Wisdom 2.0 Business 2015: Meditation at Work on a New York Stage

Wisdom 2.0, a conference series on well-being, technology and work, brought its business edition to New York on September 10 and 11, 2015. The main sessions were held in Lower Manhattan at the Skirball Center for the Performing Arts, which belongs to New York University. One session was given to Transcendental Meditation at work, with Bob Roth of the David Lynch Foundation, the cardiologist Dr. Suzanne Steinbaum and Dov Seidman, founder and chief executive of the ethics advisory firm LRN. This account draws on the conference’s own website and the video of the session it posted on October 21, 2015.

The conference

The conference website listed an opening evening on Wednesday, September 9, with Deepak Chopra at ABC Carpet & Home, a walk on the High Line, and tours of the New York offices of Etsy, Twitter and The Huffington Post. The talks and panels ran at the Skirball Center from the afternoon of September 10 through September 11. Speakers listed on the site included Eileen Fisher, founder of the clothing company that bears her name; Chad Dickerson, then chief executive of Etsy; the meditation teacher and author Sharon Salzberg; and Andy Berndt of Google’s Creative Lab.

Roth was listed as executive director of the David Lynch Foundation. Dr. Steinbaum was listed as the cardiologist leading the women’s heart health program at Lenox Hill Hospital. Seidman was listed as the author of “HOW: Why HOW We Do Anything Means Everything.” The foundation’s own blog and Dr. Steinbaum’s list of her lectures both place the session on September 10.

What the panel discussed

The session ran about 24 minutes. Roth opened by saying that interest in meditation had jumped in the previous year or two. He named the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Department of Defense, Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank, hedge funds, professional sports teams and whole schools among the groups wanting it.

Dr. Steinbaum argued that employers were not acting only out of kindness. They had seen what stress, poor sleep and overwork did to their staff, she said, and wanted fewer people out sick and more people able to do the job. She also referred to the American Heart Association’s 2013 statement on blood pressure. That statement rated TM Class IIb, which in the association’s scale means it may be considered, and said it was reasonable for people with blood pressure above 120/80 to consider trying nondrug approaches as an addition to their care. Our guide to the statement sets out what it did and did not say.

Seidman spoke about the value of a pause. In flat, connected organizations, he said, every employee is now expected to make judgment calls, not just follow orders, and that takes time to stop and think about what is right. He cited survey figures suggesting most employees were not engaged at work, and said a lack of trust in leaders was the root of it.

Roth closed with an image he said he uses to explain meditation: the surface of the ocean can be rough while the deep water stays still, and meditation, he said, is a way to reach the quieter level of the mind. He also said there was no need for rivalry between TM and other styles such as mindfulness, and encouraged the audience to keep up whatever practice they had.

How it reached this address

The David Lynch Foundation’s blog post about the session linked to the old Center for Leadership Performance site on this domain, inviting readers to find a course there. That link is one reason this page exists. The center’s courses are covered on our page about how a TM course worked.

This page is general information, not medical advice. The Manhattan Business Review is not affiliated with the David Lynch Foundation or any Transcendental Meditation organization, and it does not sell courses. Transcendental Meditation and TM are trademarks of their owners.

Read next

• What is Transcendental Meditation? A plain guide for professionals
• New York’s meditation town halls for business leaders, 2014 to 2017
• TM and mindfulness: how the two practices are taught