‘TM Healed My Depression’

A project director says the Transcendental Meditation® (TM) technique helped him overcome depression and achieve inner peace. 

Lorenzo Chiesa, who also owns a publishing house, learnt the TM technique after finding himself in a ‘deep state of depression’ after the end of an intimate relationship. 

In a candid interview with the podcast – Stillness in Success – host, Mustafa Nuristani, Lorenzo discussed his traumatic breakup and how he turned his life around with the help of Transcendental Meditation.

“I fell into such a depression. It was crippling,” Lorenzo told Mustafa Nuristani. 

“I hope you have never been depressed. I didn’t imagine it was so physical of an experience. It was not just a psychological bad feeling,” he said. 

“It was like my heart was getting stabbed with a knife, and I had a knife deep in my heart all the time. It was painful.” 

Seeing Lorenzo in this state of suffering, his mother suggested he learns meditation. 

“My mother saw that I was really, really in a bad condition. I couldn’t study. I couldn’t play the piano. I couldn’t do anything. I just was hopeless, Lorenzo said.

Lorenzo’s mother told him that Transcendental Meditation was a scientific technique and convinced him to attend a free introductory seminar. 

“I went to the introductory lecture. It was full of people, maybe 20 people,” Lorenzo said. 

“The teacher was very good and experienced. But I don’t remember anything she said. I just remember thinking ‘this is amazing’,” he said.  

“I was so enthusiastic. And she was touched by my desire [to learn TM] so she held a course just for me.”

Lorenzo attended the first day of the 4-consecutive day course and “felt liberated” after learning the technique.  
“I remember it was the best experience. It was so liberating, you know, for a depressed person that has this pain in his heart,” Lorenzo said. 

“I used to wake up with this pain all the time. And I used to go to sleep just to forget it, and wake up with this pain again. And when I first meditated, it was like someone took this knife away from my heart for the first time,” he said. 

“It was something you can’t explain for those who haven’t tried TM. It’s like explaining the taste of chocolate. If you have not tasted it, you don’t know.”

“The knife kept coming back after the meditation, but it felt like every time it was coming in a bit less strongly. It was more light, more light, less physical, until at some point it completely went away physically,” he said. 

“There was still pain inside on a mental level but my physical body was not feeling that pain anymore and that’s already a big goal [achieved]. 

“And then step by step, month by month, it completely disappeared. In a few months, my depression completely disappeared, and it turned around and started becoming bliss. And now that’s [my] reality.”

Lorenzo said that one does not have to be suffering from depression to gain the benefits from the Transcendental Meditation technique.  

“You know, Mustafa, what I noticed, because for me it was very easy to get hooked to meditation because I was in a very bad moment. And so I felt a radical difference,” Lorenzo said.  

Lorenzo said he recommends TM to his friends but they say they are ‘already happy, I don’t need meditation’.  

“And that is because they don’t know how much more they can get. There’s no limit to that bliss… there are infinite levels of happiness that you could reach,” Lorenzo said. 

“Some people can’t manage stress. Some people can manage incredible levels of stress and look normal from the outside but all of these people can benefit from TM. 

“Really, it doesn’t matter what work you do. You can be a manager, you can be anything but all the successful people do TM and it can help you too.”

Transcendental Meditation has more than 700 research studies substantiating its effectiveness in reducing stress, anxiety and PTSD.

Recently the American Heart Foundation, American Medical Association and the American College of Cardiology included Transcendental Meditation as a technique to combat high blood pressure.