Latest / The Inner Well Podcast / Inner Stillness for Outer Strength: Inside the David Lynch Foundation's Mission
Transcript
- The Inner Well Podcast: We all contain a space within that when enlivened and nourished will support us with unwavering stability, expansion, and peace of mind. Join us each week as we dive into honest, grounded conversations about transcendental meditation, consciousness, and growth, and what it means to live an integrated life supported by a foundation of creativity and calm. This is the Inner World. Hi, everyone. Welcome back to the Interwell podcast. Today, I'm here with Vin DiCrescenzo, Vice President of West Coast First Responder and Veterans Programs at the David Lynch Foundation, where he leads initiatives providing transcendental meditation training to veterans and first responders, among many other people. Vin, welcome. So happy that you're here. So thrilled to be here. Amazing. Well, I'm really excited to talk to you a little bit about programs that you do, the work that you're doing, you are ⁓ really inspiring when you speak about these topics. I know that you're really passionate about it. But maybe we can just start, for people who've never heard of the David Lynch Foundation, could you talk a little bit about what the David Lynch Foundation does? Sure. So the David Lynch Foundation has been around for about 20 years, and it was founded by the filmmaker David Lynch and our current CEO, Bob Roth, who's a long time TM instructor. And the mission from the beginning really was to bring meditation and transcendental meditation in particular to at-risk populations, particularly people who have experienced really high levels of trauma. So when we first started, think David's vision was to bring this to kids in schools and really tough neighborhoods, which we've done for many years, but then it's evolved over time. We work with military veterans and active duty military and their families who are experiencing post-traumatic stress. We work with many, many people who are in recovery from addiction. And then about four five years ago, we started working more with first responders, starting in New York with firefighters and police officers and now expanding all over the country. Amazing. Yeah, it's such important work and you all have seen a lot of success with this. I think you and I have worked together a little bit with the recent LA fires and many, many, many, many people were affected. and being able to teach people who lost their homes, being able to teach those first responders who dealt with those fires has been, for me, really inspiring. ⁓ But it's really incredible what you've been able to do. I wanna get into the work you do more, but I wanna just step back a little bit. Before you joined David Lynch Foundation, you had a background in film, television, digital marketing. ⁓ How did you find your way to the David Lynch Foundation? It was like one of those things where it was just kind of that. point in your life where something was just sort of meant to be. I had worked in film and television and then in marketing for a while and I was really sort of kind of done with it. And I was going through a period in my life where I was dealing with some really severe mental illness in my immediate family. And my buddy, Adam Friedman was working for the foundation. of fact, I remember when he got the interview, I was like, you need to tell them this job is for you. Your whole life is prologue. And then he got the job and I said, okay, I got to start working there too. So I literally just started showing up. and kind of volunteering. And I just kind of knew it's where I needed to be. I think twofold. mean, one, I learned the technique myself and as I said, it was going through a real tough period and it really helped it ground me personally to kind of be the husband and father I needed to be. But then I think quickly when I started working, particularly with veterans, it just kind of filled me up in a way that I think I really needed personally at that time. I feel like I've gotten as much out of serving veterans as they get in some ways. ⁓ If anyone who's dealt with mental illness in their family knows it's really difficult and can be frustrating, there's a lot of emotion tied up, can be really hard to navigate the mental health system. And so I was feeling like I couldn't necessarily fulfill that as much as I wanted to do, but at work I could. it just was like, it's been very, very gratifying. And what's great about our CEO Bob is like, he's just given us, ⁓ a lot of room to operate. And so when there was new initiatives to come up, like working with first responders, it's always been so positive and encouraging. And then you just make, when you see the effect, particularly like, you know, if we train a veteran, sometimes it could be really crusty old veterans who may be like, you know, a little bit cynical about, what is this kind of thing? And then when you want, it's funny, like the ones that are the most skeptical, you probably know this from teaching often be the ones that. respond the best. And they come back to you a few days later and say, oh, wow, I haven't slept through the night in seven years and now I'm sleeping, that kind of stuff. It makes you want to get up out of the bed in the morning and do more. It's amazing. Yeah, you said so many good things that I want to come back to in that. But just on that point of someone, and the veteran example is really a good one because I've taught veterans before, and they can be because of, their job because of their role, you know, they have to be really ⁓ only doing things that are effective and matter. And so they're going to be maybe, maybe this is generalization skeptical of something like a meditation technique. And I've had that experience where the most skeptical, the most resistant people because of that resistance and because of that, I think no expectations, they have such a beautiful deep experience and they're transformed and they know that, it wasn't my belief in this thing that worked, it's the actual technique, it's the tool that does it. But I also, I would add, it fits really well often with those populations and first responders and veterans a little bit different, but they're all very self-reliant. And they're particularly first responders, they're the ones you call when you need help, they're not always the first ones to ask for help for themselves. So they don't necessarily, again, you're generalizing a bit, aren't always the first ones to say, ⁓ I'd love to speak to a counselor about my trauma. So what's so great about the meditation is it's self-care. It's like, I kind of say to them, hey, you do your pushups in the morning, you do the 20 minutes of TM, you don't have to talk about your trauma. And the other thing too is they are very, it's a fraternity often, so they want to hear from other first responders and veterans. We can talk about it, that's great, but when we build advocates and they hear from their brothers and sisters on the job, That's when they really become more open to it. 100%. And that's what you guys have done really well is you're not just teaching an individual firefighter, which is incredibly critical, of course, but you're trying to bring it into the entire fire department. You're trying to bring it into the community so that it becomes part of what you're doing. think that isn't it true that you guys are going to be maybe even bringing this into the academy? hopefully down the line or right now. Yeah, there's been a lot of talk about that recently. So can give you a little bit of background. We started in New York where the foundation is headquartered four or five years ago. There was a horrible rash of suicides within the New York City Police Department in a very short period of time. And this was right after COVID. And a lot of the police officers were actually military veterans before. Some of them had served in Iraq and Afghanistan, come back, lived through the pandemic. lived through a period where was, there was a lot of mixed feelings about police and they lost a lot of them to suicide and they really didn't know what to do. They knew they were gonna stand up a health and wellness program and they were looking for community partners and our CEO Bob said, hey, why don't we volunteer? We have donors who wanna support first responders to teach some of these folks. And after teaching about 40 New York City police officers, we did a kind of light evaluation of it. It was so impactful that they said, you know, we need to have this long-term. And so they've been funding the program ever since. And then ⁓ if you know police and fire, know, they both, there's a little, be a little bit competitive when the ⁓ fire department found out the cops were doing, they're like, okay, we need to have this too. And we were really fortunate in that one of the ⁓ really wonderful person, ⁓ retired ⁓ FDNY commissioner Salvador Casano was a really strong meditator. He's a guy who was on the ground during 9-11 and he opened the door for us to work with the FDNY. And that program has really been kind of the cornerstone of our first responder program. They've incorporated particularly with their addiction program, because there's so much trauma among first responders. Like I think they say like an average person maybe sees two or three traumatic events in their life. These guys see hundreds. So it just builds up over time. So you'll see, and the tradition, you they didn't have traditionally counseling until maybe the last couple of decades. there's been really a tradition of sort of alcoholism has been kind of very prevalent within first responder community. What's great about it is they come together and there's a really strong community on recovery. And so we've woven TM into the recovery program in New York so well. And because it's such a predominant preeminent ⁓ department, what the FDNY does, many departments around the country will pick up. So they've helped us bring it out here to Southern California. And there's been so much receptivity, particularly this year within Southern California, that they're now talking to us about, how can we bring this into our academy to new recruits? Because one of the things we know about TM, it works extremely well on people who have experienced trauma and helping to reduce their symptoms. But you also want to help build resilience into people who are going into these jobs before they experience trauma so that they can do their job better. If we could bring it to recruits, it would be a really remarkable thing to do. So powerful. And yeah, it's like you get one person that's sort of an advocate and it can just spread and they'll trust that. And it becomes this real tool. I love how you talked about that, that, you know, it's something that it helps once we have that PTSD symptoms, but it's also a preventative tool. I think of TM often it's like, it's a foundational tool. It's a foundational technique. that supports and complements everything we have going on. it supports the recovery programs. It supports any counseling that's already happening. It's never at odds or in ⁓ competition with any other program. It actually fully supports and it makes someone more available to everything that they need. So it becomes like this catalyst tool in your toolkit. Absolutely. And what we particularly like to do is to that point weave it into existing programs. Right? That's the one it typically works really well. So kind of to your point, it's not something that is replacing therapy or medication. Of course, do all the things that are helping, eating right, getting proper sleep, exercising. But when we can integrate it into an addiction program, it makes such a big difference. And the other piece that I don't want to leave out are the families. Whether you're a military veteran or a first responder, it's really the whole family that serves. ⁓ because that trauma that they're bringing home, the spouse experiences it, the children experience it. I remember talking to a veteran in Ohio, just a really great guy who had served in Iraq, and he was telling us that he was back for a few years and he was really struggling with post-traumatic stress and suicidal ideation. And the point that he really knew that he needed to do something, said he had, he's a high school teacher with five kids, he said his kids had a, bag packed in their closet in case they had to flee because dad was having an episode. And I think when that happened, he said, I really need to do something. And he's one of many that learned TM. And he really credits it for saving his family, his life, and even transforming. You think about the ripple effect. He's a high school teacher. All of the kids that he's teaching who wind up learning rather winning an award for a science teacher of the year in Ohio. like, isn't, you're not just serving the one person, you're really serving the whole community, which is so rewarding to us to see that. So rewarding, so beautiful. I'm so glad you brought that up because, you I wanted to come back to your own story, how you were having your own experience within your family and feeling the stress of their mental illnesses going on and how that was impacting you. And I think that... That's what's so powerful about this technique. One person learns. We're the first beneficiary, of course, but it has this ripple effect, like you said. And everyone in our environment starts to feel that impact. I think that the families ⁓ often are in caregiver roles, right? And they're in those ⁓ roles. remember ⁓ one of the first people, probably in the first 10 people I ever taught, I taught ⁓ a veteran and I taught his wife. And I remember it was, was sort of new to understanding the veteran community and even her role. And ⁓ when I met her and she told me about her experience, she had PTSD essentially from taking care of him and being with him and how they could do that together. And then they had that united force to practice together. So it's so powerful what you're doing. ⁓ thanks. And that it is often the spouse that'll reach out and say, hey, my husband is struggling, I think he could benefit this. And probably without the spouse doing it with them, often I don't think they would learn. So it's great to have the families involved. Amazing. When you look at these programs, mean, what do you sort of see as the future of the David Lynch Foundation activities? Obviously wanting to bring this to as many people and into these programs as possible, but what does sort of success look like for you and how are you expanding these initiatives right a great question. You know, ⁓ there's an expression, we test and prove with philanthropy and we try to scale and grow with government and institutions. And that's kind of something we heard from Mark Benioff at Salesforce. I heard him say that one night. It was late night, I was watching a show and I remember thinking like, I can't really sleep. Let me put on CNBC. That'll put me to sleep right away. And then I saw him came on and said that and it just stuck in my head and I couldn't wait to tell everybody at work. Cause that's really our approach. We're fortunate that we have some really supportive donors and through philanthropy, we're able to do these pilot programs like I explained at the New York City Police Department or Fire Department. Once we kind of prove the efficacy of it, right, we know we do, we also sponsor great research. We show that it works. We demonstrate that these institutions want it. We demonstrate that we can deliver it. Then we're in a position to ask them for scalable institutional funding, whether that comes through health insurance, whether it comes through government grants. whether it comes through individual institutions like hospitals deciding that we just need to pay for it because we're seeing the effect on our bottom line. To give you an example, ⁓ when the pandemic happened, we responded immediately because we knew that healthcare workers were now suffering the way they hadn't before, particularly emergency room nurses. So we launched something called Heal the Healers, which was a program that we continue today for ⁓ nurses and physicians. ⁓ And over the years, we've taught so many nurses and it's made such an impact. And then at Brown University, they're now paying for TM for their healthcare workers in the system because they saw the benefit of it. Usually we'll start out by bringing it to kind of leadership so they could see what it is, but there's such big issues with burnout among physicians and nurses. And that, of course we care about them personally, but it also affects the bottom line. It cost a fortune to replace a nurse or a physician who leaves. So. they're savvy enough to know that we need to have wellness programs to improve attrition rates, to make sure that they're improving just absenteeism, like those things. There's a practical aspect to an institution like that that we're trying to also demonstrate through the research. So to answer your question, we're demonstration projects through philanthropy, but we wanna scale long-term to go from bringing TM to thousands of people to bringing it to millions. Beautiful, powerful work. you know, what I've seen you guys do incredibly well is the research, right? You're not just saying these things, you're showing, you're tracking, you're seeing, I remember seeing this study and I'll often use it, comparing a control group of, I think it was nurses who did not learn TM and a group that did learn TM and seeing the stress levels and that burnout rate just dramatically drop in the ones that learn TM. And when you see it like that, it's so impactful. And it's also, Gosh, if I was an employer, right? And if I was a big institution and I wanted to do something that was effective that my people would do, that's what this technique is because it's so natural, easy, and enjoyable, ⁓ and that's really important. It is. And there's the anecdotal stuff and the testimonials from people, which is so inspiring. When you hear a nurse, when you hear a firefighter, you hear a veteran talk about their experience, and that really touches the heart. But again, if you're a major institution, you want to see the data. And the data is there. I mean, we're continuing to collect more data, especially on this financial piece, like how does it affect the bottom line? But like you said, there's 50 years of research on TM, but just the last 10, I'll cite one of them that I think is really significant on veterans. The Department of Defense funded a $2.4 million study at the San Diego VA Hospital a few years back, comparing TM to their frontline intervention for PTSD, which is something called prolonged exposure. And with those, think it was about 203 veterans who had experiencing post-traumatic stress. And TM proved to be as effective, if not more effective than their frontline intervention. And one of the things while prolonged exposure is something that they use and it can be really effective, it's hard to tolerate. I ⁓ don't know all the specifics, but it involves kind of reliving your trauma. So as you can imagine, a lot of veterans don't want to do it or they drop out after a while. ⁓ Whereas TM is kind of so benign, it's easy to do and there's really not a lot of downside or side effects. So for it to be as effective as their frontline intervention speaks volumes of why it needs to be integrated on a wide scale for veterans with post-traumatic stress. So that's where we wanna go with it. Absolutely, yeah, beautiful. And I would say even probably no side effects other than. But you know, it's true. When people first ⁓ learn TM and they're dealing with a lot of heavy stress, there can be a sort of like delicate process of entering in. And then once they have that experience, it's like the other kind of exposures. Like you can go exposure therapy to those sort of traumas, or you can be exposed to that deep unbounded inner state of peace that's already there. And to access that, it's so powerful. Yeah, and I think what we've found, again, it's a little bit anecdotally, but most anyone who does TM is gonna see some benefits. Folks like that who have high levels of trauma, there's even more room to grow and more benefits there potentially for them. And what's really nice, what we try to do, cultural competency is really important. We're lucky in California, we have a few teachers that are military veterans. So that's so great, because the veterans can relate to them. But even the ones that aren't, they do additional training on working with people who have experienced trauma and a little cultural competency training, because it's really a partnership. really, as we were saying, try to weave ourselves into the fabric of these institutions. And ⁓ it just goes a much longer way into them accepting it and embracing it. Beautiful. Well, for someone who's listening, how does someone find out more information? Maybe someone listening is a veteran or is a first responder and they're curious about how they could learn TM through the David Lynch Foundation. What's the process there for someone to learn? Really simple. If you shoot an email to veterans at davidlynchfoundation.org, we'll get back to you. Let us know where you are and we'll send you all the information. You can certainly visit our website. There's lots of videos online on our YouTube channel as well if you want to learn a little bit more about it. It's very, very simple. Amazing. Yeah, and we'll put all this in our show notes. The David Lynch Foundation website and YouTube, lots of really beautiful testimonials about people who've learned TM and gone through your program. So it's super inspiring. ⁓ Well, this is so inspiring, Vin. And really, again, thank you for all the work that you're doing. You're such a wonderful example of really bringing this out. And again, I said in the beginning, but. your passion is really clear. And I think that that allows people to really connect with this technique and what you all are doing. Well, thank you. I it's been real pleasure working with you, particularly as you said earlier, when the fires happened, you know, we really felt like we needed to respond it right away because there was so much trauma in Pasadena and the Pacific Palisades where all those people lost their homes. And we were so thrilled to work with you and... Our donors all stepped up to fund that. And it's been a couple of years of really helping that community together, which has been one of the most rewarding things we've done. So it's fabulous. yeah, hundreds of people were taught TM through that program, which is beautiful. Well, we like to ask our guests one last question at the end. So this podcast is called The Inner Well. What does the inner well mean to you? Well, you know, one of the ⁓ themes of the David Lynch Foundation or maybe slogans that I think David came up with is that change begins within. So quite often we're looking for help on the outside when we're struggling. The idea that you can go inside to find some peace ⁓ is sort of one of the takeaways, I think, from this technique and working for the foundation for myself. Sometimes there's that phrase, no one's coming to rescue us. I think about that a lot. But having this technique where you're helping people to go within themselves to find some peace ⁓ is really, really. Beautiful, beautifully said. Well, Ben, thank you so much for being here today. Of course. I look forward to more conversations. got it. Thanks, Transcendental meditation is a scientifically validated technique that provides access to become more ourselves. Join us next week for more conversations with real people living fulfilling and peaceful lives with infinite support from their inner well.