Cynthia Humes

The Transcendental Meditation Movement

January 31, 2023 Dana W. Sawyer, Cynthia Humes

The Transcendental Meditation (TM) movement began in India in 1955 and achieved initial success by appealing to the youth culture of the 1960s. In the 1970s, the movement marketed its meditation technique as a scientifically endorsed practice, then turned dramatically inward during the 1980s. Its popular appeal waned in the new millennium. The movement's trajectory was shaped by social and cultural forces, and the most popular meditation movement in America distilled into an obscure form of Neo-Hinduism. The analysis also covers splinter groups that emerged over the past twenty-five years.