Latest news with #TranscendentalMeditation
Daily Mail
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Clint Eastwood's secret to good health and longevity at 95 is totally free
Hollywood legend Clint Eastwood has reached the remarkable age of 95, but you'd never guess it. With a surprisingly youthful look and energy to match, fans are left wondering: what's his secret? It isn't expensive supplements, experimental anti-aging treatments or trendy meal plans, Eastwood's longevity strategy is simple: meditation and a low-fat diet, mixed with low-impact exercise. The actor's health wake up call and journey toward personal wellness began when his father passed away at a young age from cardiovascular disease. Eastwood, who recently directed and produced a movie last year at 94, realized then that a healthy body is crucial for a clear mind and long life, and he adopted an unwavering dedication to his health. Celebrity biographer Shawn Levy, author of the book 'Clint: The Man and the Movies,' notes that Eastwood's most prized wellness strategy is Transcendental Meditation. He has followed the practice since the 1970s, meditating twice a day every day, even while working, according to Levy. 'Indeed, especially while working,' he wrote for Air Mail. 'All this while playing the Man with No Name and Dirty Harry and other such avatars of bloodshed.' Levy called Eastwood a 'man of contradictions,' as his action-packed movies and rough-around-the-edges characters juxtapose with a health-focused man meditating in between takes. Transcendental meditation (TM) is a form of meditation that involves silently repeating a personalized mantra. It works to 'dissolve stress and access your full potential,' according to Experts have said TM can help people avoid distracting thoughts and promote a state of 'relaxed awareness' by using a mantra to focus attention. The method helps to reduce stress and anxiety, while promoting healthy sleep, all of which are needed for a longer lifespan. Levy also wrote that Eastwood is a 'lifelong gym rat and fitness freak,' but above all, he focuses on a healthy diet that is balanced and nutritious without being overly-restrictive. Eastwood also emphasizes the importance of low-impact workouts as a person ages. The actor enjoys playing golf, as well as longer walks at a slow pace. When it comes to weight training, Eastwood prioritizes proper form over heavy lifting, aiming to build and maintain muscle strength effectively. The biographer added that Eastwood has followed an 'organic, low-fat diet' since the 1950s, 'when alfalfa sprouts and yogurt were considered exotic.' And when talk show host Jimmy Kimmel asked Eastwood whether he snacks on nachos or chicken wings, Eastwood responded: 'None of that crap.' His dietary habits are 'lean and green,' prioritizing lean protein sources like salmon and chicken, as well as an abundance of vegetables like dark, leafy greens. He consumes a lot of broccoli and asparagus, packed with vitamins, minerals, and fiber, Levy said. Eastwood prides himself on following the 90/10 rule, making healthy mindful dietary choices 90 percent of the time, leaving the other 10 percent to allow himself to indulge in food he would usually avoid. He also tries to limit carbohydrate intake, and swaps sugary drinks for water. Reducing stress, staying busy, getting exercise and following a healthy diet are key to longevity and make up major tenets of why researchers believe people who reside in 'Blue Zones' live well into their 90s and through 100. Blue Zones are places lauded as longevity hotspots with low rates of chronic disease and significant amounts of people living beyond the average lifespan. The zones include Okinawa, Japan; Ikaria, Greece; Nicoya, Costa Rica; Sardinia, Italy; and Loma Linda, California. People who live in a Blue Zone are said to have nine specific lifestyle habits that longevity experts call the Power 9. These are: building exercise and activity into everyday life; feeling like they have a purpose; finding ways to reduce stress; stopping eating when you feel 80 percent full; eating a plant-based diet; moderate alcohol intake; having a sense of faith; focusing on family and relationships; and having a strong social circle.
Fox News
7 days ago
- Health
- Fox News
Clint Eastwood's longtime secrets of good health and longevity revealed
At 95, American movie star and film director Clint Eastwood is still going strong. Celebrity biographer Shawn Levy, author of the book "Clint: The Man and the Movies," has written about the health practices that have contributed to the actor's longevity. In a recent Air Mail article, Levy noted that Eastwood is a "lifelong gym rat and fitness freak" who has also favored an "organic, low-fat diet" since the 1950s, "when alfalfa sprouts and yogurt were considered exotic." "And in the 60s, he was touting the benefits of sushi," he added. Eastwood has also practiced Transcendental Meditation daily, often twice a day, since the mid-1970s, even while working, according to Levy. "Indeed, especially while working," he wrote. "All this while playing the Man with No Name and Dirty Harry and other such avatars of bloodshed." Levy referred to Eastwood as a "man of contradictions" as he alternates between his rough-and-tumble movie roles and meditation sessions behind the scenes, describing how the actor has "mirrored the best and worst" of our "national character." Transcendental Meditation (TM) is a meditation technique that provides deep rest for the mind and body, according to the official TM website. The meditative practice "dissolves stress" in the nervous system, which can improve brain function. "After just a few minutes of TM practice, people typically feel more refreshed, clear-minded and ready for action," according to the website. "Over time, consciousness develops, and we enjoy greater success and happiness in life. TM practitioners report inner peace, more creativity, better health and better relationships." For more Health articles, visit In a medically reviewed WebMD guide, experts share how the TM technique can help people avoid distracting thoughts and promote a state of "relaxed awareness" by using a mantra to focus attention. Some TM supporters state that ordinary thinking is "transcended" and replaced by a "state of pure consciousness," where perfect stillness, rest, stability, order and "absence of mental boundaries" are achieved, the above source noted. Potential health benefits of the practice can include reduced stress, anxiety and depression, as well as lower blood pressure and better sleep. While TM, and even normal meditation, can be positive for overall health, experts caution that it should not be used as a singular treatment for certain conditions. TM training is available through a nonprofit organization called Maharishi Foundation. Training involves multi-session group courses with a certified instructor. Fox News Digital reached out to the Maharishi Foundation for comment.
Gulf Insider
16-07-2025
- Gulf Insider
Indian Police Discover a Russian Woman Living in a Cave
While on patrol last week looking for any tourists who might have gotten stuck in the landslide-prone forests in the southern Indian town of Gokarna, police inspector Sridhar S.R. spotted a statue of a Hindu deity peeking out through the lush green vegetation. Moving closer, he saw makeshift curtains made of red saris that obscured the entrance to a cave. When he looked in, he was surprised to find a woman and two young girls living inside. The discovery on July 9 in Karnataka State set off days of sleuthing by the police and government officials to piece together a nine-year odyssey that had led the woman to the cave. The woman, it turned out, was a 40-year-old Russian national named Nina Kutina. She had been living in the cave, which she sometimes used as a retreat, for a week with her daughters, ages 4 and 6. She practiced yoga and meditated by candlelight, and cooked on a wood-fired stove, Mr. Sridhar said. Photos of Hindu deities lined the walls. 'Caves are heaven in her mind-set,' Mr. Sridhar said. Mr. Sridhar and his team initially tried to cajole Ms. Kutina into leaving the cave in the gathering dark, given the area's heavy rainfall, perilous location and reputation as a habitat for poisonous snakes. But Ms. Kutina told them that she was 'interested in staying in the forest and worshiping God,' said M. Narayana, the superintendent of police for Uttara Kannada, the district in which Gokarna sits. The cave is in the town's Ramateertha hills, where seasonal waterfalls and landslides are common. Eventually, the police escorted the trio to a shelter for women run by a nonprofit group. There, after charging her mobile phone, Ms. Kutina emailed her relatives in Russian. 'Our peaceful life in the cave has ended — our cave home destroyed,' she wrote, according to a translation provided by the police. 'From years living under the open sky in harmony with nature, we know: no snake or animal ever harmed us.' The discovery of Ms. Kutina on July 9 raised a bigger question of where she had been since she arrived in India nine years ago, which the police and government officials began piecing together from documents and interviews with her. In 2016, she had entered India on a six-month business visa and traveled to Goa, a state known for its beautiful beaches that is crowded with foreigners who also come to meditate, practice yoga and find spiritual connection. India, with its huge array of gods, deities, gurus, saints and mystics from multiple faiths, has long drawn notable visitors from around the world. In the 1960s, The Beatles famously spent time in Rishikesh, a town in northern India that sits by the Ganges River, sacred to Hindus, practicing Transcendental Meditation with a guru who later became world renowned. Ms. Kutina overstayed her visa by a year and was allowed to leave India by government officials in Goa in April 2018. She then went to neighboring Nepal, which is also a common destination for travelers seeking spirituality, on a 90-day tourist visa and left that country in September, according to a stamp in an old passport that sat among her belongings in the cave. Indian intelligence officials said Ms. Kutina had been back in India since early 2020, having re-entered the country on a multiple-entry tourist visa. She arrived with two sons and a daughter, according to government records. Her elder son died at 21 years of age, in a bike accident last year, and the whereabouts of her younger son, who is 11, are unknown, according to police officials. Her 6-year-old daughter was born in Ukraine, and the younger one was born in India. In Goa, Ms. Kutina worked as a tutor of Russian language and literature. She had made the roughly three-hour trip from Goa to Gokarna — a town of about 20,000 people locally known for its temples and beauty — multiple times in the past, said Mr. Narayana, the police superintendent who provided the details of her travels. 'She had stayed in the cave at least four times,' he said. Ms. Kutina could not be reached at a phone number shared by Karnataka police officials. Inside the cave, Ms. Kutina used to prepare simple meals of roti and vegetable curries for her family, said Mr. Sridhar, the Gokarna police inspector. 'She is an adventurer type of person, she knew lots of things about nature,' he said. But on Monday, Ms. Kutina and her daughters were sent to an office of the Indian government agency that oversees immigration, in Bengaluru, the capital of Karnataka. In a photograph provided by officials, Ms. Kutina could be seen sitting cross-legged on an empty row of chairs, combing her hair. Her daughters were also seated, and one of them was using a mobile phone. The agency ordered that she be kept under 'close watch,' and now government officials are working on deporting her and her daughters to Russia. They have since been moved to a detention center in another city. Also read: The Billionaire Exodus: Why India's Rich Are Heading Abroad Source The New York Times
Boston Globe
24-06-2025
- Business
- Boston Globe
It took 45 years, but spreadsheet legend Mitch Kapor finally got his MIT degree
At the end of the phone call last November inviting Kapor to give the lecture, Aulet said he decided to tease his old friend. 'I'm like, there's only one problem, Mitch, I see here you haven't graduated from MIT,' Aulet recalled last week. Why the tease? 'Because I'm from New York and we talk trash all the time,' Aulet said. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up 'He was just yanking my chain a little bit,' Kapor, 74, recalled in a separate interview. Advertisement But the joke got Kapor thinking about why he left MIT without a degree, a story that starts even before he enrolled in Sloan's accelerated masters program in the summer of 1979. After graduating from Yale in 1971 and bouncing around for almost a decade as 'a lost and wandering soul,' working as a disc jockey, a Transcendental Meditation teacher, and a mental health counselor, Kapor said he became entranced by the possibilities of the new Apple II personal computer. He started writing programs to solve statistics problems and analyze data, which caught the attention of Boston-area software entrepreneurs Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston, who co-created VisiCalc, one of the first spreadsheet programs. They introduced Kapor to their California-based software publisher, Personal Software. Advertisement Midway through Kapor's 12-month masters program, the publisher offered him the then-princely sum of about $20,000 if he'd adapt his stats programs to work with VisiCalc. To finish the project, he took a leave from MIT, but then decided to leave for good to take a full-time job at Personal. Comparing his decision to those by other famed tech founder drop-outs, 'It was just so irresistible,' he said. 'It felt like I could not let another moment go by without taking advantage of this opportunity or the window would close.' Mitch Kapor, founder of Lotus Development, at MIT in 1979, where he was studying for a masters degree that he did not complete until 2025. Photo courtesy of Mitch Kapor A few years later, Kapor returned to Cambridge and founded Lotus in Kendall Square, leading to his first encounter with Aulet. Around 1982, Aulet was working at IBM in the then-new personal computer unit when Kapor visited the tech giant's Madison Avenue office in New York to demonstrate Lotus 1-2-3. Kapor arrived dressed not in the IBM standard of a suit and tie but in a Hawaiian shirt, Aulet recalled. 'This guy was so cool, so relatable,' Aulet said, which eventually inspired him to become a startup founder himself. Over the decades, the pair kept in touch. Aulet left IBM in 1993, founded several companies, and started teaching at MIT in 2005. Kapor left Lotus in 1986, As a venture capitalist, Kapor developed a philosophy with his wife, Freada Kapor Klein, that they called 'gap-closing investing,' which aimed to fight racial and income inequality by supporting business concepts that would address the needs of underserved communities. HealthSherpa, for example, helped people sign up for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act, and LendStreet helped people climb out of debt. Advertisement When Aulet made his joke on the phone call with his old friend in 2024, Kapor had largely retired from investing and realized that he wanted to complete his degree. 'I don't know what prompted me, but it started a conversation' with MIT about the logistics of finally graduating, Kapor said. By the time Kapor gave the lecture in March, Aulet had discovered Kapor was only a few courses short. MIT does not give honorary degrees, but school officials allow students to make up for missing classes with an independent study and a written thesis. Kapor decided to write a paper on the the roots and development of his investing strategy. 'It's timely, it's highly relevant, and I have things to say,' he explained. One The thesis explained that though Kapor's investing strategy was not aimed at picking entrepreneurs from underrepresented groups, he ended up backing many such founders. 'It turns out that, more often than not, the kinds of people who are the entrepreneurs with these ideas, who have the ability to do them, are themselves from a marginalized or underrepresented group, because that's the world they know and they grew up in, and that's what lit their fires,' he said. Advertisement Such an outlook could be increasingly important at a time when politicians, from the president on down, have 'We take an alternative approach that avoids the kind of head-on opposition in the current political environment,' he said. 'This is not tech's shining hour — far from it — but there's still reason to be hopeful.' Aaron Pressman can be reached at
India Today
20-06-2025
- Health
- India Today
Struggling to Focus? Meditation might help—All you need to know
In today's fast-paced world, where everything happens in a flash, people's attention spans are shorter than ever. Studies indicate that attention spans are rapidly shrinking, with individuals struggling to maintain focus on tasks that demand even moderate effort. The primary culprits are stress, constant digital distractions, and the overwhelming volume of information we are exposed to daily. India Today spoke with her to get deeper insights on how meditation impacts focus in the age of distraction. By Mrs. Aditi Shrivastava, Senior Teacher of Transcendental Meditation (TM) and Academic Advisor for Consciousness at Maharishi University of Information Technology (MUIT)advertisementWHY MEDITATION IS THE ANTIDOTE TO DISTRACTIONMeditation is a valuable tool for enhancing concentration and mental function. It helps individuals become mindful, present, and better equipped to manage the work at hand. As pressures from contemporary living rise, the capacity to concentrate becomes a key driver of productivity, making meditation a crucial skill for both personal and professional HIDDEN COST OF MULTITASKINGWith most people juggling multiple tasks, multitasking is often mistaken for efficiency. However, research shows that it reduces productivity by nearly 40%. Stressful environments compound this, leading to anxiety, fatigue, and mental blockages. Meditation, by contrast, allows the mind to reset and operate from a calm, expansive state—making deep focus more natural. Meditation isn't just a spiritual or ancient ritual—it is backed by neuroscience. It activates the prefrontal cortex, responsible for critical thinking and attention. It also increases grey matter in regions that handle learning and memory. Studies from Harvard have shown that nearly 47% of a person's day is spent distracted—something meditation helps dramatically reduce by anchoring awareness in the BENEFITS OF MEDITATION FOR IMPROVING CONCENTRATIONadvertisementMeditation enhances focus by quieting internal distractions. It boosts alpha wave activity, which is linked to a calm yet alert mind. It stimulates the parasympathetic nervous system, reducing stress hormones and promoting a relaxed state conducive to concentration. With regular practice, it also helps regulate emotions like frustration and anxiety, allowing mental clarity to emerge. Over time, meditation improves neuroplasticity, empowering the brain to focus better and adapt to challenges.'Meditation allows the mind to transcend the noise and settle into stillness, which is where true concentration is built,' says Shrivastava. 'It clears away the mental clutter, giving rise to natural alertness.'HOW TO INCORPORATE MEDITATION INTO YOUR DAILY ROUTINEStarting a meditation practice doesn't have to be overwhelming. Begin with a short, consistent routine. Choose a style that resonates—be it mindfulness, visualisation, focused attention, or Transcendental Meditation (TM). Understanding the impact of meditation in your daily life can fuel your motivation to continue.'The key is consistency, even if it's just for a few minutes a day,' says Shrivastava. 'It's about choosing a practice that aligns with your mind's nature. TM, for instance, is effortless and deeply restorative.'ALTERNATIVE PRACTICES FOR BETTER FOCUSBesides meditation, complementary practices like yoga asanas, mudras, and pranayama can improve memory and concentration. Simple habits—like mindful walks or short meditation breaks between work—can prevent burnout. A balanced lifestyle involving good sleep, nutrition, and mental wellness further supports sharper cognitive concentration is more essential than ever in our distraction-heavy lives. Meditation trains the mind to experience deeper awareness, expanding its potential for productivity and peace. Whether you choose TM, guided visualisations, or breath-focused practices, a daily routine is key to unlocking long-term benefits.'Concentration is a learnable skill, and meditation is the training ground to cultivate the mind's infinite capabilities,' Shrivastava Watch
