The David Lynch Foundation: What It Does and How Course Fees Fund It

The David Lynch Foundation, founded in 2005: how paid courses fund free meditation teaching, who leads it now, and how the company courses fitted in.

The David Lynch Foundation is a US nonprofit that pays for people to learn Transcendental Meditation. Its full name is the David Lynch Foundation for Consciousness-Based Education and World Peace. The film director David Lynch, who had meditated since 1973, set it up in July 2005. Lynch died in January 2025 at 78. The foundation carries on under Bob Roth, its chief executive.

The foundation matters to this website’s history. The Center for Leadership Performance, which ran the old site on this domain, taught TM to companies and passed part of its fees to the foundation. Roth was described in 2013 as the center’s national director and in 2017 as its co-director.

How the money works

The foundation was built on a simple exchange. People and employers who can afford a course pay full price, and that money helps pay for free teaching for others. Business Insider described the model in 2016: the foundation took fees from those able to pay and used them to teach veterans with post-traumatic stress, students in underserved schools and victims of abuse.

The Center for Leadership Performance followed the same idea. Its 2014 pages said a share of every course fee went to the foundation’s programs for students at risk, veterans with post-traumatic stress and women who had survived domestic violence. Its home page that year went further, telling employers that a veteran would learn for free for each of their employees who took the course. That was the center’s own promise, and we have no record of how it was counted.

Who it teaches

The foundation’s staff page says it has provided TM scholarships to more than 1.5 million people. It names city schoolchildren, front-line health care workers, first responders, veterans living with post-traumatic stress, and women who have survived sexual assault or domestic violence. Those are the foundation’s own figures. In 2016 Business Insider put the number taught for free over 11 years at more than 500,000.

Who pays for it

Business Insider reported in 2016 that Ray Dalio, the founder of Bridgewater Associates, had given about $20 million over a decade through the Dalio Foundation, and that the Dalio Foundation provided about a fifth of the foundation’s funding. That money was set aside for students in New York and San Francisco and for veterans.

Who leads it now

Bob Roth has taught TM for about 50 years. He learned it as a student at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1968, according to a 2013 HuffPost profile. He wrote the bestseller “Strength in Stillness” and hosts a podcast and a SiriusXM radio show. The foundation says he also leads an Institute of Mental Health and Resilience, which brings meditation to large companies and to government and military bodies.

The company courses

For businesses, the center offered TM as an individual course at its Midtown office or as a course held at the company. In 2014 these cost $960 and $1,200 a person. Our page on how the course worked has the details, and our page on who pays sets out how employers shared the cost.

This page is general information, not medical advice. The Manhattan Business Review is not affiliated with the David Lynch Foundation or any Transcendental Meditation organization, and it does not sell courses. Transcendental Meditation and TM are trademarks of their owners.