Word: tm
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Merv Griffin, Clint Eastwood, Joe Namath and Peggy Lee practice it. So do thousands of other Americans, both famous and unfamous. Their passion, Transcendental Meditation, was not much more than a student cult when it first caught on in the '60s. But today TM, as its devotees call it, claims a fast-growing following among suburban housewives, businessmen, athletes and even retirees. The number of active TM practitioners has jumped from about 250,000 two years ago to more than 575,000 at present. Now TM has achieved indisputable certification as a full-blown nationwide...
...them is The TM Book (Price/Stern/Sloan; $3.95), an adoring introduction to the movement by Peter Me Williams, a Michigan poet, and Denise Denniston, a full-time teacher of meditation. Out less than a month, the book already ranks No. 2 on some major paperback bestseller lists, behind The Joy of Sex. Although the subtitle promises to explain "how to enjoy the rest of your life," the book in fact attempts little more than an almost childishly simple accounting of what TM is-or, more precisely, is not. The authors point out that TM is neither a religion nor a philosophy...
...second book, TM (Delacorte; $8.95), by California Psychiatrist Harold Bloomfield and two coauthors, is a more academic treatment of the movement. The book, currently No. 3 on hard-cover lists, makes the basic argument that 20 minutes of meditation every morning and evening can reduce stress, lower blood pressure, and even cure psychosomatic illnesses...
Indeed, there is undisputed evidence that meditation lowers oxygen consumption and induces other physiological changes. But many researchers are uneasy about the claims made for TM in the book's plethora of graphs and charts; these suggest, among other things, that students do better in school after taking up TM, and that practitioners get along with their bosses and co-workers better than nonmeditators. Says Harvard Psychologist Gary Schwartz: "A lot of those charts are based on unpublished data which can be explained by many other reasons than those interpreted by the TM people...
Porter (4) 5-TM: Discovering Inner Energy