing it around the time that I did it. My dad's a doctor. And he was joking about like putting a sign on his door that said like, don't come in. The doctor's meditating. But he found a way

to do it. And like my husband as well, my husband always jokes that like, and his assistant jokes, he has to schedule his pee times in. I mean, he's so busy. They have to chase him down the hallway to like talk to him. And he does it. You find the time. It's like if you want to do something, if it's important to you, you find the time. You wake up 20 minutes earlier and you carve out the time if you can in the afternoon. Absolutely. I love that. I always help people to put it on your calendar, make that date with yourself, find the time.

And it will become a habit just like anything else or tack it onto something you do, right? Before you eat breakfast every day or before you eat dinner every day, you just do your 20 minutes. And it makes such a difference. So it is. It's about just prioritizing, but it quickly becomes something where you find, or how I could live without it. Yeah. And then the second question, the cost structure.

So I get this question a lot. And it's interesting because, you know, I totally understand how we can feel like, well, if this is something that's so easy and so effective and so great, why don't we give it away for free, right? Why doesn't everyone just do it and teach it? And why does there have to be some monetary gain in there that makes it sound like something it's completely not? But I like to think about it this way.

So if we think of something else that's simple and natural and something that we need, we could use the example of clean water, right? We all need clean, pure water to drink, right? Now, we could say that should just be free. All right, we should just have it. But in order to get that clean, pure water, there needs to be some infrastructure in place to make sure that the water is pure to make sure someone's checking that there hasn't been something put in the water, that we can get the water to our door, that we can get it to everybody who needs it. So in that same way, there's an infrastructure to TM. I mentioned earlier that purity of the teaching that we teach in a very systematic way.

It's important that this remains intact. And there's so many meditations out there, some very, very valuable meditations, others that maybe don't really do something. We like to say there's thousands of rivers through the ocean, right? There's so many ways to get to this place that we're all trying to get to and they're all trying to go. But this technique, again, is very simple but very profound. So the teacher is able to guide you through your experience to make sure that you're continuing to have that correct experience. And the things don't go off, that we don't start working or trying or doing something that could actually cause strain.

So it's really important that we have that infrastructure set up to, be able to provide PM. The second thing is we want to make sure that this is easy for everybody to afford. And we have a cost structure that's based on income level to make sure that everybody can do this. It's a valuable technique, but some amount of money can be put down depending on how much you make. And so you can pay once or you can pay over four months. And we have scholarships and we have grants. You know, a lot of people right now obviously are going through hardship. And it's a very tough time, a lot of unemployment. And this is a time when people need a technique like TM more than ever.

And so we've been receiving a lot of interest, which is wonderful. And we do provide some grants and some assistance. And we provide some of the TM centers are able to provide this sort of less amount for people who need it. So bottom line, it's such an important, beautiful, effective technique. But there needs to be some infrastructure to keep. it intact so that when you learn TM, it's that same technique that was delivered 5,000 years ago to the first student. Yeah. And in your defense, it's an investment. I mean, it's an investment in your life. It is one of the most valuable things I've ever invested in, you know? And then

kind of conversely, I think the fact for me, the fact that I paid for it, incentive advised me to stick with it in the beginning. I mean, yes, a few days in, it was so profound. But, you know, those days when maybe I felt like I was too busy and I had to go do this or do that, it's like, no, actually, I paid some good money for this. I should do this and stick with it. So I think it does kind of help in that way, which is kind of interesting. Completely. Absolutely. Absolutely. Right. It's a valuable thing. And you paid money to have this thing. So you feel like, okay, I want to use it. And the other thing with TM, it is absolutely an investment, and it's an investment for life. You know, you pay one time.

You pay for your four-day course. And then you have access to TM teachers, PM centers, anywhere in the world for free for the rest of your life. Right. And that's part of the package. So I've had hundreds of students and they at any moment can reach out to me and just say, hey, you know, I have a question about my technique or feeling, I don't know. And we do a little tune-up, right, for life. And that makes sure that's different than if you were going to take some meditation class, like $20 a class, right?

Right. Free forever. And then we do all these amazing benefits. We have advanced lectures and one day retreat and group meditation. So it's sort of a vibrant community that you can take advantage of or not, but you have that option. Yeah. Yeah, that's interesting. I'm thinking about like the parallels with recovery a little bit.

It's like, you know, one of the big components of that is fellowship and that sense of community and like-minded people. And you kind of get that with TM as well. So we don't have too much time left, but I do want to go into some of the studies. And I don't know if there are a few that you could talk about that are, I don't know, the standout studies about, you know, the long-term effects and short-term. I don't know. Yeah, I'd love to. I'd love to. So again, hundreds of scientific research studies, and many of these have been published in peer review journals. So if people are fascinated on this side of TM, you can go learn more at TM.org slash research. There's tons of studies out there. But some of my favorite are, I mentioned the aging one. So I mentioned that it's, you know, practitioners five years or more can have this younger biological age. They've also looked at aging. in almost every category. So they've seen that people who practice, again, I think about five years or more,

show a reverse in aging across cardiovascular efficiency, blood pressure. Typically these things go up as we age or shift as we age, and we see the reverse effect in people that are practiced in TM, better vision, better hearing, even these intellectual qualities, intelligence, creativity, that are reflexes. So we're seeing that, again,

from that very simple principle that we're giving the body fundamental rest, the body gets this reset. And now we're seeing the physical effects on our physiology. A few other studies that I love, I mentioned a little bit briefly about the coherence that happens in the brain. So one of the things that makes TM unique compared to other meditation is the specific type of brainwave signature that shows up when we practice. So there's many kinds of meditation. I didn't get into that in too much depth, but I'll briefly say there's three main categories of meditation. There's concentration, just like a focused attention meditation. This could be like your classic meditation of staring at a candle flame or focusing on your breath. And any time your mind starts to wander, you focus back in,

focus back in. And this type of meditation produces a specific brainwave called gamma wave, very high amplitude, high frequency brainwave. Same brainwave produced if we're doing like a math problem or focusing it. And these meditations can often be challenging because it's that type of situation. We're asked to do something that we don't want to do. The mind wants to move, but we have to focus. I don't want to feel like I'm doing a math problem. Right. Exactly. Who does? I think, you know, some of these meditation techniques can be attractive to people who really like a discipline approach. For many of us, we want to feel really good. Yeah, no, that's giving me anxiety. It is, right? And I mean, already in our life, we feel like there's so many things telling us,

oh, we're not good enough at this. We're not doing well enough at this. No, another meditation that's telling, oh, we're not doing this perfectly. That's hard. Kind of having the opposite effect. And actually studies have shown when comparing PM to these types of meditations, PM is two to three times more effective at reducing trait anxiety. That's the general anxiety that we have. And these other meditations can actually increase that anxiety a little bit. Now, the second category of meditation is contemplation, right? And this could be where mindfulness comes in, perhaps, or any guided meditation, maybe you're scanning the body or you're walking on a beach or you are observing your thoughts as they come in. And these meditations produces different

type of brainwave called a theta wave, actually the same brainwaves produced them with dreaming. And these can be beautiful at sort of bringing us into the here and now and allowing us to be in the present moment. But what both of these meditations do is they actually keep the mind on the surface, like the surface of the ocean, right? They're keeping us focused, either focusing, focusing, focusing, or consciously and intentionally observing the thoughts and the processes of our mind. TM is in a third category. It's called automatic self-transcending. And we're actually using the nature of the mind, which is to seek more, seek something more engaging, more fulfilling, more nourishing, more satisfying, more powerful to go within. So these types of meditations are

often studied compared to see how effective they all are. And I mentioned PM two to three times more effective at reducing trait anxiety, two to three times more effective at giving deep physiological rest. So again, mind and body are intimately connected. If we allow the mind to go beyond that surface level, the body is going to follow. That's where we get that down regulation of the parasympathic nervous system. So incredible rest to our physiology. That rest then produces huge results to our health. One thing I always mention is that doctor, are now able to prescribe TM to patients. I see a lot of people, right?

Isn't that amazing? You know, there's been so many studies on high blood pressure and TM reduces high blood pressure just as much, if not more, than medication. And so the American Heart Association gave the stamp of approval for doctors to actually prescribe this to patients. So I love this, right? We're moving away from meditation towards meditation. So incredible results.

And again, people come in through doctors for everything like chronic pain is a big one or depression, anxiety, because it affects stress affects all of these areas. And then the deep rest from TM is able to relieve and release all of this built up stress. I also always talk about this optimized brain functioning. So usually when I teach, I often have someone in my class who's maybe more on them or more. spiritual side of meditation and then someone who's maybe a little bit more skeptical, right? And they're like, I don't care about this. I want to science. So one way we can look at what's happening is this optimization of our brain, right? And this is often when people who are, you know, in very, very high pressure jobs and they want to use TM to optimize what's going on. And this is,

you know, Ray Dalio, for example, the big advocate of TM. And so TM has incredible correlation with being able to raise our intelligence, improve our coordination time, improve our ability to think more clearly. And it's all because of this coherence that's created in the brain while we're meditating that then translates outside into meditation. So my final point on that, I mentioned the two types of brainwaves that are produced, gamma waves from focused attention and beta waves from concentration. So there's a third brainwave that's produced with TM. And it's unique to TM. It's called Alpha One. And these brainwaves only show up when the body is experiencing very deep rest.

And yet the mind is active. It's awake. It's alert. Right. We're not sleeping. We haven't gone anywhere. We're still completely awake. And yet the body is acting like it's in a very, very deep state of rest.

So we have this dichotomy, very active mind, very sharp, very focused brainwave activity and very, very settled physical body. And then we get this alpha-1 brainwave coherency. So what we see when we study someone's brain who's been practicing TM, if you were to put an EEG cap on, which is how we measure these brainwaves, electro-encephalograph, little electrodes measuring areas of the brain, someone who's practicing TM has coherent brainwaves showing up all over the brain instead of some activity in one region,

some activity in another region, very little connectivity. When someone's practicing TM, we see these alpha-1 coherent brain waves across the entire brain. That's known as EEG coherent. What's more fascinating is they've done studies to see, okay, well, that's great that that's happening in meditation, but what about outside? And they've seen that for people who've been practicing for, again,

five years or more, when they come out of meditation, to keep the little EEG cap on and they do a simple task, those alpha-1 coherent brain waves remain. So now outside of meditation, we're experiencing that same coherency as we are inside. And again, that's the goal, right? We're looking for complete optimized brain functioning, a brain that can act coherently, just like we want perfect physical health. We want perfect mental health.

And we get that through this practice. And then it, you know, filters out into the rest of our life. Yeah, it absolutely does. It's like what I said before. It kind of touches every aspect. And it's so amazing. I just want to check my Instagram because I had, I put up a story that we were doing this and gave people an opportunity to send in questions if they had them. So let's see. I'm sure we covered all of them. So somebody's asking how to do it without a guide, which we kind of talked about. But she's also asking about the mantra. So this is something we didn't really talk about. Yeah. So again, I'll kind of touch on it briefly. TM, I mentioned these three kinds of techniques. So TM uses a mantra. Now, there's a lot of mantra-based meditations out there, right? So that in itself is not unique. Lots of mantras, if you've done like a Deepak Chopra meditation or something like that. People even come up with their own mantra. But the mantras in PM are different. They're very unique and they're very specific. And they're a sound essentially that has no meaning, no meaning. And this sound, very scientifically proven effective sound, allows the mind to transcend. Now, one way we think about mantras, you could think about it like blood type, right?

If you needed a blood transfusion, you would want to get the right blood type, right, to make sure that transfusion works. So same thing with this technique. These specific mantras are chosen for you by your teacher. We have a very, again, systematic way, very objective way of deciding. So it doesn't matter. You're not going to get the wrong mantra. We make sure it's absolutely perfect for you. But that mantra is just allowing the mind and body to work together.

And they're very powerful, I would say, in the sense that they have no meaning. This isn't something we're chanting to get a specific effect. as some mantra medications are. This is something that's actually very mechanical. It's a very mechanical technique. So we guide you and how to use that so that it works for you every time. Yeah, it's funny. I was talking to somebody who I think I would probably classify as a TM skeptic.

And he was like, well, how do you know that they're just not giving everybody the same mantra? Because you don't tell anybody else your mantra. And they were like, what if everybody has the same mantra? Right. I don't know. Yes. People, people always think they're like, well, you know, you're just making it up on a spot or everybody has the same one. Yes, it's very personal and it's very private to you. One way I like to describe this, you know, if you had a seed and you're going to plant the seed, you bury it, you water it. You don't block it out and check it if it's growing. You leave it there, right?

That's where it does its work. It becomes a plant. So same thing with our mantra. It's very unique. It's very specific and it's very personal. And just like the blood type, there's a set of mantra, there's a large number, but there isn't one for every individual in the planet, right? But there are many, and that specific mantra is chosen for you at that time that you learn, and then you keep it. And you keep it private for many, many reasons, but it's most effective when it's used correctly, which is internally, right? Tien is a silent technique. We're not speaking this out loud. Right. Well, it's such a beautiful thing and it's funny because I've been doing it for a few years and I was feeling like, well, maybe I need like a tune up and I probably do. But even just this conversation kind of re-inspired me and I'm sure it's going to inspire a lot of other people. So thank you so much and it's so amazing what you're doing. Thank you so much. I'm so happy to. And you know, if you ever want to tune up, please reach out because they're really, they're really amazing. They're like a little reset for your practice.

But I'm so happy to be able to talk about it today. Yeah, I'm going to message you offline. Thank you so much. It was so good talking to you. Thank you so much. I hope you enjoyed that episode. If you liked it, and if you like the show in general, please take a second to rate, review, and subscribe.

It goes a long way, and it's actually the best way to support the show. Also, if you want to see more about each episode, You can head over to The Blonde Files podcast on Instagram. I'm always posting about each episode there or over on my personal page at Ariel Laurie.