Look Who it Was Random video

Transcending HIV | David Lynch Foundation

3,311 views · Published 7 November 2014 · 6:53 · Indexed 22 September 2026

Channel: David Lynch Foundation · 2014 · Nonprofits & Activism

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http://davidlynchfoundation.org/ Jeffrey M. Leiphart, Ph.D. (Clinical Services Director, San Francisco AIDS Foundation): There's very few things as stressful as saying, "You now have a life threatening disease and probably it's going to kill you."

Norma: I was in rehab when I found out I was HIV positive, I had both: Hep C and HIV. And I thought my world was going to crumble.

Michael: I found out February 14, 1997 that I was HIV positive. I was panicked, I didn't know which way to go.

TRANSCENDING HIV

I was a benefits analyst for many, many years and I worked at several health plants. I was in my place for 20 years, my landlady died and then in a really aggressive judicial process I found myself locked out of my place, I ended up out on the street after a few months because I exhausted my friends couches.

Norma: I came here in 1968, I was 11 years old from El Salvador. There was very few immigrants, so there was no such thing as English as a second language class, so it forced me to learn English. I wanted to find out about the SAT tests, I asked my high school counselor and she said, "Oh don't worry about it, you know, you being here is a fluke." That's what she told me. You know, I'm a Latina, it's the early seventies. When I took the SAT test I scored 1400 which put me in the top 1 percentile of the nation. You can be really bright and still do stupid things. My husband sold drugs, he used drugs too, and then I used drugs and after he died I started really using more drugs which is how I got HIV infected.

Jeffrey M. Leiphart, PhD: When someone has a life threatening illness, it triggers the fight or flight response, and the fight or flight response lowers immunity. And so, there's a vicious circle that happens.

Michael: When I found out that my T-cells were around 300 and dropping and there was not a lot that was being done to address it, I started to panic.

T-cells are a type of while blood cell that is of key importance to the immune system. T-cell activation is measured as a way to assess the health of patients with HIV/AIDS.

Norma: It was tough living day to day with all the stress and not knowing what to do because we're not taught coping skills.

Jeffrey M. Leiphart, PhD: Stress level goes up which causes immune system to go down, so anything that the person can do that interrupts that and provides a sense of relaxation and safety will be immune enhancing. TM is a great example of that.

Norma: I came to Transcendental Meditation through a flyer that the San Francisco AIDS Foundation posted. I felt the serenity, the peace that I hadn't had before. The stress was slowly leaving me, and the more I did it the less stress I felt.

Michael: When I started meditating my body began to fight back. I'm currently over 1200 T-cells and I feel great.

Norma: Three months into me meditating twice a day I went from having like 250 T-cells to 358 which is like a 125 surge in that three months time, which I had not had ever in my time living with HIV. And the only thing that I had changed in my life was the fact that I was meditating. And since I've been meditating it's been consistently going up.

Jeffrey M. Leiphart, PhD: When someone feels empowered it also helps immune function and so to have a technique in your own tool kit like TM that you can implement on your own is what we call empowering. And that's a huge piece.

Norma: Who would have thought that 20 minutes in the morning and 20 minutes in the afternoon was going to have such, such a profound effect, a  benefit in my life.

TO FIND OUT MORE ABOUT THE DAVID LYNCH FOUNDATION PLEASE VISIT http://davidlynchfoundation.org/

TO FIND OUT MORE ABOUT THE TRANSCENDENTAL MEDITATION TECHNIQUE OR TO SPEAK TO A LOCAL TEACHER PLEASE VISIT http://tm.org/

FOR MORE INFORMATION ON THE SAN FRANCISCO AIDS FOUNDATION VISIT http://sfaf.org/

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