Using Transcendental Meditation® in business

A Yonkers Roosevelt High School graduate who was chairman of the Southern Westchester Branch of the International Meditation Society, former international director of the Maharishi Corporate Development Program and built a career in researching and teaching Transcendental Meditation® believes businesses can benefit from its application. Craig Berg has taught the technique at companies large and small and himself has been practicing it daily for more than 50 years. He was personally trained to teach it by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi who achieved global recognition as guru to The Beatles. Berg has taught it in countries such as India, Brazil, the Philippines and Portugal as well as the U.S. He has a master”™s degree in Business Administration from Maharishi International University, and a doctorate in Maharishi”™s Vedic Administration from Maharishi European Research University. He has been doing advanced research in consciousness with the Maharishi Purusha Program based in Romney, West Virginia.

According to the American Psychological Association”™s Dictionary of Psychology, it is a technique of concentrative meditation for achieving an altered state of consciousness. The APA says that the modern version consists of six steps that culminate in sitting with eyes closed while repeating a mantra for two 20-minute blocks of time each day. A mantra is a word or sound selected to aid in concentration while meditating. Repeating the mantra blocks distractions and induces a state of relaxation.

“I”™ve taught in a lot of IT companies,” Berg told the Business Journals. “I taught several courses to Motorola executives and computer scientists and software developers. These software engineers would tell me … with the more settled expanded awareness they get from transcendental meditation, what used to take them three hours now maybe in 15 minutes they get an insight and they”™re able to accomplish it.”

Berg said that the technique enables people to do less in the way of expending time and effort while accomplishing more.

“The technique, aside from being merely a mental technique, it provides profound rest to the entire organism,” Berg said. “The body gets a rest in many senses much deeper than the deepest point of a full night”™s sleep and this relieves the deep-rooted stresses of the organism and makes the person more energetic and more resistant to disease. The scientific research has shown that medical utilization, hospitalization and hospital care is reduced by about 50% in people who have been practicing transcendental meditation.”

Berg said that the physiological state created through Transcendental Meditation® is the exact opposite of stress and allows the brain to act more efficiently with greater creativity. He said that artists report that within the first few days of learning it their use of color improves, perception is more refined and creativity in enhanced .

Berg said that it is taught in sessions over a four-day period, with individual instruction the first day and group sessions for the next three. He said that on the fourth day he always asks the group if they have noticed being less tired since being introduced to it and invariably they say they have.

“This is an amazing thing. I mean, think if you had a pill that could make everybody feel more rested and energetic in just four days. Everybody would want that pill,” Berg said. “Well, you know what? We”™ve got that thing and it doesn”™t have the side effects that many pills have.”

Berg said that use of Transcendental Meditation® helps companies reach their goal of having employees who are more productive.

Berg cited a program at the Montrose Veterans Administration Medical Center in Westchester where veterans suffering from post traumatic stress disorder learned it and within one month their symptoms were dramatically improved.

“The National Institutes of Health has given some $26 million in research on the health benefits of Transcendental Meditation®” Berg said. “Your workers are going to be healthier. The American Heart Association said that among all the different types of meditation and relaxation techniques transcendental meditation was the only one that showed very significant reduction in high blood pressure. So, healthier, happier, more productive workers.”

Berg said that a hedge fund that manages about $140 billion in assets has for the past 10 years been making it available to all of its employees.

“When I was in college and studied psychology they said we”™re using only 10% of our potential,” Berg said. “Imagine if the full range of the human potential were available. Obviously the person is going to be more creative, more productive. He”™s going to be less inclined to do something illegal because he now is able to fulfill his desires in a natural life-supporting way.”

Berg said there are nearly 700 published scientific studies about Transcendental Meditation® and many show that it provides a deeper quality of rest and a greater orderliness of the brain than merely sitting with one”™s eyes closed. He described sitting with one”™s eyes closed as like flying in a Piper Cub while it is like flying in a Lear jet.

Berg said that when he was teaching at a Transcendental Meditation® center in White Plains, he did a survey of former students and found that approximately 85% of them were continuing to use it. Berg recalled that Reader”™s Digest had reported it had the lowest dropout rate of all the different self-help modalities looked at by the publication.