American record producer Rick Rubin talks at lenght with Rolling Stone Magazine about the practice of Transcendental Meditation, creativity, making music and odd studio times:

How did you get interested in transcendental meditation?
When I was 14 years old, I went to see my pediatrician, the doctor who delivered me, because my neck hurt when I went to school. He said, incredibly for his day, that it was stress and I needed to learn to meditate. As he said it, I remember thinking, My parents aren't going to go for this. But they said, "Oh, well, if that's what the doctor says."

[...]

Did TM work for you?
I can't remember how it affected my neck issues, but it definitely affected my life. I did it from when I was 14 until I was going to NYU. Maybe stopping was a backwards version of trying to find out who I was — meditating was part of my family life, even though nobody else in my family did it.

After I moved to California, I decided I was going to start again, after not doing TM for five years. To actually start took months: it seemed like a very big decision. From the first meditation back, I realized that the person I am was shaped by the experience of the years of meditation. I feel like I can see deeply into things in a way that many of the people around me don't, or can't

[...]

Are there times when you're in the studio with somebody and you think they'd benefit from learning TM?
[...] There's a great deal of bullshit that people think about when they make music, things that don't matter. TM kind of wipes that away, and you focus on the real job at hand, as opposed to thinking about what the management wants, or what the record company's saying, or what somebody at a radio station might think.

Here is a short film made by Alison Chernick with Rick talking about being in harmony, the power of music, creativity and silence:

Tip: See also my post "Transcendental Meditation and the Alternatives".

Featured image: Portrait of Rick (unable to find photo credit).