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205Situation awareness (SA) means accurately perceiving what is going on around you, making sense of it in real time, and then rapidly projecting what will happen next. For example, when juggling plates, you need to be aware of the plates (perception), where they are in relation to each other (comprehension), and where your hands need to be at each moment (projection). If your perception is overwhelmed, or your assessment of where the plates are in relation to one another becomes inaccurate, or you momentarily become distracted, your hands will not be where they need to be and you will drop the plates.In a 6-month study, cadets performed an auditory task to measure attention without distraction, using the P300 (a measure of brain potential indicating recognition). The TM group showed accurate attention with 80% less distraction than the control group. This shows that regular experience of the holistic changes produced by TM practice improves the ability to avoid distraction.The same study also showed that TM increased awareness of relevant stimuli. (Reference 1) Related studies have shown that TM practice increases fi eld independence, the ability to remain focused on the target and not get distracted by other information coming from the environment. Other research on military cadets, exploring the development of SA capacity, found that after three months of TM, cadets showed statistically signifi cant improvements in perception (ability to appreciate more from one%u2019s surroundings) and projection (sensing solutions more rapidly), compared to controls. (Reference 2) -90.0-80.0-70.0-60.0-50.0-40.0-30.0-20.0-10.00.0Attentional Processing of Irrelevant StimuliTM Controlsp < .002TranscendentalMean Percent Change in P300Increased Situation Awareness Decreased Attention to Irrelevant Stimulitm-020IMPROVED FOCUS ON THE IMPORTANT THINGSReference 1: Bandy, C. L., Fleming, K. K., & Dulmage, J. (2013, May 23%u201326). Meditation training in rook cadets increases resilience. Paper presented at the 25th Annual Conference of the Association for Psychological Science, Washington, DC.Reference 2: Batorski, M. (2011). Developing situation awareness capacity to improve judgment and decision-making under stress (Doctoral dissertation, Pepperdine University). Pepperdine University.