Journalist and author Claire Hoffman grew up in Fairfield, Iowa, where the Transcendental Meditation movement had located in 1975. Her new book, "Greetings from Utopia Park: Surviving a Transcendent Childhood" tells the fascinating story about how it was growing up and live in a Midwest meditation community.

The following essay published in Vogue is part of the book:

The idea of living in Iowa thrilled me. I imagined an existence somewhere between Little House on the Prairie and Charlotte's Web. Barnyard animals would dance, and I would roll through lush meadows and learn to ride a bike. At long last, I might also finally have friends who, like me, meditated twice a day.

I tried it for the first time when I was 3 years old, in the back room of the Transcendental Meditation Center's Manhattan office. Incense burned in front of a framed painting of Maharishi. My teacher, a young man in a butter-yellow suit, whispered my mantra to me. By the time I was 5 this secret sound had become an essential part of who I was, and I'd taken to repeating it to myself to push away the chaos of my rupturing family.

A few other related and great reads worth mentioning include Hoffman's article "David Lynch Is Back … as a Guru of Transcendental Meditation" and Grace Bello's article in Papermag called "Growing Up in Fairfield, Iowa – America's Transcendental Meditation Mecca", in which Hoffman is interviewed.