Peruvian Upper Primary School Children Who Learn Transcendental Meditation: A Quasi-Experimental Study of Personal Wellbeing

Peruvian Upper Primary School Children Who Learn Transcendental Meditation: A Quasi-Experimental Study of Personal Wellbeing

Personal wellbeing is considered a global measure of how satisfied an individual feels about their life, a measure which encompasses mental and physical health as well as interfacing with resilience and quality-of-life. As part of a pre-, peri-, and post-pandemic research program in Perú, prior controlled evidence by these authors suggested the practice of Transcendental Meditation by 49 orphan girls increased wellbeing by 33%, a statistically significant change. We now to turn our attention to upper primary-age school children. Using a quasi-experimental pretest– posttest design with a N = 402 sample of 5th- and 6th-grade indigenous children at three schools, we found wellbeing increased after practicing Transcendental Meditation from 62.6/90 (69.5%) to 68.4/90 (76.0%), a significant difference, with school, gender and age mostly unrelated to this improvement. As wellbeing is a reliable predicator of both health and longevity, these results suggest a more promising future for children in Perú.