Name: Umera Anjum TEDEd Talk || Grade-10 || ZPHS Kothapally || Paramita TEDED Club
Uploaded: 2026-03-25T22:31:45.000Z
Duration: 9 min 7 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

गुड इवनिंग एवरीवन, वेलकम टू दिस इंटरनेशनल इवेंट TEDEd.

I want to tell you an incredible true story from Thailand.

Adverbs of manner

Heavy rains suddenly flooded the Tham Nong Cave, trapping 12 young soccer players and their coach inside.

For 9 days, they sat in a dark cave on a small piece of dry ground surrounded by rising water.

As the air became thin and the boys began to panic, their coach, who used to be among, calmed them down.

Instead, he told them, "We are all afraid, but we share the same air.

We must protect it." He taught them a simple practice called One Breath for All.

He asked them to close their eyes and breathe together.

He told them to imagine inhaling to support the person on the left,

and exhaling peace for the person on the right.

He told them, "We breathe as one." In the pitch black, the panic stopped.

By breathing slowly and together, their hearts calmed down and they used less of the limited oxygen.

They stopped acting like scared individuals and started acting like one single team.

When rescue divers finally found them, they didn't find a group in chaos.

They found 13 calm people sitting together in a circle meditating.

Please note that they all survived for 9 days just by doing meditation.

This real incident shows us that meditation is not just a way to relax.

It's the most powerful tool for survival that can turn a group of terrified individuals into a single resilient unit.

The message of this incident is, when we realize we are all connected by a single breath, we can find the strength even during the most hopeless situations.

My name is Umera Anjum, studying 10th grade from ZPHS Kothapally, a gourneman school in Telangana.

I'm here today to tell you that cave in Thailand is a metaphor for our world.

We are currently trapped in a cave of our own making, a cave of conflict, environmental crisis, and

We are gasping for air, fighting over resources, and panicking in the dark.

But I believe the world is only one breath away from peace.

Breathe is the first thing we do when we enter this world, and

Between those two moments lies an entire lifetime of potential.

And with it, the power to choose presents our reaction, compassion over anger, and connection over separation.

My today's topic is One Breath for All: Global Meditation as a Peacekeeping Tool.

I want to be very clear, this is not religious.

People often ask, "Aren't we breathing now?" Yes, we are breathing, no doubt.

One conscious breath creates a pause, a moment of attention.

One breath can make you alive, but shared breath can guide the world to peace.

Our collective steps, aligned with intention, create direction to progress.

Please remember, breathing is not just a biological action.

It is the most universal tool humanity possesses.

We walk different paths and different paths.

But our breath is the same, and that unites.

When we bring that walk into harmony, not by chance but by choice, we can turn the chaos of the world into something new, a collective path of calm and clarity.

When we breathe together, we think together.

There is an old saying, "A single calm breath can stop a storm that a thousand words cannot." Science backs this up.

During the 1980s, researchers studied large groups practicing collective meditation.

They found that when more people participated in group meditation, war-related deaths dropped by up to 76%.

Social indicators like crime and accidents also declined.

This is known as the Maharishi Effect, the proof that collective inner calm can influence the physical world even in places torn by war.

I invite you now to join me in a small practice.

Just for a moment, let us create our own field of calmness.

All the audience, please close your eyes and don't open until I say.

All the audience, please close your eyes and keep your spinal cord straight.

Feel how something shifts in your chest, in your mind.

When millions do it, it becomes a global field of calmness.

Most of the tools for global peacekeeping require immense wealth, political permission, legal documents, and advanced technology.

A breath cannot be hacked by a computer or stolen by an enemy.

A breath does not know religion, race, or nationality.

It is the only peacekeeping tool that is truly universal, truly democratic, and entirely free.

Yet we ignore it in our highest institutions.

We spend trillions on defense, but we spend nothing on the silence that prevents the need for it.

Today, I am making an appeal for a global shift in responsibility.

Why can't every school begin with one minute of silent meditation?

Why can't it be a requirement in our parliaments and assemblies?

Why can't it be practiced in our police stations and in our prisons?

We should not do this as a tradition or religious rite.

We have a responsibility to regulate our internal state before we attempt to regulate the world.

I appeal to you, before you react, breathe.

Before your community feels divided, pause together and breathe.

I hope my talk today is the beginning of a movement.

Not a movement of protests or slogans, but a movement where peace is a daily practice.

A movement where one breath taken by many becomes the heartbeat of hope.

May our breath guide us, may our intention unify us,

and may this simple act, One Breath for All, become a permanent reminder that peace is not some distant, unreachable star.

It is not something we wait for leaders to sign into law.

Let meditation make the world peace and calm that breaks the walls of differences.

It begins with each of us sitting in this auditorium, sharing the same air.