TM the Antidote to Killer Stress in Detroit School

For 140 students and teachers at a Detroit middle school Transcendental Meditation is the antidote to killer stress

University of Michigan researchers find twice-daily sessions help kids handle stress, feel happier, get along better with peers

DaimlerChrysler and GM foundations, civic leaders donate $300,000 for successful 6-year-old project

America’s schools are in the grip of an epidemic of traumatic stress. Poor test scores, anxiety and depression, high blood pressure, substance abuse, and violence are the devastating manifestations of this silent killer.

Now one remarkable middle school in Detroit is fighting back — with Transcendental Meditation.

At the Nataki Talibah Schoolhouse of Detroit, described by the Detroit Free Press as a “model charter school,” nearly 100 students, ages 10 to 14, practice the nonreligious, stress-reducing Transcendental Meditation technique together twice a day in the school gym. They are not alone. Over 40 teachers and administrators and dozens of parents at the school have learned TM as well.

And impressively, a recent pilot study conducted by the University of Michigan shows the meditating school kids are happier, have higher self-esteem, get along better with fellow students, and handle stress better than a non-meditating control group. In fact, the results were so promising that Rita Benn, Ph.D., research scientist and education director at the NIH-funded Complementary and Alternative Medicine Research Center at the University of Michigan Medical School, will hold round two of research on the Nataki students on June 2 and 4.

Funding for the six-year-old, $300,000 TM project and the research has come from the DaimlerChrysler Fund, the General Motors Foundation, and Detroit area civic leaders.

The U-M research is the most recent finding on the use of Transcendental Meditation in the schools. Previous published research has found improved test scores, lowered high blood pressure, and decreased substance abuse among students practising the TM technique.