Jazz legends Wynton Marsalis, Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Esperanza Spalding, and Corinne Bailey Rae took the stage at New York City’s Jazz at Lincoln Center to help the David Lynch Foundation raise funds to help bring the stress-reducing Transcendental Meditation technique to police officers and first-responders suffering from post-traumatic stress, families that have experienced domestic violence, and children on the autistic spectrum disorders.
The benefit gala, “An Historic Night of Jazz,” was hosted by George Stephanopoulos and David Lynch.
Video highlights of this inspiring event are available below.
Excerpts:
George Stephanopoulos, Anchor of ABC’s This Week and Good Morning America
“I’m a relative newbie to TM. I’ve only been doing it about two years. But I can say from my personal experience that it has made all the difference in my life. And I have to admit that I came to it as a skeptic. I mean, ‘How can it be that sitting quietly for 20 minutes twice a day could make you the person you were meant to be. I just didn’t believe it. But it really does click for me and for so many people increasingly around the world. And what I am so excited about is the work that the David Lynch Foundation is doing now to bring that to people who may need it.”
David Lynch, Academy award-nominated filmmaker
“Every human being has a treasury within. Unbounded intelligence, creativity, love, energy, peace, and happiness is there. Transcendental Meditation is a technique, an ancient form of meditation brought back for this time by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, and it’s like being given a little golden key that opens the door to that treasury within.”
Dr. Mehmet Oz, Emmy Award-winning host of The Dr. Oz Show, cardiovascular surgeon and author
“As great a skeptic as you may be, and I do encourage anyone who is not doing TM to be a skeptic and come at it with that perspective, because when you look at the information about it, it’s quite impactful.
“Take for example high blood pressure, the number one cause of aging and all the risk factors you might have, and it primarily ages you by taking the arteries of the body and rusting them away from the inside. Especially if the blood pressure is related to issues that are emotional in your life, it’s profoundly effective.
“Doctors actually have done double-blind, randomized, controlled studies—those are the gold-standard studies that we look at—and found dramatic reductions, not just in blood pressure which can be reduced as much as medications in some cases, but also almost 50% reductions in things like incidences of atherosclerosis, heart attack rates, even death rates in some studies. So these aren’t subtle little changes. They’re dramatic shifts.”
Rita Cosby, CBS news correspondent and bestselling author
“I love what the David Lynch Foundation is doing at every single level—at-risk kids in schools around the world, veterans who have post-traumatic stress like my father had, also women in need. It’s incredible what they’re doing.”
Liv Tyler, Award-winning actress
“I started meditating about a year ago. It’s been really important for me in my life. Women and veterans and people who have had traumas happen to them need help in healing and knowing how to deal with those experiences. I think that it’s very important for everyone.”
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In the past seven years, the Foundation has provided scholarships to more than 250,000 at-risk adults and children to meditate.
For more information about the initiatives of the David Lynch Foundation, go to: www.davidlynchfoundation.org