“It was the start of 2012, and it had been the holiday of my life. San Francisco, and my first time in the US. But what a long flight out! Nearly an hour from Newcastle to Heathrow, nine hours from Heathrow to Dallas, and a further three hours from Dallas to San Francisco. Jet lag, said Chris? Not a bit, he said; not if you do your TM a couple of times during the journey.
So, I did the first one not long after leaving the UK. By the time I got on the last plane at Dallas, I was absolutely shattered. But, not long after take-off I closed my eyes and started on the second TM session.
I know Chris says we’re not supposed to concentrate on the mantra, we just take it as it comes, he says, but, honestly, everything was conspiring against me! The hubbub inside the plane, my cramped space by the window, and my feelings of absolute and utter tiredness. On top of it all, I couldn’t relax; I couldn’t rest my head against the wall of the plane, I couldn’t keep my feet still, and my arms were twitchy: much frustration. Until. Until I realised it was TM doing one of its functions.
I’ve had it before, when I’m tired, usually towards the end of an exhausting week; TM gets seems to get rid of stress from the mind in the form of twitching of one or more limbs.
So I stuck it out for the full twenty minutes, and more or less from the moment I stopped the mantra, the twitching stopped and the restlessness went from my mind and my body. I actually slept for a little less than an hour before we flew into San Francisco.
And jet lag? Not a bit of it.
At the end of the holiday I had a direct flight back to Heathrow, all ten hours of it. I did two TM sessions on the plane, and, as before, when I got back home, no jet lag.
I’ve been doing TM for over 26 years now.
What got me into TM in the first place? Seeing some strange marks on a friend’s back. When I asked him what they were he told me they were the scars of what psoriasis had done to his skin. The doctors had tried all sorts of remedies, but only TM had worked: TM was the only successful treatment for his psoriasis.
I didn’t have psoriasis, but, a few years later, hoping it would help me in some way, I took up TM myself, and, as they say, I never looked back. It cleared my thinking so incredibly quickly. By that, I mean that before taking up TM, I could see – in retrospect – that my thinking was like water in a glass, but water that was as cloudy as if a Disprin tablet was fizzing away in the water, making it cloudy. I start doing TM, and almost immediately the water went clear; clarity of thought.
Now I can not imagine my life without TM.”
Ken, Darlington.
