This is a transcript excerpt from a YouTube interview (Ben Greenfield with Philip Land) discussing brainwave research on Transcendental Meditation (TM). Philip Land describes demonstrations by TM researcher Dr. Fred Travis (PhD) showing EEG changes—within ~1.5–2 minutes of starting TM a subject’s brainwaves become more synchronous, reflecting a state of "restful alertness." The anecdote includes a staged demonstration at Maharishi University of Management in Fairfield, Iowa, with ~400 people present.
Questions this video answers
Dr. Fred Travis (PhD), a TM researcher and teacher.
Maharishi University of Management in Fairfield, Iowa.
About 400 people.
Within one and a half to two minutes.
I'll put my propeller hat aside here now for, for a second. But actually I wanted to ask you, do you know, have they studied brainwave response to tm? Like have they actually looked into brainwave studies and, and measured with EEG or anything like that?
Oh, yes, they have. I have several DVDs that I will play from time to time at some of the classes showing where actually our brainwave researcher that's also a TM teacher and TM meditator, his name is Dr. Fred Travis. He has PhD and he. On the little one DVD that I'll show, he has his daughter sitting up on stage in front of 400 people at Maharishi University of Management in Fairfield, Iowa. And he has her all hooked up with the brainwave thing and he has the computer monitors sitting there. And he'll say, okay, now Arianna, you know, this is what you're looks like when you have 400 people looking at you, the brainwave patterns. And she just has a certain scenario. And she said, he says, now close your eyes. She closes her eyes. And as soon as she closes her eyes and there's no external stimulus, her brainwave patterns will change. And he said, this is what you have when you have no external stimulus except for the auditory part. Then he says, okay, now Ariana, please go ahead and start practicing your TM. And she's sitting on stage in front of 400 people. Within one and a half to two minutes, you start to see on the computer monitor the brain waves lines becoming very synchronous, very harmonious. And as you talked about the alpha waves and the beta waves, those start to change that show that what is being experienced, we're being experienced. We don't make it happen, we just experience it. The state of restful alertness where the body starts to rest, the heart rate starts to slow down, the breathing starts to slow down. And yet the mind is also resting, but it's also still alert. You can hear sounds around you. I bet you heard some of the folks in the airport, didn't you?
Oh, you could still hear a lot of the things that are going on around you, but it's as though they're. They're kind of like in a different place. I think what I mentioned earlier was you almost kind of like rise above them and you.
