{"id":8283,"date":"2012-10-08T17:45:23","date_gmt":"2012-10-08T21:45:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tm.org\/blog\/?p=8283"},"modified":"2012-10-08T18:00:08","modified_gmt":"2012-10-08T22:00:08","slug":"family-that-meditates-together","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usa.tm.org\/blog\/meditation\/family-that-meditates-together\/","title":{"rendered":"The family that meditates together"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.tm.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/Family2.png\" alt=\"\" title=\"Family2\" width=\"160\" height=\"155\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-8295\" \/>It was 30 years ago when a TM poster in an <a href=\"http:\/\/home.elpasotexas.gov\/\">El Paso<\/a> store window caught the eye of Jos\u00e9 Gutierrez. \u201cI went to an introductory lecture on the technique, and that was it,\u201d Jos\u00e9 says. \u201cI found what I was searching for. From the first meditation, I experienced unbelievable energy, and it just kept getting better and better.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Jos\u00e9 said he had been looking for something to help relieve the stress and pressures of his business. Starting out as a door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesman, he had worked his way up to become the company\u2019s distributor for the city of El Paso. His job involved motivating and training younger sales people.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI found that the TM kept me in a state of calm even when there were a lot of demands on me,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n<p>Jos\u00e9 also says the daily meditations helped him turn around his health. \u201cIn that type of business, you attend a lot of conventions, the whiskey flows freely, and I was nipping too much. After learning to meditate, I got control of the drinking. I also suddenly <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tm.org\/benefits-smoking-cigarettes\">stopped smoking<\/a> one day. You just make better choices.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Jos\u00e9 is not the kind of person to keep a good thing to himself. Soon he had his wife and seven kids meditating.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAs time went on, our kids got married and had their own kids. I thought, \u2018There\u2019s a lot of stress in this world\u2014I can\u2019t do much about that, but I can help our own children.\u2019\u201d So in characteristic fashion, Jos\u00e9 paid the tuition for his grandchildren to start the TM technique.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.tm.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/Family3.png\" alt=\"\" title=\"Family3\" width=\"510\" height=\"327\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-8298\" srcset=\"https:\/\/usa.tm.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/Family3.png 510w, https:\/\/usa.tm.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/Family3-300x192.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 510px) 100vw, 510px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Today, at age 77, Jos\u00e9 has 18 members of his extended family practicing the Transcendental Meditation technique with him. With so many close family members meditating, he has lots of turning points to share.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOne of my sons, who had stopped meditating years earlier, was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. Lo and behold, he went back to meditating, and in just a short time, within a year or two, he was able to come off his medications,\u201d Jos\u00e9 recalls. \u201cHe got married, has four kids, and runs a small construction company. He\u2019s a happy person, laughing all the time, and he doesn\u2019t drink, doesn\u2019t smoke. He attributes the turnaround to TM.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Jos\u00e9 relates how one of his daughters-in-law suffered from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nhlbi.nih.gov\/health\/health-topics\/topics\/hbp\/\">high blood pressure<\/a>. \u201cIn the first week after starting to meditate, she went to see her doctor, and he cut her medications in half. By the third week, he took her off her meds altogether. He told her, \u2018Whatever you\u2019re doing, keep on doing it!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Jos\u00e9\u2019s wife passed away five years ago, but the family remains close. \u201cAs a family we have always tried to watch out for one another, to encourage one another. Recently, I hosted a TM lecture at our house, and most of the people there were ours,\u201d he says.<br \/>\n_____________________________________________________<br \/>\n<em>Linda Egenes is a professional writer and a frequent contributor to <strong>Enlightenment, the online TM Magazine.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It was 30 years ago when a TM poster in an El Paso store window caught the eye of Jos\u00e9 Gutierrez. \u201cI went to an introductory lecture on the technique, and that was it,\u201d Jos\u00e9 says. \u201cI found what I was searching for. From the first meditation, I experienced unbelievable energy, and it just kept getting better and better.\u201d <a href=\"http:\/\/bit.ly\/OjdEL0\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_excerpt -->","protected":false},"author":47,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[71,136,22],"class_list":["post-8283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-meditation","tag-diabetes","tag-family","tag-transcendental-meditation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.tm.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8283","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.tm.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.tm.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.tm.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/47"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.tm.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8283"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usa.tm.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8283\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.tm.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.tm.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.tm.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}