Transcendental Meditation Movement - Participants

Participants

The New York Times, reported that participation reached its peak in the 1970s and suggested that potential meditators were put off by the TM-Sidhi program and Yogic flying, a technique in which practitioners attempt "to lift themselves off the ground." The organization was estimated to have 900,000 participants worldwide in 1977 according to new religious movement scholars Stark, Bainbridge and Sims. That year the TM movement said there were 394 TM centers in the U.S., that about half of the 8,000 trained TM teachers were still active, and that one million Americans had been taught the technique. The movement was reported to have a million participants by the 1980s, and modern day estimates range between 4 and 10 million participants worldwide.

As of 1998, the country with the largest percentage of TM practitioners was Israel, where 50,000 people have learned the technique since its introduction in the 1960s, according to observers and people within the movement. In 2008, the Belfast Telegraph reported an estimated 200,000 Britons practice TM. Leading meditators trained as TM teachers or graduates of the TM-Sidhi program are called "Governors of the Age of Enlightenment". while Transcendental Meditators who participate in group meditations at Maharishi University of Management are referred "Citizens of the Age of Enlightenment".