Studies conducted in business and industry have shown that TM improves occupational health and performance [52, 70, 190, 253, 275-298]. Findings include:
• Improved job performance [276, 279]
• Increased job satisfaction [190, 279]
• Improved relationships at work [190, 279]
• Increased productivity [279]
• Increased employee effectiveness [190]
• Increased contribution of managers to the organization [276]
• Improved leadership [278]
• Enhanced management development [253, 281-298, 166]
• Improved physical and mental health and well-being [52, 70, 190, 275-277]
• Improved health-related behaviour in employees and managers [52, 190, 276]
• Reduced stress in employees and managers [190, 275-276]
• Reduced job tension, anxiety, and depression [70, 190, 277]
• Increased energy and decreased fatigue [190, 276]
• Reduced difficulty in obtaining employment for people with post-traumatic stress disorder [69]
In a five-month study conducted by researchers from Japan's National Institute of Industrial Health (a branch of the Japanese Ministry of Labour), industrial employees practising Transcendental Meditation showed increased emotional stability and reductions in anxiety, tendency to neurosis, impulsiveness, physical complaints, insomnia and smoking compared to controls. Depression also decreased in the TM group, despite lower initial levels [52, 70]. Overall, employees practising Transcendental Meditation improved significantly on 10 out of 14 dimensions, whereas controls improved on only one [70].
Another study examined stress, health, and employee development in two settings in the automotive industry: a large manufacturing plant of a Fortune 100 corporation and a small sales distribution company. Employees who learned Transcendental Meditation showed significantly greater improvement than matched control subjects on a wide variety of measures, including improved general health and reductions in physiological arousal, anxiety, job tension, insomnia, fatigue, and consumption of cigarettes and hard liquor [190]. Practice of Transcendental Meditation also led to increased job satisfaction, improved employee effectiveness, and better work and personal relationships, confirming the findings of an earlier study [190, 279].
Further analysis identified three factors underlying this wide range of improvements through TM: ‘occupational coherence’, ‘physiological settledness’, and ‘job and life satisfaction’. The effect size of TM in reducing physiological arousal, anxiety, and alcohol/cigarette use, and in enhancing personal development, was substantially larger than for other forms of meditation and relaxation reported in four previous statistical meta-analyses [190].
A three-month prospective study at a medical equipment company compared managers who learned Transcendental Meditation to matched controls who were similar in age, education level, race, marital status, hours worked per week, job type and level of responsibility in the organization. Managers who practised TM made an increased ‘organizational contribution’ compared to controls, as measured by a combined index of productivity, leadership practices, work relationships, vitality, mental health, job satisfaction, and anger. TM also led to reduced alcohol consumption; healthier habits of exercise, diet, and sleep; decreased serum cholesterol; increased energy and less fatigue; improved mental health; reduced stress-related physical symptoms; and reduction in perceived stress (the degree to which situations were perceived as overloading, uncontrollable or unpredictable) [276].
In a randomized study of employees at a high-security government agency, subjects who learned Transcendental Meditation showed reductions in anxiety and depression after 12 weeks, in comparison to controls who participated in an educational corporate stress-management programme. When retested after three years, the TM group showed not only sustained reductions in anxiety and depression, but also improved self-concept compared to controls [277]. Consistent with these findings, a controlled prospective study of employees at a South African firm found that TM was effective in reducing psychological stress and decreasing both systolic and diastolic blood pressure over a five-month period [275]. In another study, employees at a food sales company who learned TM showed greater improvement on a composite measure of leadership behaviour over an eight-month period than non-meditating controls [278].
Development of a company's human resources through Transcendental Meditation has been shown to produce marked improvements in corporate health and performance. For example, in a medium-sized chemical manufacturing company, productivity and profitability increased steadily as the number of employees practising Transcendental Meditation rose over six years to 80% of the total workforce. During this period, productivity increased by 52%, annual sales per employee grew by 88%, while days lost through illness or injury decreased by 50%, and absenteeism declined by 89% [285].
Effective Rehabilitation of Offenders
Research spanning more than 35 years demonstrates that Transcendental Meditation is effective in correcting and preventing criminal behaviour. These studies have used some of the most sophisticated and widely validated measures of mental health and developmental maturity available in the social sciences [193, 321-341].
A study conducted at Harvard University on maximum security inmates in Massachusetts showed that the criminal mindset can be altered by Transcendental Meditation. Prisoners who learned the technique significantly improved on measures of psychopathology, including decreased aggression, anxiety, and schizophrenic symptoms. Furthermore, Transcendental Meditation increased their self development by more than one level on Loevinger’s ego (self) development scale—from the dependent, exploitative orientation that is commonly found in criminals to the more responsible, self-monitoring, self-respecting, and communicative orientation of law-abiding citizens. Such holistic effects on development in adults are remarkable, especially among people previously thought to be most resistant to change [327-328].
In another maximum security prison study, inmates who learned Transcendental Meditation showed reductions in anxiety, resentment, negativism, suspicion, verbal hostility, neuroticism, and tendency to assault, as well as decreased insomnia and improved quality of sleep compared to controls [193, 324].
Transcendental Meditation can also facilitate rehabilitation of juvenile offenders: young people referred to juvenile court for a legal offence showed improved social behaviour and increased self-regard after learning TM. Anxiety levels were also reduced, a result corroborated by a later study [337, 332].
Both previous and subsequent research strongly supports these findings [321-313, 325-326, 329-331, 333-336, 338-341]. A narrative and quantitative review of the application of TM in eight correctional settings involving almost 1500 inmates found that the technique leads to positive changes in health, psychological development, and behaviour [322]. Another review examining changes in brain chemistry of criminals found that stress-related neuroendocrine abnormalities known to be associated with aggression and crime were alleviated by Transcendental Meditation [341].
The ultimate test for any rehabilitation programme is whether it reduces the frequency with which former offenders commit new crimes and return to prison (recidivism). Two studies, one with a 15-year follow-up period after release, found that TM markedly decreased recidivism rates, with up to 47% reduction compared to controls participating in other treatment programmes [321, 323, 329]. In keeping with these results, a large scale study of 11,000 prisoners and 900 prison officers in Senegal found that Transcendental Meditation reduced recidivism rates to only 8%, as well as markedly decreasing prison violence and health problems [326].
In a pioneering, community-based rehabilitation programme, six Missouri judges have sentenced over 100 probationers, whose offences range from drunken driving to manslaughter, to learn TM. The programme has had remarkable success, with extremely low rates of re-offending based on promotion of more balanced, successful, and law-abiding lives for participants [325].
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