Helping Health Professionals Combat Stress & Increase Resilience

Around the world, Health Professionals are dealing with exceptionally high uncertainty and stress which has a detrimental impact on our physical and mental health. Stress creates a fight-or-flight reaction which keep us safe in the short term but chronic stress can lead to insomnia, anxiety, depression, burnout, heart disease, cancer, digestive problems, empathy fatigue and other relationship problems.

Transcendental Meditation (TM) is an easy, pleasant, scientific technique that is uniquely effective to counteract the negative effects of stress, restore our health and happiness and increase our resilience going forward. Worldwide 6 Million people have learned TM and more than 50,000 in New Zealand. More and more, health professionals around the world are supporting TM as uniquely more effective than other meditation or relaxation techniques and in the US, nurses even get Continuous Medical Education credit for their TM course.

What do Health Professionals who practice TM say?

“I am a retired NZ Registered Nurse. I have practised TM for 40 years and found it to be an amazing career support tool.”
Steve Townsend, retired NZ registered nurse

“My resilience has improved. I’m feeling a little bit calmer and more relaxed and strong, having inner strength. It’s a nice feeling to have and it’s making me do my job better and making me a bit better at home as well.”
Sarah, Accidents and Emergency Doctor 11 days after learning TM

“I have been recommending Transcendental Meditation to my patients for the last 30 years. In my experience, anybody who suffers from a disease created or aggravated by stress, finds relief from this simple technique.”
Dr. David Lovell-Smith, MBChB, Christchurch GP

Formal recognition from the medical world

Around the world, more and more health professionals are starting to prescribe TM as a tool to help patients and themselves manage stress. Watch the video below to see TVNZ’s Breakfast show report on this.

“No other ‘stress management technique’ has anywhere close to TM’s amount of hard data in support of its claims to reduce stress.”
Dr. Norman Rosenthal, Psychiatrist, U.S. National Institutes of Mental Health

TM’s unique benefits are also getting more formal recognition from the medical world:

• American nurses get CME credit to learn the TM technique
• The New Zealand RNZCGP endorsed an expert TM seminar for CME credit
• The Belgian government reimburses 30% of the TM fee to prevent burn-out
• The American VA fully pays the TM course for veterans with PTSD
• In Switzerland, insurance provider Swica partially reimburses TM
• According to the American Heart Association, the Transcendental Meditation technique is the only meditation practice that has been shown to lower blood pressure and is recommended to be prescribed by doctors.Ref.Brook RD et al., Beyond Medications and Diet: Alternative Approaches to Lowering Blood Pressure. A Scientific Statement from the American Heart Association. Hypertension, 61:00, 2013.  The AHA statement said: “Because of many negative studies or mixed results and a paucity of available trials, all other meditation techniques [including Mindfulness] received a ‘Class III, no benefit, Level of Evidence C’ recommendation. Thus, other meditation techniques are not recommended in clinical practice to lower BP at this time. The AHA scientific statement also reported the finding that lower blood pressure through Transcendental Meditation practice is associated with substantially reduced rates of death, heart attack and stroke. The AHA scientific statement concludes that alternative treatments that include the Transcendental Meditation technique are recommended for consideration in treatment plans for all individuals with blood pressure greater than 120/80 mm Hg.”

What does the scientific research say?

More than 350 scientific studies from top universities like Harvard have been published in leading scientific journals the past 50 years documenting these TM benefits, including decreased cortisol Ref.Journal of Neural Transmission   Vol 39,1976, pp 257-267, improved sleep quality Ref.Anxiety, Stress and Coping: An International Journal   6:245-262,1993, reduced anxiety Ref.Journal of Clinical Psychology   45: 957-974, 1989, reduced depressionRef.Journal of Clinical Psychology   45: 957-974, 1989, reduced burnout Ref.Education  131: 556-564, 2011, reduced blood pressure Ref.Hypertension   26: 820-827,1995, reduced hospitalizations Ref.Psychosomatic Medicine   49: 493-507, 1987 (-87% for heart diseases, -55% for cancer), improved relationships Ref.Anxiety, Stress and Coping: An International Journal   6:245-262,1993 etc.


See here for the top 200 TM research charts and references or contact us if you have specific research questions.

Transcending = Easy to do

Many people have tried some form of meditation and have found it difficult to do. The good news is that TM is very different. It is a very simple, natural and effortless technique, that doesn’t require any concentration or controlling of the mind. TM is taught individually by highly trained teachers and this personal coaching makes it very easy to learn.

The technique is also easy to integrate in your daily routine as it is only practiced for 20 minutes twice a day, it is not religious, does not require any changes in lifestyle, does not require any difficult postures and can be done anywhere, including on the bus or train on the way to work.

Special 40% charity scholarships for health professionals

As we seem to be moving past the peak of the pandemic now, the NZ Transcendental Meditation​ organization is providing special 40% charity scholarships to any doctor, nurse or other COVID front-line staff that wants to learn TM to help with recovery from burnout, stress and all their side-effects in April to June 2022. The first step is simply to reserve a seat for one of our free intro talks below to learn more about what TM is and how it could help you.