An extensive body of research verifies that the Transcendental Meditation Technique has a profound beneficial effect on students— reductions in stress levels, increased alertness and vitality—resulting in many positive benefits in daily life.

Brainwaves and daily life: What happens when you meditate?
by Global Good News staff writer
25 July 2011

‘Have you ever wondered what happens inside a meditating brain?

‘I’d like to show you how the brain changes when a person begins the Transcendental Meditation Technique,’ says Dr Fred Travis, a brain researcher and director of the Center for Brain, Consciousness, and Cognition at Maharishi University of Management (MUM). Sitting next to him on stage before a group of new MUM students, first year student Dariana Travis wears a smile and a red cap with protruding electrodes attached to a computer. The sensors read the electrical activity of her brain, a test known as an electroencelphalogram or EEG.

For this demonstration, Dr Travis attached four sensors to four points on Dariana’s scalp: front left, front right, back left and back right. Dr Travis explains that the executive center of the brain is in the frontal region and the visual center is in the back. As four wavy lines proceed across the computer screen, Dr Travis says, ‘What’s going on in the front of the brain is different from what’s going on in the back.’ He points out the fast processing going on in the front indicated by an erratic pattern. ‘This is what your brain does when 450 people are looking at you.’

Dariana then closes her eyes and begins the Transcendental Meditation Technique. Instantly the brainwave patterns change. ‘The fast activity disappears and you see very slow rhythmical activity,’ Dr Travis notes. ‘This high amplitude rhythmical activity is alpha activity, and you also see it in all the different sensors,’ first seen in the back of the brain, but also a rhythmical alpha pattern in the cortex in the front of the brain. ‘The whole mental chatter that’s constantly going on—evaluating, deciding, planning, worrying—all of that is settling down.’

‘The point I wanted you to see is how quickly the brain changes and how it’s fundamentally different than just waking experience,’ explains Dr Travis. ‘This has very real benefits for you as a student. Experience changes the brain. You’re adding the experience of silence, but it’s not dull, it’s not passive. There’s a lot of vitality, there’s wakefulness there—alertness. That brain state and that experience is integrated, in a very systematic, practical real way in the ability to think and enjoy the world.’

What happens after you meditate?

What do these brainwave patterns seen during the practise of the Transcendental Meditation Technique mean in terms of daily life?

Troy van Beek, a Sustainable Living major from Michegan says he started noticing the effects of TM in his activity right away. ‘The sense of wonder, that you’ve kind of opened up a whole new envelope of understanding. You feel it in how you interact with people. ... I hate to say magic, but you feel it. There’s a sparkle in the air when and after you’ve meditated in how you perceive people, how you understand things.’

Marissa Markowitz, an MUM student from Iowa, says, ‘In TM you tap into such a deep level of rest. ...I always feel like I come out feeling really dynamic.  ... Because it’s that unified field, that source of ultimate potentiality, I come out just wanting to do everything!’

‘[TM] gets rid of blocks,’ says Anna Bruen, also a Sustainable Living major. ‘You know how you can get creative blocks, you kind of get stumped? I feel like those blocks get removed.’ Marissa agreed, ‘They just melt away!’

Amine Kouider, a Media and Communications major from Algeria, says TM helps people be more themselves. With TM, ‘You’re confident in yourself, you feel that you know what you’re doing. One wonderful thing is that you start thinking big, and have these great ideas, wanting to change the world and do big things. And you know that you have the ability to do it. You feel it within you.’

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