What do 1,000 inner city kids from St. Louis have in common with Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and filmmaker David Lynch?

Well, judging from the celebrities’ outfits worn at a New York press conference Friday, not much.

But if Lynch has his way, they could one day all share a deep level of quiet rooted in effortless transcendence.

Lynch, the creator of the 80s television miniseries Twin Peaks and such avant guard flicks as Blue Velvet, is an international proponent of Transcendental Meditation through his David Lynch Foundation for Consciousness-Based Education and World Peace.

This weekend, Lynch, along with the the former Beatles, and other musicians such as Donovan, Moby and Paul Horn, will host a benefit concert to raise money for scholarships to provide Transcendental Meditation training for a million at-risk youths from poor neighborhoods and inner-city schools.

If the concert is successful, a thousand of those scholarships will target 1,000 at-risk St. Louis children.

In a slick press conference held at Radio City Music Hall Friday and simulcast over the Internet, Lynch and the mostly sixtysomething celebs gave personal accounts about meditation and even memories of meetings with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, founder of Transcendental Meditation - otherwise known as TM.

“It’s so beautiful,” explained Lynch. “It’s not a surface cure.”

“Inside us there is the stillness,” said Paul Horn. “Everything is the stillness.”

Among those praising the technique was a CEO from a Detroit Middle School who said transcendental meditation had helped her at-risk students to relax and become more confident learners and more reflective about their behavior.

The press conference was bolstered by academics and federally-funded researchers who extolled the physical and mental health benefits of meditation. Studies have found meditation to be a helpful treatment for children with Attention Deficit and Post Traumatic Stress Disorders. There is also evidence that the intense quiet and peace achieved through meditation lowers blood pressure, increases focus and raises self esteem.

If you think this is all some sort of Mellow Yellow celebrity Magical Mystery Tour, think again. Finding ways to alleviate debilitating stress in children is proving to be critically important. Federal researchers have found that by the time they reach six, poor children have twice the level of stress hormones in their body than other children their age. That physiologically-based stress leads to decreased concentration, impaired cognitive development and builds barriers to learning, mental flexibility and creativity.

In St. Louis, University of Missouri-St. Louis researchers have found that the average 10-year-old public school student is suffering symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder because of violence and trauma witnessed or experienced in their family and neighborhood.

Charles Dockins, a certified TM trainer based in St. Charles, said the scholarships are exciting. In the 1970s, there were thousands of people practicing TM in the St. Louis region, he said. But that has decreased significantly.

“It has not been growing in St. Louis, but that wave hopefully will be back with the attention brought out by this concert and some of the new research,” he said.