Tag Archive for: transcendentalmeditation

How to Shift Teens from a Complainer to a Reformer?

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Learning to command change

Teens today can often be misunderstood. Their dialogues are quick to get emotionallyempowering teens charged and the older generation could describe them as complainers.  I would not argue with that label at times, but, as with all characteristics, it has a flip side that can be embraced. We have to ask ourselves, how do we as adults help to empower teens to become reformers and not complainers?

Teens will at times find complaints about life inside their social circles, family life, or at school. As parents we wish we could tell our kids to demand a higher expectation or outcome for their life and from their friends. Instead of complaining we want to shift their perspective to the status of a reformer who can take charge of their life and do what needs to be done. So how can the change be made from a complainer to a reformer?

How to become a reformer

The definition of a reformer is a person who makes changes to something in order to improve it. As a teen this can be done by becoming highly alert to your surroundings and its context.

“When you start to feel yourself wanting to complain or are unhappy with your current situation, stop and examine those feelings. Ask yourself, what can I do to change this?

empowering teensIf it feels like something is out of your control, find someone with a higher amount of control and approach them to make the change.”

Even if the teen is unable to physically make the change, that doesn’t mean they can’t start a conversation with people who can!

The parents role

Instead of complainers, I advise parents to see your teens as reformers. Meaning that they’re not satisfied with the way things are because they know it could be better and are willing to work to change them. Feeling powerless is often the source of teen angst. Therefore parents need to put them in a position of power in which they can solve their own problems, as set up and modeled by the adults.

You can start in the home. Interview your teen, or start the tradition of family meetings, to see what they’re happy and unhappy with in the family setting. Having power at home can give them that boost of confidence they need to make changes at school or even in their social circles. A teens observations and demands for change come from a passionate belief that life should be as good for everyone as it has been for themselves.

This can be done by demanding equity and compassion in all areas of life. Becoming areformer is a powerful position from which to approach the wider world that our teens inevitably enter. Teens today represent a cross-section of the world across all parameters—women and men of color, a range of religions and ethnicities, national origins and visa

healthy teens at a party, empowering teens

statuses, complex family dynamics, sex and gender roles.

Challenging teens to do the work

We have many teens today that are willing to do the work to make the changes.  We must present them with the right challenges to get them moving in a positive direction. We want our teens to work hard and take full advantage of any opportunity or challenge put in their path.

Your teen can go from being a complainer to being someone who is willing to jump in and work hard to make that change happen, not perfectly from the beginning but ideally in the end.

Learning to be a reformer is never a clean and perfect process but we take and celebrate each small accomplishment along the path. Our role as parents is to call it out and say “I see your power in action, keep building on that!” Teens are going through many changes on the physical and emotional level. Help your teen by adding a tool for releasing stress into their daily routine. Click here to learn about Transcendental Meditation for your teen!

Interested in learning about how the hero’s journey narrative can help your teenager? Click here.

To learn more about Transcendental Meditation at our school, click here.

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Helping Teens Grow in Times of Crisis: The Hero’s Journey 

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How can heroic narratives help teenagers?

We can look at “the hero’s journey” as a framework for what we are collectively experiencing as a society today.  Joseph Campbell is perhaps the world’s most renowned expert healthy teens at a partyon mythology and advisor to the likes of George Lucas, who based Star Wars on this archetypal journey. As adults, we need to help our students/children find their own archetypal journey amidst the grief and loss they are experiencing. We seek to reframe these challenging times in a way that is realistic, while observing quarantine protocol, but also give them hope for the future.

I want to talk about what has become an important topic during this time of isolation: the social-emotional well-being of our students. The stress and anxiety that adults experience are felt even more intensely by our adolescents. They may express their feelings in ways that are hard to interpret and even downright exasperating. That’s why the Hero’s Journey  can be a useful template to young adults and I am including a diagram of the journey, as I think it might be helpful for you to share with your children.

The Hero’s Journey

The Hero’s Journey is a classic story structure that’s shared by stories worldwide. Designed by academic Joseph Campbell in 1949. Many author’s draw on it to illustrate a wide-ranging category of tales in which a character ventures out to get what they need, faces conflict, and ultimately triumphs over adversity. The Hero’s Journey can be broken up into 4 main parts.

heros journey for teens in crises

Part 1: The ‘Call to Adventure’

The journey begins with some event that pulls the hero away from the comforts of home into an unknown world. Resistance to the call (the pull to remain in a child-like state) is normal as venturing out into the unfamiliar can be a daunting task. According to Joseph Campbell there could be a supernatural guide or mystical item that encourages the hero to go forward.

 

 

Part 2: The Initiation

Once the call to adventure is accepted by the hero, the journey will be the ultimate test and reveal  their true nature. The trials experienced on this road will force the hero to lose old coping skills and be pushed to new levels of self discovery. All energy in this phase is concentrated on resolution. A humbling of our hero occurs when there’s successes and failures, discovering new values, beliefs, and gains a deeper wisdom because of this. In this phase our hero may find a mentor or seek guidance from a higher power to aid on their journey

One example of the therapeutic use of the Hero’s Journey is by the CRC Health Group , which includes a wildlife treatment program that helps over 30,000 people every day overcome addiction and related issues. Meghan Vivo reflects on this issue in her blog “Slaying the Dragon: Teens Embark on the Hero’s Journey in the Wilderness.”

“Although the mythological road of trials is made up of ogres, demons, and three-headed monsters, today’s teenage hero faces obstacles like overcoming his use of alcohol, drugs, or other addictive and high-risk behaviors. His battle is with himself.”

Part 3: The Hero’s Transformation

The actions taken thus far on the journey have deeply changed our hero. There’s an inner and perhaps outer transformation that takes place when all tasks have been completed. This is necessary before the hero can return home with an expanded vision of life, a matured understanding of self, and lessons that will enrich the family as well as the boarding students at Maharishi Schoolcommunity.

Part 4: The Return 

The hero has a transformed perspective and is therefore “reborn” into an evolved version of self. Meaning has been found in the hero’s life where before there may have been a sense of purposelessness. Our hero has triumphed over the enemy and has returned with the freedom to live.

Life slows down and growth speeds up

You may be wondering what all of this has to do with being a teenager during a pandemic. Well many who study Joseph Cambell have related the coronavirus to a similar catalyst in the Hero’s Journey, the dark night of the soul. Here is an article by Vogler that he wrote a number of years ago explaining the hero’s journey. The website actually includes a new article that specifically likens Covid 19 to the “dark night of the soul.” Vogler explains in the following paragraph what that means.

“If it (coronavirus) really is the global darker night where the self-destructive complexity became as bad as it could get and in order to survive we had to hit a wall, then the virus is going to remain long enough to complete what it needs to do to create the circumstances needed to complete our transformation.”

Today’s experience of isolation can push us to the brink of what we previously were comfortable with in our minds. Perhaps we are forced to examine unhealthy habits of eating, or parts of ourselves that need closer work. This anxiety and/or depression that people are experiencing can be channeled into a drive for growth, adventure and challenge. One way that inner growth can be achieved is through the Transcendental Meditation® technique. To transcend, by definition, means to go beyond human limitations and to break boundaries. At Maharishi School, we teach you a technique to break internal boundaries and to sink deep into yourself, to tap into your essence and live in a state of flow.

Consciousness-based education

To learn more about the Hero’s Journey during the coronavirus click here.

To learn about Transcendental Mediation at our school click here.

To learn more about our academics or to contact a member of our admissions staff, click here.

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Feel Stressed? Add Meditation To Your Quarantine Routine

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What if all of this is stressing you out???

With all of the news and social media overstimulating us, it’s normal to feel stressed. During this time we find ourselves searching for an inner state of calm. Sometimes we turn to forms of self care such as learning yoga, doing a face mask, organizing the house, or binge watching TV shows. While these things make us feel better on the outside, there’s a deeper

students meditate and release any feeling stress

level of stress that can be released. This can be achieved through the Transcendental Meditation® (TM) technique.

What is Transcendental Meditation?

The nice thing about the Transcendental Meditation® (TM) technique is that you can do it anywhere, at any time (even in the middle of a pandemic)! TM®  is a simple, natural technique that’s easily taught through one-on-one instruction by a certified TM® teacher. It’s not a religion, philosophy or lifestyle. To transcend, by definition, means to go beyond human limitations and to break boundaries.

Meditation + Online Learning

At Maharishi School, we teach you a technique to break boundaries and sink deep into yourself. Here, we believe that all parts of ourselves should be developed – the body, mind, heart, and consciousness, and, therefore, the practice of TM® is required for all students. Even our online learning day has time for meditation built into it!

To learn more about Transcendental Meditation at our school, click here.

To learn more about our academics or to contact a member of our admissions staff, click here.

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25 Celebrities Who Know Transcendental Meditation

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What is Transcendental Meditation (or TM)?

TM® (Transcendental Meditation) is a simple technique that is easily taught through one-on-one instruction by a certified teacher. It’s not a religion, philosophy or lifestyle. To transcend, by definition, means to go beyond human limitations and to break boundaries.maharishi school students meditating transcendence

At Maharishi School, we teach you a technique to break internal boundaries and sink deep into yourself. Here, we believe that all parts of ourselves should be developed – the body, mind, heart, and consciousness, and, therefore, the practice of TM® is required for all students. Our school day starts and ends with a few minutes of the Transcendental Meditation® (TM) technique.

To learn more, visit www.TM.org.

25 Celebrities that know TM:

  1. David Lynch
  2. Jerry Seinfield
  3. Oprah Winfrey
  4. The Beatles
  5. Kendall Jenner

  6. hugh jackman on meditation_2    “In meditation, I can let go of everything. I’m not Hugh Jackman. I’m not a dad. I’m not a husband. I’m just dipping into that powerful source that creates everything. I take a little bath in it. Nothing has ever opened my eyes like Transcendental Meditation has. It makes me calm and happy, and, well, it gives me some peace and quiet in what’s a pretty chaotic life!” — Hugh Jackman
  7. Clint Eastwood
  8. Mick Jagger
  9. Sheryl Crow
  10. Ray Dalio
  11. Ellen DeGeneres
  12. Cameron-Diaz tm trancendental meditation practices“Meditation is helping you to tap into something that’s already inside of you… that’s you, in essence. That’s something that was super-empowering for me once I grasped that.” — Cameron Diaz
  13. Heather Graham
  14. Tom Hanks
  15. Miranda Kerr
  16. Eli Leib
  17. Jennifer Lopez
  18. Lindsey Lohan
  19. Robin Roberts
  20. Eva Mendes
  21. katy perry on meditation interview“I start the day with Transcendental Meditation. It puts me in the best mood!” — Katy Perry
  22. Liv Tyler
  23. Donovan
  24. Lena Dunham
  25. Ben Foster

Why is it so cool to meditate?

We may feel very different from these celebrities but stress doesn’t discriminate between us and them. It doesn’t take being a celebrity to have the desire for stress release, inner peace, and stability in yourself. Anyone can meditate, anywhere, at any time! Meditation acts as a vehicle that drives you directly towards a more happy and harmonious body/mind/heart. Maharishi School also uses it to increase brain coherence with our students. Want to learn more about how it works with students? Inquire here.
Our faculty and staff enjoy the health benefits that come with practicing TM. In the December issue of Current Hypertension Reports, there was a published study finding that the practice of TM® reduces high blood pressure. If you’re interested in learning TM® click here.

 

To learn more about our academics or to contact a member of our admissions staff, click here.

To learn more about school events and student life, follow us on Facebook and Instagram.

 

Top 10 Tips for Creating a Balanced Teenager

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What is a balanced teenager?

When we think about what we want for our children, it’s nothing less than the best, whether that’s in school or quality of life outside of school. But when those teenage years come around it healthy teensalmost seems like our kids want the opposite of whatever we want for them, even when it’s for their benefit. This can be an extremely frustrating period for both the parents and the children. I believe it’s important to empathize with what teens are going through and this blog will give include helpful tips from Ayurvedic Health Coach Sankari Wegman. Ultimately you can’t protect your children from everything, and you shouldn’t try to! During the teenage years the best thing you can do is hold space for your teenager and be there when they need you.

 

The individuation process

Some may call it ‘teen angst’, but the scientific term is the individuation process. Carl Jung (a Swiss psychologist who founded analytic psychology) describes this process as;

 “Individuation is a process of psychological differentiation, having for its goal the development of the individual personality. In general, it is the process by which individual beings are formed and differentiated; in particular, it is the development of the psychological individual as a being distinct from the general, collective psychology.”

If you answer “yes” to any of the following questions, then it’s very likely your child is going through the individuation process.

individuation process in teens

  • Has your teen been spending more time isolated in his/her room?
  • Has your teen dyed their hair or drastically changed their outward appearance/style?
  • Is your teen not opening up like they used to?

What’s going on in their brain?

As adults we think with our prefrontal cortex, the rational part of the brain that responds to situations with good judgement. Our prefrontal cortex also provides us with an awareness of teenagers brainconsequences in the long-term. However teens process information with the amygdala, the emotional part of the brain. As you can only imagine, when you’re acting purely out of raw emotion, there can be less “thinking” and more “feeling” types of behaviors. This is very normal because the connections between the emotional part of the brain and the decision-making center are still developing and not always at the same rate! That rational part of a teen’s brain isn’t fully developed and won’t be until age 25 or so.

Top 10 tips for creating a balanced teenager

  1. Sleep: Create a regular sleep routine. As hard it might be to establish, going to bed before 10pm is ideal.
  2. Screens: Monitor use of computer/device screen time. Studies are showing screen time increases anxiety and focus.
  3. Volunteer: Encourage your teen to serve others. This will cultivate empathy and inspire your teen.
  4. Eating: Regular meals – no skipping allowed. Healthy, nutritious breakfast and a hot lunch.
  5. Yoga: Start the mind-body connection early on. Experience feeling good and connecting back to yourself. Once you see the progress, confidence increases. Yoga is great for cardiovascular health, click here to find out all the health benefits of yoga.
  6. Meditate: We recommend the Transcendental Meditation technique. It works like a charm!
  7. Avoid Caffeinated Beverages: Have your teen monitor their water intake (50ml per 100 pounds of body weight).
  8. Abhyanga: Encourage your teen to give themselves a daily massage before their shower. It’s a great way to purify any stresses out of their physiology. Click here to watch how to do this.
  9. Create a Vision Board: Get to know your child’s vision and passions by making a vision board. Parents can help their teen connect their actions with reaching their goals. If the parents make their own board, it can also help the teens make connections that help them relate to their parents.
  10. Consequences: Establish a set of rules or consequences that your teen needs to follow. This way if there is a misbehavior, your teen will know exactly what to expect in terms of disciplining from you and there won’t be any surprises.

maharishi school student doing yogateen exercising teens happy and being silly at winter formal

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