March 6, 2006

Meditation Helps ADHD

ST. LOUIS (Ivanhoe Broadcast News) -- About 4 million American kids struggle every day with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD. The disorder makes it difficult for them to focus and learn. Now, some schools are trying a new, simple approach, and it's changing lives.

It's not the typical scene at an American middle school. These kids -- all with ADHD -- are practicing transcendental meditation, or TM.

"It allows you to experience very profound levels of relaxation while you're wide awake," says William Stixrud, Ph.D., a clinical neuropsychologist at George Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

He says TM is easy to do. Kids simply sit, eyes closed, for 10 minutes, twice a day. The body is profoundly at rest. The mind is not.

"There's increased blood flow to the brain, and that's important because that's one of the things they show with ADHD is that there's reduced blood flow in the brain," says educator Sarina Grosswald, Ed.D. She led a study on TM for kids with ADHD, where there were dramatic reductions in stress, anxiety and depression. Organization, memory and strategizing skills also significantly improved.

"It felt really refreshing, like really cleansing, and I felt really relaxed," says 14 years old Alejandro. Eleven-year-old Chana says TM makes her less impulsive. "I'm starting to think before I talk to my friends," she says. And 13-year-old Will says, "It's amazing how easy it is, and yet, yet it does so much for you."

Dr. Stixrud would like to see meditation in all of America's schools. He says, "It's crazy that we'd have kids, where the first response for a kid who's anxious is put him on medicine and not teach him a way to regulate his own mind and body."

Whether TM can reduce the meds kids need hasn't been studied, but Dr. Stixrud says that will be looked at next. For kids without ADHD, research shows meditation can lower blood pressure and even raise IQ!