MY STORY

In this column meditators share their stories* of how they
started the Transcendental Meditation technique and what
kinds of positive changes have occurred in their lives.

Sage Gallarno

The Missing Link
for Family Life

In some ways Sage Gallarano is an average teenager. At fifteen, she enjoys hanging out with her friends and wishes she had more time to sleep. Unlike her friends, though, she spends time practicing the Transcendental Meditation technique each day.

“Before I started meditating, I found myself nodding off in my last class,” she says. “Now I feel a lot more rested. Last week I meditated in the car after school, before Tae Kwon Do practice, and it was the best workout ever. I had much more energy and focus.”

A top student who is taking advanced placement courses, Sage no longer feels overwhelmed with her workload. “In my college English class, I was feeling stressed about writing a 500-word essay every week,” she says. “Now the words flow smoothly and my teacher noticed a big difference, too.”

Sage likes to meditate with her dad, Michael, who also recently learned to meditate, and her mom, Jan.

Already a close family, the three notice that they’re getting along even better. “We always laughed a lot and supported each other, but we could get angry or upset or whatever,” says Michael. “Now with TM we have the ability to pull back, to say ‘I don’t want to go down that road,’ to make better choices.”

Describing himself as having a short fuse, Michael says, “I can’t even relate to who I used to be. I feel so much less aggressive. I’m ecstatic about it, and I mean that from my heart. I’ve never experienced anything that gave me that.”

As owners of the Positive Change Health Center in Sebastian, Florida, the Gallaranos already were paying attention to their health.

“Yet despite everything we were teaching others and doing for ourselves, we felt that meditation was the missing link,” says Jan, who had started the Transcendental Meditation technique and enjoyed it many years ago, but had fallen off the practice. “I knew TM was important for enlivening the mind-body connection, but I had forgotten how to do it effortlessly, so I wasn’t getting any results. I didn’t see that it was superior to other meditations I had learned.”

Then Jan got in touch with a TM teacher who checked her meditation, and she started having the experiences she was looking for. When Sage and Michael learned to meditate, she sat through the TM courses with them, as a refresher course.

“I’m starting to notice that the right thoughts are coming to me at the right time—the answers I’m looking for are there without trying,” she says. “There’s more efficiency in work and in daily life.”

The three hope that Michael’s mother, who lives with them, will be able to start meditating soon, too. “I think we were very ripe for it,” says Michael. “It’s been like magic.”

* We invite you to send in a short video or article sharing your story of personal growth through the TM program—or your experience of applying the TM program in your field of interest, e.g., education, military, business, health, rehabilitation, etc. Please send all submissions to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . For more information, please visit the Submissions page.