If your boss sits in the office with his eyes shut, it doesn’t mean he’s nodding off. Transcendental Meditation is the latest craze for high-fliers.
Lorraine Hickey. 33. Chief executive of a West End asset management company has been doing TM for a year: “I was working long hours and was very stressed at the time and decided I had to do something about It. But my first response when someone suggested I learn TM was that I didn’t want to become vegetarian and wear floral, tiered skirts. But the person who recommended it to me was a business person themselves, so I thought I’d give it ago.”

“Now if I have a difficult meeting I take 20 minutes to meditate beforehand so I can deal with things far more objectively. TM Is also very portable; I meditate on planes especially when there are delays. I also meditate in my office — I tell my PA not to interrupt me for half an hour. “When there are too many deadlines to meet, it helps me to prioritise what is important and what can wait.”
Alex Gray, 35, a west London property developer, has been meditating for six months: “I have tried other methods for dealing with stress and they haven’t worked, but TM is better than a full night’s sleep. I was working abroad recently with a team of fairly fit people, while I’ve got a bit of a beer gut. We were working 12 hours a day, seven days a week on a project. “The only way to keep up — and in fact I beat everyone hands down — was to meditate for 20 minutes in the morning and then work nine hours non-stop, then do another 20 minutes in the evening and carry on. We would then go out drinking. Everyone else was wiped out but I could keep going and in the morning I was waking everyone up, getting them out of bed. “After five days my team couldn’t believe that I had so much energy and was so focused … I didn’t tell them I did TM; it is my big secret.”
This article was written and published by the Evening Standard