In the video below, CBS News reports on one of the most remarkable small towns in America–one that Mother Earth News has named “One of the 12 great places you have never been.” At the center of this Iowa town’s life is the award-winning Maharishi School and Maharishi University of Management—the first schools in the US to integrate the practice of the Transcendental Meditation technique into a traditional curriculum.

Transcript excerpts:

Tucked deep in Iowa’s flatland, among the barns and fields, is one of the 12 great places Mother Earth News says you’ve probably never been. It’s the city of Fairfield, Iowa, and something has been happening in this city of 9,500, a mystery until now.

This small place is less than a two-hour drive away from Cedar Rapids and has an international flavor with its Indian restaurants and Italian coffee houses, but that’s not the mystery. I have to take you here, to Maharishi School of the Age of the Enlightenment. For nearly four decades the simple act of meditating, twice a day, everyday has attracted all sorts of people and that includes the students inside the private school.

Maharishi School of the Age of the Enlightenment

“We’ve been the pioneering or flagship school for this approach we call Consciousness-Based Education,” says Head of School, Dr. Richard Beall.

It’s like any other college prep school across the State of Iowa but here the students, faculty, and staff all take time to practice Transcendental Meditation or TM.

“We are taking a significant amount of time in the morning and afternoon, before and after school to practice meditation and yoga so that our kids, when they go into the classroom are wide awake,” Beall said.

Each session is 20 minutes and school officials say it rids everyone of stress and makes it easier to learn and perform better.

So far it has worked, the consciousness-based learning helps send more than 95 percent of its seniors to top college and universities across the country. They always score in the top one percent in Iowa’s standardized test, not to mention the top honors in Math, Science, the Arts, and Sports.

Meditating isn’t just a school thing, roughly 25 percent of Fairfield’s population practices TM, including Mayor Ed Malloy who’s been practicing for 38 years.

“The science shows that there is an influence a reduction of crime and stress,” says Malloy.

The town really takes TM seriously.

Each day between four and five o’clock the cars and people start to arrive. They all join together in large numbers for meditation groups in two large golden domes on the campus on Maharishi University. The towns people who meditate say that what they do in those domes help create change and it all started at the school where consciousness based learning is helping to shape tomorrow leaders.

Maharishi University Campus

“They say it takes a village to raise a child and I couldn’t imagine a better village,” says student Caroline Fulcher.

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To view this KGAN/CBS2 News report online, CLICK HERE.
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You can visit Fairfield, Iowa during “Experience the Self”—a 12 day event from July 10th though July 22nd. For more information, CLICK HERE.