Yes Even the Trump Family Meditates
Two articles: the first on David Lynch’s TM charity in Washington, DC and the second on Ivanka Trump’s twice daily meditation practice, originally posted at Ivanka Trump’s Team blog.
So let’s stop pretending that meditation is a measure of anything, of your ethics or values, of your standing as a “good person” or a person of conscience or an ‘awakened being’. I mean think about it: the ever so rich and greedy Ivanka Trump meditates, so does Jared Kushner, who is under investigation by the FBI for criminal collusion with Russian neo-fascists. So did Hitler, as Rev. Kyodo Williams likes to point out. The fact that you meditate is not an indication of anything but your own capacity for self care. Good for you. If you really want to a measure that you are an ‘awakened one’ or a person of conscience as a Buddhist, let it be the degree to which you can put aside self-interest and put the welfare of others first.
Celebs (plus Jared and Ivanka) turn out for the David Lynch Foundation’s first Washington fundraiser
originally published at WaPo June 5, 2017
Jerry Seinfeld and Jay Leno attend the National Night Of Laughter and Song event hosted by the David Lynch Foundation at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington on Monday. (Photo by Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images for the David Lynch Foundation)With Washington at what feels like peak stress (just check your Twitter feed if you’re not feeling it yet), Monday night was a moment for its antidote: relaxing meditation.
The David Lynch Foundation — a nonprofit started by the “Twin Peaks” director aimed at spreading the use of Transcendental Meditation to poor children in urban areas, veterans and victims of violence — held its first D.C. fundraiser, a celeb-studded concert at the Kennedy Center that drew an audience including first daughter/White House adviser Ivanka Trump and her husband and fellow West Winger, Jared Kushner.
Trump and Kushner (who are practitioners of TM) didn’t speak but sat gamely listening to performances by the likes of comedians Jerry Seinfeld, Jay Leno and Margaret Cho, actor Hugh Jackman, and music by Ben Folds, Kesha, and Angelique Kidjo.
No longer is TM seen as the exclusive terrain of crystal-bearing kooks — everyone’sdoing it these days, Seinfeld assured us during the pre-show red carpet interviews.
“Starting seven or eight years ago, there are very few top athletes or top business people who don’t have any meditation technique,” said the comic, who began practicing TM in 1972. “Everybody has something now.”
Seinfeld is now a huge evangelist, and says he recently got A-list actor Tom Hanks — who had confessed to Seinfeld that he wanted to take a year off work to de-stress — “100 percent better” by getting him into TM.
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“I love it. I honestly could not do these things I do without it — I’m 63! I would be tired.”
Folds, too, extolled its benefits. He said he tried it after touring had taken a toll on his mental and physical health. “I came out of my first week with it not white-knuckling the steering wheel in traffic, not having to return phone calls immediately, and the knock-on effect was far better decisions than I had been making,” he said.
Jackman and his wife, Deborra-Lee Furness Jackman, said they even invite friends over for meditation sessions (the technique involves two 20-minute sessions of meditation daily). “We do shots before and after,” Jackman joked. “But in between we’re very still — no drinking.”
Though TM clearly has its celebrity devotees, the point of the fundraiser was to spread the use of TM to disadvantaged kids in city schools, veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress, and victims of domestic and sexual violence, noted foundation President Bob Roth. The foundation is opening an office on Capitol Hill, and organizers said the sold-out show would bring meditation training to 10,000 Washingtonians.
“We’ll be offering this to anyone and everyone who thinks they need some help,” Roth said.
#TeamIvanka Learned How to Meditate
Ivanka shared one of her favorite habits with the team.
Fun fact: Ivanka meditates twice daily—she even has her recurring twenty-minute sessions blocked off in her calendar. When she finds something she’s excited about, she has to share it (we’ve received emails from her at 11 p.m. with details on the latest thing she’s found and wants to try)—which is why our team found ourselves taking meditations this spring. Ivanka gave us the incredible opportunity to participate in a full transcendental meditation (TM) course, led by her friend, Bob Roth, of the David Lynch Foundation.
Each member of the team was treated to a one-on-one session with a trained TM instructor, where we were each given a personal mantra—a word or sound that, through repetition, helped to quiet our minds. We then meditated as a group each day for the rest of the week and learned about the many, varied benefits of TM (less stress and more productivity, among others).
Katie Evans, our art director, was totally into it.
Give it a chance
In our one-on-one sessions, our instructors started us off with three very short meditations. “After the first short meditation, I almost laughed when my instructor asked me how it was,” Katie said. “I felt the same as I had when I walked in. I wasn’t sure what I should be feeling. We did a couple more short meditations together before she left me alone to do a longer one on my own. I was able to let my thoughts flow and concentrate on my mantra slowly and softly. Somewhere in that last 20-minute meditation I lost myself and I felt very peaceful.”
It’s really good for you
Transcendental meditation is proven to reduce stress, anxiety, mood disorders, insomnia and hypertension. It reduces your cortisol levels (the stress hormone), lowers your risk of a heart attack and improves your brain function. Basically, it makes you healthier, happier and more effective in your day-to-day (who doesn’t want that?). Katie agreed. “Since starting to meditate, I feel calmer. My husband even said I’ve been more patient.”
You don’t need to clear your mind of all thought
“My instructor assured me it was completely normal for thoughts to come and go during my meditation.” Thoughts are totally normal and, in fact, are a sign that you’re doing it right.
Not every meditation will be life-changing
“After that first meditation, I felt like I was on a cloud. My mind was blissed out. Since then, I haven’t been able to get back to that level of peace, which has been frustrating, but my instructor said that it’s okay (and totally normal) to have a mix of good and bad meditations.”
It’s not easy for everyone
For some of us, it still hasn’t caught on. Everyone agreed that the toughest part is making time to fit it in. Even though she knew how beneficial it would be, Katie also struggled to make it part of her daily routine. “It’s actually been almost FIVE days since my last attempt (I tried on an airplane) and I can feel the difference of not doing it already. It’s silly that I can’t find that 20 minutes in the morning and evening.” But, hey, if Ivanka can make time for it, anyone can, right? Challenge accepted.
Engage! 
According to the tradition TM comes from, TM *does* change someone’s morality for the better. However, this is an incremental thing based on how the brain changes over time and not because the person is changing their moral code.
TM is the only well-studied form of meditation that does NOT reduce the activity of the brain’s default mode network, but instead (in the long-run) enhances it. This is perceived internally as the [eventual emergence of a sense-of-self that is not associated with “stuff.” This happens because the brain becomes accustomed to the DMN being active with less and less noise from other networks int he brain. The result is a more balanced, less noisy mode-of-functioning of the DMN and so a less noisy sense-of-self.
A more balanced mode of functioning of the DMN is associated in non-meditaon research with creativity and Eudaimonia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eudaimonia) — a desire to work towards the higher good:
Pleasure attainment or self-realization: the balance between two forms of well-beings are encoded in default mode network https://academic.oup.com/scan/article/12/10/1678/4035855
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Abstract
What is a good life and how it can be achieved is one of the fundamental issues. When considering a good life, there is a division between hedonic (pleasure attainment) and eudaimonic well-being (meaning pursuing and self-realization). However, an integrated approach that can compare the brain functional and structural differences of these two forms of well-being is lacking. Here, we investigated how the individual tendency to eudaimonic well-being relative to hedonic well-being, measured using eudaimonic and hedonic balance (EHB) index, is reflected in the functional and structural features of a key network of well-being—the default mode network (DMN). We found that EHB was positively correlated with functional connectivity of bilateral ventral medial prefrontal cortex within anterior DMN and bilateral precuneus within posterior DMN. Brain morphometric analysis showed that EHB was also positively correlated with gray matter volume in left precuneus. These results demonstrated that the relative dominance of one form of well-being to the other is reflected in the morphometric characteristics and intrinsic functions of DMN.
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The fact that mainstream research supports the claim that TM improves behavior is great, but there is no set timeframe for this behavior change to emerge and in fact, there is no conceivable way to tell what kind of behavior change will emerge, either. Every person on the road to enlightenment will find their own way of manifesting their evolution and it will manifest spontaneously as the person changes from within, not because someone wants someone to behave a certain way.