Film director David Lynch’s meditation foundation aims to affect 100 million lives in the next decade by teaching people transcendental meditation (TM).

Co-founder and executive of the David Lynch Foundation, Bob Roth, spoke to Spa Business, outlining how TM is an easy form of meditation that “even a 10-year-old can practise it.”

Originally founded in 2005 by the film maker Lynch – who has practiced TM twice a day every day since 1973 – and Roth, the latter practitioner explained the evolution of the organisation: “In the beginning, our focus was on helping at-risk children in low income urban schools to cope with the extreme stresses that they were facing. In less than 10 years, we’ve touched the lives of more than 500,000 students. Over time, our work has spread to a wider range of people, from the homeless to victims of domestic violence, war veterans with post traumatic stress disorder and HIV/AIDS sufferers.”

Given the current surge in interest in mindfulness, now is the perfect time for spas, according to Roth – noting that a spa is the perfect environment for the teaching of TM.

“There are three basic approaches to meditation,” said Roth. “The first is called ‘focused attention’, where you attempt to actively control your thoughts, clear your mind, or focus on your breath. This produces the gamma brainwaves that are associated with peak concentration.

“The second is ‘open monitoring’ which includes many mindfulness techniques, where you learn to observe your thoughts or emotions dispassionately,” added Roth. “This produces theta brainwaves, which are very slow and present during the REM stages of sleep.

“Thirdly is ‘automatic self transcending’, which is transcendental meditation, where you learn to effortlessly transcend conscious thinking to achieve a profound state of calm, of inner wakefulness,” said Roth. “It’s like diving underneath a choppy ocean to the calm waters beneath. In this state, deeply relaxing alpha brainwaves are present.”

While the foundation is actively recruiting new TM teachers around the world, Roth admits it isn’t a form of ‘mass meditation’: “It can’t be taught to a crowd of 50 people. It works best when it’s taught individually over four consecutive days, for an hour at a time. The first session must be one-to-one with a teacher, while subsequent sessions can be in smaller groups. If we’re going into a school with 3,000 kids we might initially send in 25 teachers so that each and every child gets an individual first hour.”

The foundation is in talks with the UN, NGOs globally and has taught employees at Oprah Winfrey’s company, Dr Oz’s TV production company and top Wall Street firms.

“In schools where we deliver TM, it’s been shown to improve academic performance and behaviour,” added Roth. “It’s even had an impact on obesity levels as children reduce stress-related eating.”

Roth noted that the foundation would like to work with more spas: “People go there [to spas] for a period of time and want to switch off,” said Roth. “So often, when they return to their stressed work or home environments, any cosmetic benefits quickly wash away. If spas can offer their guests TM, they’re giving them a powerful tool to improve their health for the rest of their life.”