Page 588 - Total War on PTSD

You can come to TM as a complete skeptic — like Dr. Richard Schneider, a retired Rear Admiral and President of Norwich University – but still be open to change. The more President Schneider learned about the tangible benefits of meditation, the more interested he was. So he invited me and my colleague Colonel Brian Rees, a medical doctor who served five tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, to meet with him and his whole administrative team, and talk about starting a pilot program teaching TM. “I support the idea of the program,” he told me at the time. “But I have to learn myself before I suggest it to any student. I have to lead from the front.”
He announced the TM pilot program in a letter to the inbound class and their parents. “We got overrun with parents who wanted their kids to try it,” he said. “We did a control group of a platoon of about 30 kids who got the training, and 30 of those who didn’t. Within three weeks, the kids who didn’t get the training were complaining like they were disadvantaged,” said President Schneider. “Because the meditating kids weren’t getting yelled at, they were staying awake in class, they were performing better. So they wanted it. And I told them, ‘You’ll get it but you’re going to have to wait.’”
I find that many people are able to see the value of meditation in their own lives when they see what it does for Veterans. “If the technique can work for these men and women who live with the most toxic levels of stress and anxiety,” the thinking goes, “then maybe it could work for me.”
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