[HTML1]Thom Knoles is a is a master-teacher of Vedic Meditation, an effortless mental technique to experience fully-awake restful consciousness. He has personally-taught more than 20,000 students worldwide. Thom talks about the potential of the brain and its impact on the health of the body, on the relationship between quantum physics and human consciousness, and how doing daily meditation can dramatically reduce stress. www.thomknoles.com
Meditation for Stress Relief
March 7, 2012 by Beth Greer
Filed Under: World Tagged With: beth greer, meditation, stress reliever, SuperNaturalMom, thom knoles, Vedic Meditation, YourSuperNaturalLife
About Beth Greer
Beth Greer, The Super Natural Mom™, is an award-winning journalist, holistic health advocate, impassioned champion of toxin-free living, and radio talk show host, who busts open the myth that our homes are safe havens. Her bestselling book, Super Natural Home: Improve Your Health, Home and Planet…One Room at a Time, a Books for a Better Life Award Finalist, is endorsed by Deepak Chopra, Ralph Nader, Peter Coyoteand others, shows how food, cosmetics, personal care products, household cleaners and furniture are making us sick.
Formerly President and Co-Owner of The Learning Annex, a renowned private alternative adult education company, Beth has helped thousands see new possibilities and feel empowered to make changes in their lives.
She’s a columnist for the Huffington Post and blogs on several websites including Greenopolis.com and NaturallySavvy.com. She has appeared on ABC-TV, NBC-TV and CNNand interviewed by local and national radio shows across the country. Beth is a healthy home makeover specialist, and green marketing strategist/consultant to restaurants, home health care agencies and retreat centers, helping to make them greener, safer and healthier.
She was named a recipient of the “100 Magnificent Marin Women Award” by Search for the Cause, a non-profit organization that investigates how exposure to chemicals in our daily lives increases the risk of cancer. Beth is a testament to how making small lifestyle shifts can make a huge difference in one’s health. By using alternative methods of healing, eating a diet free of pesticides and avoiding hazardous chemicals in her personal care and household products, Beth eliminated a tumor without drugs or surgery.
Beth is also the Host of Your Super Natural Life on WomensRadio. The Super Healthy Home Show offers interviews with top experts with practical advice on health and wellness alternatives; tips for making the safest, healthiest choices for you and your family, and insights on how to live a safer, less toxic, and more natural life.
Thank you. It’s good when anyone furthers information about the benefits of meditation, whether it’s Thom Knoles or Herbert Benson. But it’s also good to be honest and clear about the facts.
The ideas about meditation that Knoles espouses, and the meditation he teaches, are Knoles’ altered, loosely taught version of the original meditation technique and course developed by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Without Maharishi, Knoles would have nothing much to teach, it seems, nothing much to say about meditation. Even Knoles’ talk about “the unified field” is language he borrowed directly from quantum physicist John Hagelin, the director of the TM organization.
As someone who also attended teacher training in India with Maharishi, I suggest: learn the real thing from an authentic TM teacher, who fully upholds the original effectiveness of the practice.
I wonder why Knoles decided to teach what he learned from Maharishi, alter it in his own ways, and then call it “Vedic” meditation?
Maharishi called the meditation he taught Transcendental Meditation, and that’s what it is called by all the certified TM teachers who teach in the way that Maharishi wanted this meditation technique taught.
Could it be that one motivation for Knoles to call it “Vedic” meditation is that, by disassociating from Maharishi’s non-profit organization, he gets to keep all the money for himself, instead of supporting the TM organization and its global, peace-spreading initiatives? I don’t know. Perhaps, for personal gratification, Knoles just wants to be known as the guru and be honored as a teacher.
It is not because he can teach meditation more cheaply on his own. The TM organization is able to provide scholarships and grants for people who cannot afford the tuition, so anyone can learn TM. Hundreds of thousands of people around the world have learned the authentic TM technique for free over the past 5 years—students in inner city schools, Native Americans, the homeless, veterans with PTSD and other at-risk populations.
Whatever the case, it is important that people do not get the impression that when they learn “Vedic meditation” from Knoles that they have learned the same technique that Maharishi taught, in its pure form, because “Vedic” meditation is definitely not TM, it is not imbibed with all of Maharishi’s brilliance as a meditation teacher.
All these years, honest TM teachers around the world have taught as certified TM teachers, through the organization that Maharishi set up to teach meditation and preserve the effectiveness of the practice, and they have had access to all of Maharishi’s refinements of teaching, the full range of teaching resources to guide their students, and later developments of knowledge and all that Maharishi, as the direct source of this practice in our age, offered for the good of the world.
Before Maharishi introduced the technique, this practice was unavailable throughout Indian society. The practice had gotten lost due to inadequate teaching methods and misunderstanding of the transcending process. In our time, Maharishi worked his entire life to structure teaching procedures and policies and to create a worldwide non-profit organization to preserve the purity of the practice so that people can benefit from fully effective meditation for generations to come. He did this in hope that the technique would not be lost again any time soon. If all TM teachers were to do what Knoles is doing, the original TM technique would already have gotten lost.
Authentic TM teachers never promote themselves or take any credit for the meditation technique, they call the practice TM and only promote meditation itself and always credit to the source of the technique.
Your website is beautiful, excellent and informative.
The American justice Dept. have recently approved the power of yoga
and meditation vide a recent judgement in the American court.” Man Who
Slapped Wife Sentenced to Yoga, It’s Anger Management, Says Judge.”
First there was house arrest. Now there’s yoga. A judge ordered a man
convicted of slapping his wife to take a yoga class as part of his
one-year probation. “It’s part of anger management,” County Criminal
Court at Law Judge Larry Standley said of the ancient Hindu philosophy
of exercise and well-being. “For people who are into it, it really
calms them down. ” Standley, a former prosecutor, said the case of
James Lee Cross was unique. Cross, a 53-year-old car salesman from
Tomball, explained that his wife was struggling with a substance abuse
problem and that he struck her on New Year’s Eve during an argument
about her drinking. “He was trying to get a hold of her because she
has a problem,” Standley said after the court hearing. “I thought this
would help him realize that he only has control over himself.” The
sentence came as a surprise to Cross, who was told to enroll in a
class and report back to Standley on his progress. “I’m not very
familiar with it,” Cross said of yoga. “From what I understand, it may
help in a couple ways, not only as far as mentally settling, but maybe
a little weight loss.” Darla Magee, an instructor at Yoga Body Houston
in River Oaks, said she would recommend that Cross take a basic yoga
class emphasizing breathing and including a variety of postures —
forward bends, back bends and twists. “Yoga can help us to get rid of
many emotional issues we might have,” she said. “It’s a spiritual
cleanse.” Prosecutor Lincoln Goodwin agreed to a sentence of probation
without jail time because Cross had no significant criminal history
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/metropolitan/2365341.
Yoga is far from simply being physical exercises, rather it is an aid
to establishing a new
way of life which embraces both inner and outer realities.However this
way of life is an
experience which cannot be understood intellectually and will only
become living knowledge through practice and experience. Yoga which is
one of the greatest Indian contribution to the world has got vast
potential in all fields. and an Indian way to get synergy among body,
mind and soul.
The thing that gets me is that all TM teachers made a solemn promise to only teach what Maharishi Mahesh Yogi taught them under the auspices of the organization that he created to keep his particular meditation instruction consistent. It is pretty interesting to evoke MMY’s name over and over again, implying that he is teaching what he was taught by MMY, and then have the disclaimer at the bottom of every webpage.
It’s a legal maneuver to avoid being sued, or so he thinks. You can avoid the legal courts but you can’t postpone your karma.
Time to pop some popcorn. This might be fun to watch.
Every age and field of spirituality has its share of salesmen who pick and choose their own set of myths to establish their authority, and “Maharishi” Mahesh “Yogi” was exactly one of those sorts of salesmen, nothing more. The man couldn’t even read Sanskrit, and according to eyewitnesses simply repackaged what he picked up from others along the way and resold it to the clueless with money and time to spend.
kennyji’s strange reference (below) to India’s “ancient knowledge” being corrupted by “invaders” is one such piece of contemporary myth-making. If anything, the current teachings of the TM movement are a relatively recent invention no more than loosely based on tradition and certain scriptures native to India. It should be obvious that the TM movement’s creation of a “Global Country” run by a bunch of white-skinned Westerners in royal crowns and garb is very unlikely to have ever been part of an authentic spiritual tradition of India.
Awesome job on the post!
Thank you, tamtam, for clarifying this situation. It reminds me of what someone once told me about being a TM teacher trained by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi: to be a guide from the side, not a sage from the stage. It’s clear that Thom Knoles broke away and wanted to be a sage from the stage by dressing like and addressing himself as a maharishi.
You know, Maharishi personally never took any credit for the amazing transformations in the millions of people who learned his Transcendental Meditation technique. He always gave the credit to his master, Guru Dev, and said he was just a loudspeaker, and reminded his teachers they were too. Maharishi systematized the teaching of TM and the training of TM teachers, saying that if they were to teach in the same prescribed manner, then the people who came to learn in future generations would continue to get the same beneficial results and grow in enlightenment. Wars would become obsolete. For that to continue he created a worldwide organization to ensure the perpetuation of this simple effective teaching in all walks of life.
Maharishi also revived the correct understanding and application of the Vedas, India’s ancient knowledge, which had been lost and distorted due to enemy invasions. He also trained Vedic Pandits in the correct recitation of the Vedas and their procedures creating a collective powerful peaceful influence for society. And so much more.
It really is interesting that there are people such as the “master-teacher” in this “article” that are just trying to duplicate teachings taken from others and claim that the credibility applies to their own version. The research and benefits he claims are from studies on the Transcendental Meditation technique, not what he’s teaching. It is dishonest to try to make people believe that his version is so similar that it needs no verification of its own. If people want the results, they should not assume that they will get them from an imitation.
Exactly! And it is equally dishonest to breakaway and teach his Master’s technique under another name, claiming the same results, if in fact that is what he is teaching. The reason he disavows any connection therefore to Maharishi’s organizations is to avoid a lawsuit. He knows how Maharishi wanted his teachings to be taught. Claiming to have Maharishi as your guru and then blantantly disrespecting his wishes indicates a violation of the trust Maharishi placed in his teachers, and a disregard for spiritual authority.
Thom is repakaging Maharishi
Mahesh Yogi’s technique without regard to the tradition Maharishi established.
This is just someone who is a charlitan. Go to the TM organization or the David Lynch Foundation if you want to learn the proper meditation technique that Thom extols.