David Lynch: Transcend every day

David Lynch thinks traumatic stress can be dealt with if people “transcend every day”.

The legendary Mulholland Drive filmmaker has taken a break from creating features recently in favour of painting and supporting his charity the David Lynch Foundation, which offers healing for people through Transcendental Meditation.

The director is convinced this practice improves quality of life, especially for people who have been in combat.

“I’ve been practicing TM for 41 years, and if you’re a human being, Transcendental Meditation will work for you,” he told The Daily Beast. “And soldiers who are suffering from PTSD, it’s like their lives are in this pressure cooker, and the pressure is so great that it affects all their life in the most negative way—their family, kids, friendships—and it’s no fun being alive. So when they get the technique to transcend, this huge pressure gets released. They say, ‘I have my life back again,’ and all they have to do is stay regular in their meditation—transcend every day—and their lives will keep getting better and better.”

The David Lynch Foundation also offers transcendental meditation to schoolchildren and “at-risk” populations, including war refugees and prison inmates.

When he’s not busy with charity, the Twin Peaks director has been happily watching cable TV shows like Breaking Bad, Mad Men, and True Detective in his free time.

The cult filmmaker thinks it’s great television networks are broadcasting programmes that are so inventive, since independent films seem to be dwindling.

“Cable television is the new arthouse, so it’s there, but it’s not the big screen,” he said. “If people have a big screen at home, great sound, and they turn the lights down and turn their phones off, they can get into the world and have an experience. But most people don’t watch films that way anymore.”