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Below Normal. Benson, an internist and cardiologist specializing in hypertension, became interested in the effects of transcendental meditation (TM) while investigating ways to modify high blood pressure. Knowing that the body prepares itself for "fight or flight" by increasing its oxygen consumption, blood pressure, heart rate and secretion of the hormone epinephrine, he theorized that it might be possible to reduce these metabolic factors below their normal rate. Eventually, he and his collaborators conditioned monkeys to lower their blood pressure in order to avoid a slight electrical shock. He then achieved the same result in human volunteers by using...
After hearing about Benson's work, several TM practitioners asked to have their blood pressure studied. Wallace and Benson, working independently, then conducted physiological tests on 36 subjects who practiced TM regularly. In a separate study, they asked 1,862 drug users who had also tried TM for at least three months to fill out questionnaires. "It was clear," he says, "that most were at one point heavily engaged in drug abuse. But practically all of them-19 out of 20-said that they had given up drugs because they felt that their subjective meditative experience was superior...
...drugs and alcohol, it could easily be taught to addicts. Unlike true yoga, it requires neither an ascetic life-style nor time-consuming preparations. Four one-hour lessons are enough to teach subjects the basic techniques-and lessons are becoming readily available. Yale University, for example, offers a complete TM course, as do U.C.L.A., the University of Colorado and others. Converts are also spreading the word. TM groups are being organized in cities across the country by an organization called the Students' International Meditation Society...
Benson remains cautious, however, about TM's value to addicts. "I cannot under any circumstances say that TM is an alternative to alcoholism or drug abuse," he insists. He points out that his study is "very biased" because it reported only on people who had learned meditation and continued to practice it; there was no control group of others who tried to end their addiction without the aid of TM. Also, Benson is careful to note, the reports of the 1,862 drug users were subjective-they merely answered Benson and Wallace's questionnaires...
...University of Chicago, like many another converted introvert, he woke up to performing. Wit is far more often a shield than a lance; " Mike set up a complex of defenses that (TM) made him the fastest tongue in the Midwest. The second fastest was a hostile = chick named Elaine May. It was love I at first fight. "Elaine held me like an autistic child," Nichols remembers. The child bride he had taken at 19 was cast off. Elaine became a surrogate, although, says Mike, "it was much too serious for marriage." And much too funny not to play...