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• Jim Carrey
  • Years ago when I was doing Andy Kaufman I learned how to meditate and it's been very valuable. (...) It's been around for a while but I think on a widespread level it's being picked up by everybody now; it's being understood as something more than some kind of religious nutty thing...it's a system of teaching yourself how to get into a state of relaxation that affects your entire life and the quality of your life. I do it, I've done it for a while, and I recommend it highly!

• Howard sternStern
  • Jerry Seinfeld and Howard Stern - Discussing TM
  • Howard Stern says it really helped his mother get out of a depression she was in after her older sister died (who she was extremely close to).

• Ray Dalio
  • Martin Scorsese & Ray Dalio on Creativity &Trascendental Meditation & Success
    

    • Bob Roth: (...) They practice transcendental meditation; Ray for over forty years and Marty since 2008.

      Scorcese: Yes, every day, twice a day, as much as I can twice a day. The thing about it is that there's kind of a peacefulness that I don't think I've ever achieved before, really. And I must say, it has made a major difference because, particularly in the morning, the amount of things that have to be done, and the things you have to worry about--suddenly it just comes together and you stop. I find that I can't do without it that way--literally.

      Dalio: I started in 1968 or 69 and it changed my life, because, like I was a very ordinary or sub-ordinary student, and it brought me a clarity, it made me independent, it made me free-flowing, it just gave me lots of gifts.

      Scorcese: I remember doing a film called "Yugo", which is a film we shot in three dimensions, and it would take about an hour to get to the studio. But in the morning I would get up maybe 45 minutes earlier to do meditation, before I was able to face that set, with children actors that can only work for like a minute, a dog that wasn't listening, Sacha Baron Cohen who was improvising everything, and everything in 3D, and overscheduled and overbudget. God there's only one thing you can do, is calm it down and get into it and deal with the realities. If there is something on my mind, if there is something I'm really worried about, in terms of the character development, or particularly a thematic issue, or just trying to get a shot done, literally it'll be "We can't do that, we don't have a hallway, it's got to be a track down a hallway, we have no hall." Now what? Well, what is it about? It's about his face. And so you just forget it, and you go into meditation (Dalio: That's it, and you come out with the answer.), and somehow something came out. I said, "Damn it, that's amazing!"

      Dalio: That's exactly what it's like. Because you go into that place. And actually the physiology of the brain, that comes from the subconscious, that's where your inventiveness / creativity / inspiration come from, so you just go in there and somehow you come out with the answer. From brain imaging they show that there are two big effects. The first is that your amygdala, the part that is causing you the stress, calms down and your prefrontal cortex lights up. And so that brings you an equanimity.

      Scorcese: If I don't do it, I tend to waste the time, the energy, the franticness, and things can be very very frantic. And that 20-25 minutes, whatever that is, is a Godsend.

      Dalio: The thing to convey is also how it compounds. So that it keeps getting better. Whatever amount that you're meditating, next year will be better and the year after that'll be better. So I meditate twenty minutes a day except if I've got a busy day, then I meditate forty minutes. So, experience it yourself, I mean, how much convincing do you need?

  • 2012.10.27 - Academy of Achievement - Discussion of TM
    

    • "In 1968 The Beatles went to India to learn how to meditate. I heard quite a bit about it; it was in the media. It was interesting; I learned how to meditate. And it was definitely life-changing. I would say that probably more than anything; it had a bigger effect on my life than practically anything, because of how it works. The way it works is it's basically open-mindedness; what happens is, normally you can't control your brain. If you were to sit down and say, "I'm not going to think", it will be filled with _stuff_, and it will jump all over, and you can't control it. So what happens is, this is an exercise that creates open-mindedness, because there's a word that doesn't make sense, which is called a mantra. It's a sound that you repeat; and so while your brain is wanting to jump all over the place, by repeating this sound mentally, it takes attention away from those thoughts. And then when you continue to repeat it, it goes away; and so there's nothing. And so you go into nothingness. Now, when you go into that nothingness, first of all, you've learned the ability to control your brain, so that you can go there; you can put things away, you can approach them in a certain way. When you go into that open-mindedness, you're going into your subconscious. So you're not a state of conscious--so I'm not aware, but I'm not asleep. Asleep is, you hear a sound you won't wake up. This is, if I hear the slightest sound, I'm attuned to it. So it's a state of subconsciousness. And there are different parts of our brain that have a very big influence on us. The amygdala is the part of the brain that has the flight-or-fight that produces anxiety; the prefrontal cortex is the part of the brain which we call for executive functioning. It's the part that's reflective. It's the part where we are calm, and we say "Do we want to do that? Do we not want to do that?" We put things in perspective. Those two parts of the brain fight with each other. In other words, the passion: "I'm going to do that because it's exciting", but it may be harmful; the other part of the brain says, "You don't want to do that." And so that whole emotional flight-or-fight part of the brain, during meditation, through brain imaging they see that that calms down, and the prefrontal cortex lights up. So that open-mindedness is where creativity comes from. Because creativity is not coming from the working the brain, and the "I will work hard and think about it and I will muscle it through". It comes from this relaxation; it's just like it's an opening up, and like: take a hot shower, and don't be thinking of something, and some great idea comes through, and you grab the great idea. So meditation is very much like that. It opens the mind, it creates an openness, a freedom in which that--I don't know whether we'd say intuition--that creativity comes through, and it creates an equanimity, in other words you can step back and you can put things in perspective. It doesn't lessen your emotions, the emotions are the same, but you can step back and say, "I'm not going to be controlled by that emotion". And that then helps you to see things at a higher level."

• Tim Ferriss
  • https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/7erct8/i_am_tim_ferriss_host_of_the_tim_ferriss_show_and/dq7o9ba/
    • Question to Tim: What concept or method that you've learned from the experts on your show took the longest for you to implement into your life, or felt the most forced,that ended up having the biggest effect?
    • Tim's answer: Definitely meditation upon waking. I was very resistant to this, viewed it as "not for me," and misunderstood the techniques and results that could be achieved in even 1-2 weeks. Taking a Transcendental Meditation class and using Headspace for their "10 in 10" (10 min per day for 10 days) helped to solidify the habit and showed me that meditation can really just = emotional non-reactivity training. This translates to every interaction you have and can dramatically impact almost every area of life.

Criticical Views of Transcendental Meditation

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