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"Lena Dunham has been meditating for 18 years. The 27-year-old Girls creator gave an inspirational speech about how meditation has changed her life in helping to manage her obsessive-compulsive disorder at the Paley Center in New York City on Tuesday, Oct. 8. Dunham was one of the speakers taking the stage at the &amp;quot;Women. Meditation. Stress.&amp;quot; panel discussion, hosted by The David Lynch Foundation.\r\n\r\n&amp;quot;I&amp;apos;ve actually been meditating since I was nine. I&amp;apos;ve been practicing TM [Transcendental Meditation] since I was nine,&amp;quot; she shared on stage. &amp;quot;My mother meditates, my grandmother meditates and my great-grandmother meditated. That might make you think I&amp;apos;m part of like a grand hippie tradition, but these are actually all just neurotic Jewish women who need TM more than anyone,&amp;quot; Dunham joked. &amp;quot;I have to tell you, it&amp;apos;s pretty charming to see a very well-dressed anxious Jewish woman take a moment at her country club because she needs to meditate.&amp;quot;\r\n&amp;quot;When I was around nine, I was diagnosed with obsessive compulsive disorder,&amp;quot; the actress and writer explained. &amp;quot;I feel forever grateful that instead of assaulting me with a barrage of medications my mother decided it was time for me to learn to meditate . . . Although when you&amp;apos;re nine you have trouble articulating the sort of internal shifts you feel, I know that it made an incredible difference. It made it possible for me to understand what I was going through, and to process what I was going through and to calm down.&amp;quot;\r\n\r\nDunham took a break from meditating during her teen years, but quickly realized she was lost without it. &amp;quot;When I was a teenager I stopped meditating because sitting still for 20 minutes is very low on the list of things teenagers want to do unless they&amp;apos;re stoned,&amp;quot; she joked. But when I started working in the incredible, challenging and often very stressful world of entertainment, my world was spinning really quickly and I knew that I needed to return to some sense of calm.&amp;quot;\r\n&amp;quot;Since my re-initiation into meditation has been even more powerful than my first experience, and it has made it possible for me to weather certain challenges and storms and public moments that I didn&amp;apos;t ever imagine would be in my life,&amp;quot; Dunham shared. &amp;quot;It gathers me up for the day and makes me feel organized . . . happy . . . and capable of facing the challenges of the world, both internal and external. I feel so lucky that I found it and so lucky that I met Bob [Roth, Executive Director of the David Lynch Foundation], and that I found out there&amp;apos;s a way to sort of take this gift that I&amp;apos;ve been given and give it outward. I recognize how lucky I am, and how lucky I was, to find meditation.&amp;quot;\r\n\r\nDunham made her character on Girls, Hannah Horvath, also suffer from OCD. At the end of season two of the HBO series, Hannah&amp;apos;s disorder spiraled out of control and she was hospitalized after sticking a Q-tip too far into her ear."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.usmagazine.com/celebrity-news/news/lena-dunham-diagnosed-with-ocd-at-age-9-meditates-to-stay-calm-2013910>