From Maharishi to the Boardroom: A Short History of TM in Business

How Transcendental Meditation went from a 1959 arrival in the US to Wall Street trading floors and New York town halls, in dated steps.

Transcendental Meditation came to the United States in 1959, brought by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, a teacher from India. More than half a century later it was being taught in hedge fund offices in Connecticut and discussed on stage by bank executives in Manhattan. This page follows that path in dated steps. Where a figure comes from the TM organization itself, we say so.

1959 to the 1970s: arrival and fame

Maharishi introduced the technique to American audiences in 1959. The Beatles made it famous in the 1960s, as the Financial Times noted in 2014. That celebrity link reached business too: Ray Dalio, the founder of Bridgewater Associates, told Business Insider in 2014 that he first took up TM because the Beatles were doing it.

The history page that stood at this address in 2014 said Maharishi met scientists at a series of conferences on TM in the 1970s, among them the stress researcher Hans Selye. It said the two spoke together at a 1972 conference at Queen’s University in Canada. Those meetings, in the center’s telling, encouraged scientists to study the practice. We report this as the center’s own account.

By the late 1970s the movement had its own university in Fairfield, Iowa, later named Maharishi University of Management (since 2019, Maharishi International University). Many of the studies on TM published since then came from researchers there.

In 2014 the organization said more than 6 million people had learned TM worldwide, 1.5 million of them in the United States. Those are its own figures.

2005: a foundation in Lynch’s name

The film director David Lynch, a longtime meditator, started the David Lynch Foundation in 2005. Its model was to charge people who could afford the course and use the money to teach others for free, including students in struggling schools, veterans with post-traumatic stress and survivors of domestic violence. Our page on the foundation covers how it works.

Around 2008: Bridgewater

According to Business Insider in 2016, Dalio brought TM to Bridgewater about eight years earlier, offering it to his staff and having the foundation’s teachers come to the firm. Dalio first offered to repay half of each employee’s fee himself; the firm later made it a formal plan. By 2016 about 500 employees had learned it.

2013 and 2014: the Wall Street wave

Coverage built quickly. GQ ran a long guide to TM in September 2013 that pointed to hedge fund managers as practitioners. In February 2014 the foundation held a town hall for business leaders in Manhattan, where Dalio told an audience of about 300 that meditation was the main reason for his success. In March 2014 CNNMoney quoted Bob Roth, then the foundation’s executive director, as saying 30 or 40 companies were interested in its corporate program, compared with one or two two years earlier. Bloomberg, the Financial Times and others followed. Our press roundup lists the pieces we could confirm.

2016 and after

Business Insider reported in November 2016 that the foundation’s center had taught almost 2,500 professionals over three years, 1,150 of them in 2016, and that roughly 55 percent came from Wall Street. Town halls for business leaders continued until at least February 2017.

David Lynch died in January 2025. The foundation continues under Bob Roth, now its chief executive, who also leads what the foundation calls an Institute of Mental Health and Resilience, aimed at large companies and government bodies.

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.