CBS: Achievements of Maharishi School in Iowa
Transcript:
Journalist: In the most unlikely places, in the small city of Fairfield Iowa, this is the key to higher learning.
Maharishi School in Fairfield, Iowa
Journalist: Welcome to the Maharishi School and Maharishi University. Remember Maharishi Mahesh Yogi? Here a student practices his technique of transcendental meditation or TM for short.
Excellent achievements
Think what you will, headmaster Ashley Deans says the school report-cards speaks for themselves.
Ashley Deans: I’ve been here 15 years and I’m amazed every single day what these students accomplishe. When I go to a tennis competition, they say 'oh you're a tennis academy'. We've won seventeen state championships in the last sixteen years. If I go to speech and drama, they say 'oh you're a theater school'. We've won more of the top awards than any other schools in the history of the state. We've won the American high school math competition, four years in a row. We've won the science fair, ten times. We've won a junior science fair, years in a row.
Journalist: People listening or watching might say come on, meditation makes this kids perform better? Is that possible?
Ashley Deans: Yes, think of what the most people think, If you want to send your child to a good school, usually you're thinking they learn more. They learn more information, more facts, and they work harder. But what that creates is stress. It actually damages the brain physiology. What we do is something totally unexpected, we have the children doing nothing, literally.
A few minutes in the morning and in the afternoon, and what that does, it allows the mind to settle down to its quietest level. And just that experience enlivens the brain physiology and prepares them for activity.
Brain integration
Journalist: Fred Travis professor of psychology at Maharishi University says TM helps improve communication between different areas of the brain.
Fred Travis: In the rising and the falling of the (EEG) waves here, and in the rising and the falling of the waves here, so we see the front of the brain, the back of the brain being coherent, that means there're talking to each other. They are doing separate things yet they are completely integrated.
Journalist: What you're saying is that most of the people don’t have the front side and the back side of their brain integrated. Does TM meditation create that sort of relationship?
Fred Travis: Not so much creates but strengthens.