Greetings from Utopia Park
Claire Hoffman

Mindfulness and meditation are having a moment. All over the business world people are extolling the virtues of a daily practice for productivity and mental health. This mainstreaming of meditation is being led by apps like Headspace (which I use) and the leaders of the mindfulness movement like Joseph Goldstein. But a rising tide lifts all ships and the perennially popular and controversial Transcendental Meditation (TM) is also having a moment.

This book, a memoir of growing up in the hot bed of hardcore TM practitioners in Fairfield, Iowa, gives some valuable insights into the TM movement, especially in its early years. These days, TM prefers to be associated with Hollywood celebrities and the health benefits which have been correlated with the practice of the discipline, but we should forget that for a while there TM and the Maharishi were more closely associated with attempts at “yogic flying” and meditating for world peace.

This book is a story of those years.  About what it means to grow up deep within the TM movement, with a single mom who spent hours a day in meditation, to be broke when those around you were wealthy, to want the secular pleasures of average teenager when your mother would rather you sat on a cushion. It’s a book critical of TM’s excesses, for sure, but not entirely dismissive of them. Indeed by the end of the book, we’re filled with doubts about the leadership of the TM movement, but also following the author as she attempts to learn yogic flying.

It’s a New Religious Movement memoir, and I’m a sucker for those, even when they’re poorly done. But this one is thoughtful, it is well written, and if you have an interest in TM, or what its like to grow up outside the mainstream, its worth the time.

Recommended for the enthusiast.