what appears to be a classroom of lazy teenagers in Rio is actually a group of students most of them sixteen and seventeen years old participating in an experimental program in Rio state schools teachers here are incorporating transcendental meditation into the curriculum. Seriously it's really great I feel calmer and I'm better at dealing with everything I leave here feeling lighter, relaxed I usually talk too fast but when I come out here I am speaking slowly the project is part of a partnership between Rios Department of Education and the David Lynch Foundation which teaches meditation around the world and was started by the American filmmaker David Lynch by the end of 2010 organizers hope meditation will be introduced in all of Rios 1000 public schools when a large group of people meditates in the same place you can feel a certain peace in the atmosphere it neutralizes the negative energy and the violence it contributes to world peace 150 schools in Latin America have already reaped the benefits of meditation. Rio has become the leading example despite the fact that at first convincing surprised parents was a difficult affair little by little we explained the goals of meditation to the parents and the students started to understand how it works I saw how they began to see the classes differently and they began really making an effort in addition to helping students chill out the five-year-old foundation is conducting institutional research on the physiological effects up the practice