One of the many great things about meditation is that there's no one-size-fits-all formula. There are many different meditation techniques, many different benefits, and many different reasons why people meditate. Here are 13 celebrities who meditate, and 13 things we can learn about meditation from them.
- Angelina Jolie
You can meditate anywhere and find it everywhere. "I find meditation in sitting on the floor with the kids coloring for an hour, or going on the trampoline," said Jolie.
- David Lynch
Meditation can help you can do amazingly creative things. (Have you ever seen Mulholland Drive?) How is David Lynch so creative? Lynch attributes his creativity to meditation, as he's been practicing Transcendental Meditation for over 35 years.
- Hugh Jackman
Meditation can help you deal with anxiety. Hugh said that meditation "changed his life" and helped him deal with being obsessive compulsive.
- Adrien Brody
Meditation can help you prepare for a starring film role -- or just prepare, in general. In preparing for his upcoming role in Predator 2, Brody said he stayed in a hut in the jungle and "studied meditation techniques."
- Eva Mendes
Meditation can help you deal with everyday stress. Mendes said it helps her "deal with life's ups and downs, coming from more of a centered place."
- Howard Stern
Meditation may help you quit smoking. Stern said he quit smoking almost instantaneously after he began his Transcendental Meditation practice 36 years ago.
- Gisele Bundchen
Can meditation give you a supermodel-like figure after giving birth? Well, Gisele was a supermodel before giving birth -- but was able to lose her baby weight miraculously fast because of "eating healthily, meditating and doing exercises such as kung fu and yoga." (Paraphrased from Vogue Magazine)
- Adam Yauch
This Beastie Boy says daily meditation helps him in his struggle with cancer. Adam "pictures smashing apart all of the cancer cells in the world." Namaste to that.
- Russell Brand
Meditation can help you find your soul-mate. Russell Brand told fellow meditator, Howard Stern, that meditation helped him when he first met pop star, and now fiance, Katy Perry.
- Russell Simmons
Meditation can do all that, and then some... The hip-hop mogul on the benefits of meditation: "It has given me energy, strength, health, wisdom, and access to my own inner stillness, inner silence, inner bliss. It is my connection to myself; it is my connection to the universe."
- Tiger Woods
Things can go bad once you stop meditating. Yes, Tiger has said that he'd gotten away from his meditation practice and we all know what happened there.
- Gwyneth Paltrow
You can start meditating today. You know what Gwyneth Paltrow's 2010 resolution was? To learn how to meditate. So if Gwyneth just started, so can you. Here are some great meditation techniques from Deepak Chopra to get you started.
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One of the many great things about meditation is that there's no one-size-fits-all formula. There are many different meditation techniques, many different benefits, and many different reasons why peop...
One of the many great things about meditation is that there's no one-size-fits-all formula. There are many different meditation techniques, many different benefits, and many different reasons why peop...
Regarding "it's true that there are no studies on meditating for 6-10 hours a day, just as there are no studies on meditating upside down or while scuba diving or doing evilkinevil stunts on a motorcycle, because it's just not the standard TM program that is commonly taught (and is not recommended)"...
There are a great *many* people at MUM (http://www.mum.edu/) and the surrounding community who meditate/fly for at least 6 hours a day just *because* it's been recommended to them.
Regarding "people's experiences on TM "long rounding" courses are universally very blissful"...
I think that you're giving yourself away with that kind of language. Hyperbole's such as "universally" and "blissful" are TM religious dogmatic jargon (http://www.suggestibility.org/religion.php). And this is what commonly *really* happens: http://www.suggestibility.org/surprise.php.
"Universally blissful" I interpret as referring to the common experience of pure consciousness, not just in TM but in any form of meditation. It's an accurate choice of words. Throughout the literature of all traditions of enlightenment, transcending is described as universal—meaning, available to all human beings—and described in the same words: silent, harmonious, pure, and blissful.
You seem to be extremely angry, Joe. Maybe you ought to look at that.
My point was that more intensive participation *is* recommended. And it is. Vigorously. It is, after all, the *only* way to Save the World (http://www.invincibledefence.org/meffect.html) and to take us to "Heaven on Earth" (http://www.alltm.org/Maharishi/Heaven_on_Earth.html).
Are you agreeing with MonkeyVoodoo that "people's experiences on TM 'long rounding' courses are universally very blissful"? *Universally*? **Every single human being** who does this experiences "bliss"? *All* of them?
Here's what *really* happens to many of them: http://www.suggestibility.org/surprise.php, http://www.suggestibility.org/spiritualDarwinism.shtml. And it ain't blissful.
all meditation practices are good, but transcending thought and experiencing pure consciousness is the ultimate.
it's true that there are no studies on meditating for 6-10 hours a day, just as there are no studies on meditating upside down or while scuba diving or doing evilkinevil stunts on a motorcycle, because it's just not the standard TM program that is commonly taught (and is not recommended).
people's experiences on TM "long rounding" courses are universally very blissful. "the deeper you go, the higher you fly," as the song goes. i've been on so many of these retreats and never have i experienced anything unpleasant from extended meditation.
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Glorydog, you're using "Argumentum Ad Hominem", eh? :) (http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/ad-hominem.html)
You refer to this: http://skepticsontm.blogspot.com/2009/03/psychiatrists-perspective-on-down-tm.html. That is a remote psychic reading given by a psychiatrist who thinks that he can physically levitate (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrdxzjU_BeQ).
Kellett admits on his site that he had been suffering psychotic delusions for years. It is a given that TM does not cause pyschosis. No psychiatrist needs to diagnose Kellett to determine that. (See www.doctorsontm.org for an assessment of TM's effects.)
To accuse someone of believing they can "fly," on any rational grounds would require knowing the person being accused. Of course, Kellett doesn't know the man, and the unsound accusation is just more misguided anti-TM rhetoric.
Joe, I'd be happy to lean a helping hand if you want to climb out of your rabbit hole. And really, I wish you the best.
You say "It is a given that TM does not cause psychosis". "Given" by whom? Yes, what you say is indeed an article of faith in the TM religion (http://www.suggestibility.org/catch22.shtml and http://www.suggestibility.org/religion.php), but to someone not of that faith it is not a "given" at all.
The also-highly-credentialed psychiatrist who actually *talked* to me (a significant difference here because this wasn't a remote psychic reading) immediately after I got out of TM called it *induced* psychosis. **Lots** of heavily involved TMers go completely crazy (see http://www.suggestibility.org/surprise.php#HeavyUnstressing), and I was most definitely one of them. Anyone learning TM and participating past "twenty minutes twice a day" has a risk of becoming crazy eventually as they get more deeply and deeply involved.
But if you want to then indeed listen to a psychiatrist who thinks that this is literally "the first stage of levitation": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSsI0nXv2AM. (BTW the second and third stages of levitation are described at http://www.goldendome.org/EvolutionOfMan/index.htm; search for "Sidha State I" and go from there.)
And BTW these things can be discussed with other formerly heavily involved TMers here: http://tmfree.blogspot.com