Sir Paul spurs suburban push for meditation in schools

More than 40 years ago, the Beatles created a media circus when they traveled to India to learn about transcendental meditation.

Today, Sir Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr will lead a celebrity concert in New York to raise money to teach meditation to school children.

At a news conference Friday, "Twin Peaks" director David Lynch, the event sponsor, called it a transition of meditation from an exotic oddity to a mainstream practice.

"Meditation is no longer mysticism," Lynch said. "It's not new age mumbo-jumbo. There have been 600 or 700 studies showing this is good for the human being."

A small group of suburban residents tried to build on the celebrity pitch in Schaumburg Friday by holding their own teleconference of the event.

Laurina Carroll, of Streamwood, who teaches transcendental mediation, or TM, hopes to bring meditation to suburban schools.

She plans to present a proposal to officials at Elgin Area Unit District 46 in the near future. Any program would be funded by the David Lynch Foundation, not by tax dollars, but would take up about 20 minutes of the school day.

Meditation is taught under the program at about a dozen schools nationwide, including a Detroit inner-city school where it's credited with helping to reduce violence and boost academic scores. An NBC report on the school showed a remarkably calm and quiet gym full of children meditating.

Research published recently in the journal Issues in Education found mediation also helped improve concentration in students with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.

But Americans United for Separation of Church and State in Washington, D.C., opposes teaching TM in public schools, citing a 1979 New Jersey court ruling that opposed TM as advancing religious concepts.

"Creationists make the same argument," spokesman Rob Boston said. "It's not religion, it's science."

He questioned the claims and science behind TM, and said schools should find other methods of stress reduction.

While meditation is part of Hinduism and Buddhism, Transcendental Meditation adherents maintain it is not a religion or philosophy, and is practiced by people of various religions.

TM involves sitting for 15 to 20 minutes twice a day, silently repeating a mantra that's meant to clear the mind of thoughts and let the meditator experience a deep silence and bliss. Practitioners say it reduces stress and leaves them feeling energized and aware.

Albena Rachkova, of Palatine, an operations manager for Northern Trust Bank, said she can meditate on the train while she's commuting. She said the practice has helped her professionally, and helped her 19-year-old son get straight A's in high school and to get into the University of Chicago.

"That inner silence helps me see what's important and what's not," she said, "and to weigh all the possibilities out there."

Fifteen-year-old Vic Partha and his 13-year-old brother Rishi, of Naperville, who learned to meditate while visiting their grandparents in India two years ago, said it helps them focus.

"At first I thought it was kind of boring and lame," Vic conceded, "but now I notice the times it calmed me down and helped me do better in school."