CHAPTER 2 : SECTION 4

Transcendental Meditation is the star of an entire educational program developed by the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi called Consciousness Based Education. Don’t be scared off by the term “Consciousness-Based.” This term “consciousness” has gotten a bad wrap since the 1980‘s. People that spoke of consciousness were written off immediately as mary-jane smoking hippies, wild haired dissenters, or wigged out beatniks when in reality this couldn’t be further from the actual truth. Consciousness is actually simply defined as, the quality or state of being aware especially of something within oneself. That’s it. The ability to be aware. That’s right Reagan. (It's ok, Reagan and I share the same birthday, we poke fun at each other all the time - it's an Aquarian thing)

What Consciousness Based education does brain wise is, again, activate the TOTAL brain functioning centers verses activating certain areas of the brain at different, separate times. Studies have found that students that use Consciousness-Based education are “more committed academically, more alert, more healthy and balanced, more self-actualized, [and] more mature in moral judgement...” (www.cbeprograms.org) Ok, that’s great! But why, I asked? Extensive research has been done to answer this very question. We discussed the research into meditation, and there is even more research that has been done on CBE. The load is remarkably impressive siting over 600 studies conducted by 200 universities in 30 countries.
Let’s go on a mini brain tour. Start your axons.

First let us start with the infant brain. The infant’s main areas of brain development are the sensory and motor areas. These sensory and motor areas are the first to mature in our little babies’ brains and this happens within the first two years of life. What has been discovered is that when infants are “raised in enriched environments that allow for a full range of sensory, motor and social activity” three major developments occurred. First, their brains weight increases a whooping 10% in just 60 days.

Second, synapses of the nerves in the cortex of the brain, which is the thin outer layer of the brain where much of this electrical nerve activity takes place. were estimated at a 20% increase (Enriched and Impoverished Environments: Effects on Brain and Behavior. New York: Sprzinger-Verlag, 1987.) (Annual Reviews of Psychology 49: 72-111. 1998.)

Third, cells in the frontal area of the cortex grow more than 30 times their length at birth in these two years. 30 times! So much for just being a maconium shooting jello blob in your arms.
 The next thing to occur in our brain’s journey is the development of the language centers. This is completed by 8 years of age.

Now these are daunting tasks that we adults tend to take for granted. Yet, believe it or not, an equally important aspect of brain development occurs even after all of the previous mentioned functions take place. After 10 years of age what’s called the integrative systems of the brain primarily develop, the systems that use both sides of the brain at the same time. This last until around the age of 17 years. Now here is this little tidbit of information. After 17, well, that’s it folks. Our brains are what they are; at least in the physical sense. That old adage “You can’t teach a dog new tricks” to explain why we don’t want to get off our butt and go to the local stained glass class may be more truth than laziness.

Ok, so we have this:
Infant: sensory/motor skills
2-8 years: language skills
10-17 years: integrative brain development
17-on: giant flat-line folks. Hear the humbling beep.

One can deduce this integration development in a young child should be tapped into as much as possible for higher brain development as a whole. Better functioning brain produces more young, intelligent people which produces better contributing adults, which promotes more positivity in life in general. How to, Dr. Jeannie? Through studies it appears that children taught in the Consciousness Based education model activate these integrative functioning centers of the brain, by, yes, meditating. So, in one sense it is rather humbling to know that the development of the brain goes stagnant after 17 years old, but it is encouraging that we can optimize the functioning of the brains of our children so that they will be better people than us.

Neuroimaging studies (PET and FMRI) have shown that doing a task specifically does not develop the brain’s ability to integrate as a whole. This is why Consciousness Based educators believe that the reason education is so ineffective today is because the system is limiting the brain’s functioning during the most critical times by continually focusing the brain on mastering just specific sections of knowledge that only activate certain areas of the brain thus not aiding in developing integrative centers. Ashely Deans goes a step further explaining that not only does the current system not integrate the entire brain, but that it stresses the brain by promoting such an information based curriculum educating of our youth as if filling an empty container instead of working to increase the ability our children’s brain to retain information. (pg 16-17) We all know what stress overload can do to an adult system and to think that we would knowingly do so to a developing child is, well, it gives me goose bumps, and not the good kind. Anxiety, depression, heart disease, and high blood pressure are key diseases that are known to be caused by stress. Dean goes on to explain that stress and poor blood flow to the brain produces “functional holes,” (pg 20) which obviously gives a child trouble learning. (Don’t get me started on the horrendous diet most children eat, the vast amounts of inactivity in favor of TV and video game stimulation, the continual display of accepted violent images day after day also aiding in our children’s lack luster abilities.)

We’ve revealed the fairly simple, on the surface answer as to how to get the brain to use more of its integrative function by tapping into our 4th state of consciousness with the practice of Transcendental Meditation. We’ve already gone over the numerous studies done on the effectiveness of TM. So far it appears to me that not incorporating this into every single school system is, can I be bold enough to say, criminal. The forth definition in Webster’s states 'criminal' means “shameful; disgraceful.”
Yep, that fits.