Jim Bagnola, MA in Vedic Science and Author

Jim Bagnola, MIU Alumnus and Author

I connected with Jim Bagnola in late February, 2015, while he was at the hospital with his father, who’d had a procedure that morning. His father, Jim said, “is a strong old guy.” Both of Jim’s parents are 88 and both have been meditating for almost 40 years. 

Jim has an exciting life of flying between his home in Radiance, Texas, and his offices in Tokyo and Bucharest, Romania. His primary focus is teaching corporate leadership programs using the book he wrote as the textbook: Becoming a Professional Human Being.  Jim teaches that to be truly effective leaders must care for the health of their body and mind.

“Leading is everybody’s business,” Jim says, “as well as ‘teaming.’” Teaming means “recognizing the many faces of intelligence;” or, learning to value and cultivate each person.

Jim enrolled in the MIU Vedic Science program in 2010 to learn more about the health and coordination of body and mind, and then incorporated this knowledge into his book and courses on leadership. He gives great credit to his favorite MIU professor, Dr. Fred Travis.

You may be wondering, as I did, how Jim ended up with offices in Romania and Tokyo. Jim’s connection with Romania began fourteen years ago when the United Nations Development Program invited him to teach leadership programs, along with several government organizations, to companies in Bucharest. He continues there as a corporate educator, spending most of his time with companies like Siemens, Hella, and Continental.

“Wherever I go,” Jim says, “I connect with the TM movement and give TM lectures.” The TM movement in Romania had almost disappeared when Jim arrived, and he has helped reinstate it over the last decade.  Jim is now teaching TM at Celestica, one of his corporate clients.

Jim’s connection with Tokyo came about through a series of events involving Dr. Monihar, an ayurvedic physician long known to the Fairfield TM community.  Dr. Monihar heard Jim lecture at a TM teachers’ conference in Huntsville, Canada, and then passed Jim’s book to one of his Japanese patients, Yoshihiko Fujii, or Fujii-san.

Mr. Fujiisan, an executive coach, gave the book to 25 English-speaking Japanese executives, asking each to write a summary of its contents. When he collected the summaries, Fujiisan was so impressed that he rushed them to a publisher, who decided to publish the book right away. Becoming a Professional Human Being has risen to the number one selling non-fiction book in Japan.

Jim says the book not only weaves TM into the discussions of body and mind, but stirs interest in starting TM with a 15-page introductory lecture. Six months ago, after Jim gave a talk to approximately 100 participants in Tokyo, 80 of them expressed interest in starting TM.

On March 13, Jim will fly to Bucharest to teach leadership courses to management from Celestica, Honeywell, and Toyota. While he’s in Oradea, he and the National Director of TM in Romania will teach TM to 10 more managers at Celestica.

On March 30, Jim will come to MIU to teach a course called “Leadership and Teaming” to MBA students. Then on April-12-13, Jim will teach a course on leadership to MIU staff.

Jim welcomes people to visit with him at lunch at the MIU cafeteria while he is here (March 30-April 13).

Ruthie Hutchings is a contributor the the MUM blogs. She did graduate work in English Literature at Emory University, holds an MA in Professional Writing from Maharishi University, and also does writing and editing for websites, magazines, books, and instructional materials.