Wednesday, October 5, 2005
VictoryBeforeWar.com Release
For Immediate Release: October 5, 2005
Contact: Jay Marcus (641) 472-5945 (
jmarcus@marcuspc.com)
Students Fight Terrorism
Sheer-el Cohen was the 13th generation in his family to be born and educated in Israel. But Israeli schools are extremely stressful as a side effect of the Palestinian conflict. As a result, eight years ago the Cohen family moved to the U.S. so Sheer-el could attend the Maharishi School of the Age of Enlightenment in Iowa, a school dedicated to educational excellence without stress and to fighting terrorism in a peaceful way.
Twice each day Sheer-el, now a freshman in college, joins hundreds of other students and faculty in one of the school?s most popular pastimes?fighting stress and promoting peace through the advanced meditation programs at Maharishi University of Management.
The Maharishi School and the University are highly unusual schools. All the students practice Transcendental Meditation, yoga, and breathing techniques twice each day as part of the curriculum. Many, like Sheer-el, also participate in the Yogic Flying program, an advanced meditation program, which studies show reduces violence in the ?vicinity? of the Yogic Flyers when a sufficient number of Yogic Flyers have assembled. And the schools? required foreign language is Sanskrit, because reading and listening to recitations in Sanskrit develops brain functioning. Does it work?
In recent years the high school has graduated 10 times the national average of National Merit Scholars. In the Odyssey of the Mind and Destination ImagiNation creativity competitions (reserved by most schools for their talented and gifted programs), the small Maharishi School has won more state championships than any school in Iowa. The University?s results are similar. The National Survey of Student Engagement, the most comprehensive survey of student life, rates the university among the top 3% of colleges in active and collaborative learning and the top 4% in enriching educational experiences.
Most importantly, the meditation programs at the school and college are producing students who are part of a worldwide experiment to prevent terrorism. Fifty research studies show that the inner happiness and peace the students experience during their meditation and Yogic Flying programs are radiated to those in the ?vicinity? of the meditating group, neutralizing violent tendencies in the locale. With enough students and other meditators, the peaceful effect can extend to an entire city or even the nation. Peer reviewed research published in major scientific journals shows significant reductions in violence and terrorist acts when enough TM meditators and Yogic Flyers practice their program together, at the same time.
The meditation programs at the Maharishi schools constitute the world?s most ancient and complete homeland defense, and are the subject of a new book from Maharishi University of Management Press, Victory Before War: Preventing Terrorism through the Vedic Peace Technologies of His Holiness Maharishi Mahesh Yogi(released in July and now in bookstores).
Suggested interviewees include Sheer-el Cohen and Robert Keith Wallace, Ph.D. (UCLA). Dr. Wallace is author of Victory Before War and chairman of the Maharishi University Department of Physiology and Health. Dr. Wallace?s research in the 1970s on the biological changes during meditation, published in Science and Scientific American, shocked the scientific community when it was first published, but ultimately led to the widespread interest in meditation in the Western world. Sheer-el Cohen, now a freshman at Maharishi University of Management, was last year?s world champion high school Yogic Flyer. B-roll is available of Maharishi School students, Yogic Flying, and researchers at Maharishi University studying the effects of meditation and Yogic Flying. More information is available at VictoryBeforeWar.com.