Fifty Years and Counting: Meditation Practice and Experience in the Context of a Psychiatric Career

This is a personal account of a journey from a Midwest high school track star to a psychiatrist made possible by daily practice of Transcendental Meditation (TM). The author proceeds chronologically through his 50 years of meditation practice from practical effects of clearer thinking and profound spiritual experiences to training as a meditation instructor, then medical student and finally psychiatrist. Applications of meditation to psychiatry including military and veterans mental health are discussed as is the psychotherapeutic use of knowledge from an important companion to meditation practice, the Bhagavad Gita.