Speaker 1: Stay Calm as a production of I Heart Radio. Hi.
Speaker 1: I'm Bob Roth, and I've been teaching people to meditate
Speaker 1: for fifty years, helping them to stay calm under pressure,
Speaker 1: reboot and re energize their lives, and basically be a happier,
Speaker 1: healthier version of themselves. And now I want to help
Speaker 1: you do the same. Welcome to Stay Calm, your daily
Speaker 1: dose of calmness. Every weekday morning, I'll share a meditation story,
Speaker 1: offer a simple practical tip about how you or loved
Speaker 1: one can stay a bit calmer in your life, and
Speaker 1: then we'll end each episode together with a moment of gratitude.
Speaker 1: My hope is that I can share what I know
Speaker 1: to anyone who needs it. Ready, sit comfortably, take a
Speaker 1: few deep breaths, and let's begin today's journey. Over the years,
Speaker 1: I've had the very good fortune of interviewing some very
Speaker 1: impressive people, business leaders and doctors and professional athletes and
Speaker 1: guidance counselors, therapists and VA hospitals, And I always enjoy
Speaker 1: asking them is this something that they knew they wanted
Speaker 1: to do their whole lives. It's kind of amazing how
Speaker 1: many people had that feeling inside they had a sense.
Speaker 1: People have asked me that same question, and I said,
Speaker 1: not on your life. I didn't know. I wanted to
Speaker 1: make an impact in the world, but nobody even knew
Speaker 1: what meditation was. When I was growing up, my family
Speaker 1: was really politically minded. When I was seventeen years old,
Speaker 1: I volunteered to help out with Bobby Kennedy presidential campaign.
Speaker 1: In fact, I remember going to see him speak on
Speaker 1: June one and looking around the room with two thousand people,
Speaker 1: and it wasn't that I identified with being a Democrat
Speaker 1: or a political party. I just wanted to make a
Speaker 1: better world. So there I was thinking, now I've got something.
Speaker 1: We're going to make a better world than as history records.
Speaker 1: Four days later, Senator Kennedy was killed. So I went
Speaker 1: off to college with a career track of I'm going
Speaker 1: to become a lawyer and then I'm going to become
Speaker 1: a United States Senator like Bobby Kennedy and change the world. Well,
Speaker 1: it took me about a month for me to realize
Speaker 1: that politics was never going to heal the soul of
Speaker 1: the nation. And my mom was a school teacher, so
Speaker 1: I thought, well, how about if I write educational curriculum
Speaker 1: that a child can learn to help them navigate and
Speaker 1: survive a very tumultuous, stressful, trauma filled world, particularly inner
Speaker 1: city school kids. I was just naive, just want to
Speaker 1: make a better world, and pretty darn stressed, anxious. Where
Speaker 1: I was working, I happened to meet this one guy.
Speaker 1: His name was Peter Stevens. There was something just special
Speaker 1: about him. He was a good person, he was smart.
Speaker 1: And I found out he was doing something called transcendental meditation,
Speaker 1: and I had no idea what he was talking about.
Speaker 1: I asked him more about it and said, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't believe in that stuff. He held a pen
Speaker 1: up and he let the pen go and it dropped
Speaker 1: into his other hand, and he said, you don't have
Speaker 1: to believe in gravity for the pen to fall, and
Speaker 1: you don't have to believe in this meditation for it
Speaker 1: to work. Still very skeptical that I went and herd
Speaker 1: of talk and then I decided, Okay, I'm gonna learn
Speaker 1: this thing. Imagine, here's this tightly wound eighteen year old kid.
Speaker 1: No it all sure that this is just bunk. And
Speaker 1: the first experience was so physically relaxing and mentally familiar
Speaker 1: and yet unique, and I remember after my first or
Speaker 1: second meditation, the thought came, oh, so this is the
Speaker 1: tool I want to teach those kids. That was June
Speaker 1: nineteen six, and a few years later I began teaching.
Speaker 1: Over the years, taught a lot of people, but always
Speaker 1: in the back of my mind was these kids. In
Speaker 1: two thousand five, I had become friends with the filmmaker
Speaker 1: David Lynch. I said, you know, there's this huge need
Speaker 1: in the world for kids. Our kids are just getting
Speaker 1: demolished by stress, and particularly kids going to under resource
Speaker 1: schools and underserved communities. There's sixteen million kids who live
Speaker 1: below poverty in the United States. Why don't we start
Speaker 1: a foundation so we could bring this meditation for free
Speaker 1: to school kids and then veterans and women survivors of
Speaker 1: domestic violence. And I'd like to do it in your name, David,
Speaker 1: who had been meditating himself for thirty years sitting grade.
Speaker 1: I think none of us thought this thing was going
Speaker 1: to take off, but I had learned how to write
Speaker 1: a press release, wrote it. Next thing I know, there
Speaker 1: are articles in newspapers all over the world, and that
Speaker 1: was the seed of a foundation that has now brought
Speaker 1: the meditation to over a million kids, and now we
Speaker 1: work with veterans and their families who suffer the nightmare
Speaker 1: of post traumatic stress disorder, women who are survivors of
Speaker 1: domestic violence and sexual assault, young people and adults who
Speaker 1: are battling substance use disorder. But really everybody, as everybody
Speaker 1: now is at risk for the impact of stress and trauma.
Speaker 1: So never in a million years what I have thought
Speaker 1: that I was going to be running a foundation that
Speaker 1: was using transcendental meditation to make a change in the world.
Speaker 1: But here I am. My trajectory for teaching is my trajectory.
Speaker 1: But there are thousands and thousands of teachers of meditation
Speaker 1: who took a focused but unforeseeable path to get to
Speaker 1: this point now where meditation is so widely accepted and
Speaker 1: appreciated in the world. So my tip here is really simple,
Speaker 1: be true to yourself. If you're looking for a career path,
Speaker 1: first and foremost, you have to be true to yourself.
Speaker 1: Has to resonate with you. I like to conclude with
Speaker 1: these thirty seconds of quiet, where you have an opportunity
Speaker 1: to reflect, appreciate your life, someone in your life, just
Speaker 1: to slow down for a moment. And the great thing
Speaker 1: is that when we do that genuinely, spontaneously, naturally, it's
Speaker 1: very healthy. I'll be right back all right. Thank you
Speaker 1: for joining. This is Bob Roth. Keep calm, Thanks for
Speaker 1: listening today. I hope you heard something that inspires, that
Speaker 1: uplifts you and that you can incorporate into your own life.
Speaker 1: Until next time, remember, meditate, be kind, and be true
Speaker 1: to yourself. Hey, all of you out there, I'd love
Speaker 1: to hear from you. You can send me your stories,
Speaker 1: your questions, or anything else on your mind. Just connect
Speaker 1: with me on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram at meditation Bob.
Speaker 1: You can also send me an email at meditation Bob
Speaker 1: Roth at gmail dot com. I look forward to hearing
Speaker 1: from you.