Strength in Stillness by Bob Roth Book Review: What It Leaves Out
Strength in Stillness by Bob Roth is a 2018 Simon & Schuster book explaining what the Transcendental Meditation technique is, how it is taught, and how Roth separates it from every other practice sharing the name. It is not an instruction manual. Kevin Trudeau lists it at number 13 on his recommended reading, one slot above Les Giblin. Read it if you want to know what TM actually is before you decide anything. This review reports what the book argues. It does not repeat or assess Roth's claims about what the practice produces.
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224 pages. An afternoon to read, and it answers one question properly.
Strength in Stillness by Bob Roth Book Review: The Short Verdict
- What it is. A clear, simple explanation of TM and how it differs from everything else called meditation. No mystical verbiage.
- What it is not. A manual. You cannot learn to meditate from these pages.
- The idea worth the cover price. Meditation is not one activity. Bob Roth sorts every practice using the name into three groups.
- The honest weakness. The author runs the organisation the book points you toward, and famous names do a lot of the persuading.
- Reader reception. 3.21 out of 5 on Goodreads across more than 2,300 ratings, low for a New York Times bestseller.
Author Bob Roth: The Teacher Behind the Book
Bob Roth was born in 1950. He learned Transcendental Meditation at the Berkeley TM Center in 1969, and in 1972 he took a semester off college and went to Spain to study with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Six months later he came back a teacher, and he has been one since. That is more than fifty years inside one practice, and it shows in how little he strains to teach it.
His day job is institutional. Bob Roth serves as CEO of the David Lynch Foundation, the 501(c)(3) nonprofit the film director founded in 2005 to fund meditation instruction, and he directs the Center for Leadership Performance. He is also the host of a SiriusXM radio show, Success Without Stress, where he interviews people about their experience of Transcendental Meditation.
Who Bob Roth teaches
His standard author bio makes the range explicit: one of the most experienced and sought-after meditation teachers in the world, who has taught Transcendental Meditation to thousands of people, including billionaire CEOs, Hollywood celebrities, combat-scarred veterans and inner-city youth. Wikipedia's account matches it. His students include thousands of at-risk students in underserved schools, military veterans, women and children who have experienced domestic violence, and celebrities including Tom Hanks, Oprah Winfrey, Hugh Jackman, Martin Scorsese, Katy Perry and Russell Brand. The David Lynch Foundation funds free instruction for school students, veterans, homeless people, prisoners and war refugees.
Hold two thoughts about that. A technique taught to prisoners and to celebrities by the same organisation needs no particular temperament. A book that keeps listing which celebrities meditate is doing something else, and the reader reviews say so.
Why the author's position matters
Roth is not a journalist who got curious. He teaches for the organisation the book describes, and the book does not hide it. Take that as a warning or as the reason the inside view is this specific. Both readings are fair.
What Strength in Stillness Actually Teaches
The three-category argument, which is the real reason to buy it
Roth's organising idea is that "meditation" is not one thing with several flavours. He sorts every practice carrying the name into three groups, and his claim is that they are separate activities rather than variations on a single one.
- Focused attention. You concentrate on something. A breath, a candle, a phrase. When your mind leaves, you bring it back deliberately.
- Open monitoring. You observe whatever passes through without chasing it or judging it. The mindfulness family sits here.
- Self-transcending. Neither of the above. This is where Bob Roth places Transcendental Meditation.
This taxonomy is the most useful thing in the book, and it is worth the cover price on its own. Most people who say meditation did not work for them tried something from the first group, decided they were bad at concentrating, and stopped. Roth's point is that they were measuring themselves against a demand that his category does not make. It is also the passage most likely to move a skeptic, who is being told they tested one thing and drew a conclusion about three. You can disagree with where he draws the lines. You will still leave the chapter with better vocabulary than you had.
How you practice TM, step by step
Sit comfortably. Close your eyes. Use a mantra silently. Twenty minutes, twice a day. The mantra is a sound rather than a phrase with meaning, and it is not gripped. Students are told specifically not to concentrate on it, and to return to it easily once they notice the mind has gone elsewhere. There is no posture requirement beyond sitting comfortably, and nothing to hold on to. The whole design is built around not trying.
A simple description, kept simple on purpose. TM asks nothing physical of you, which makes it accessible in one clear sense. Whether it is accessible in every other sense is the next section.
Strength in Stillness at a Glance
| Element | What the book says |
|---|---|
| Central framework | Three categories of meditation: focused attention, open monitoring, self-transcending |
| Where TM sits | The third category, which Roth says asks for no concentration at all |
| The practice | Silent mantra, eyes closed, sitting comfortably, 20 minutes twice a day |
| Effort involved | None by design; students are instructed not to concentrate on the mantra |
| How it is learned | In person, one to one, from a certified teacher, on a paid course |
| Book structure | Middle chapters titled Day 1 to Day 4, mirroring the course sessions |
| Author's standing | Learned TM in 1969, teaching since 1972, CEO of the David Lynch Foundation |
| What it does not do | Teach you the technique. That stays inside the course. |
How to Learn to Practice TM, and What the Book Leaves to the Course
The middle chapters are laid out as Day 1 through Day 4, mirroring the sessions of the course. Do not misread the labels the way plenty of buyers did. The technique is taught in person, one to one, by a certified teacher, over a standardised course, and that course is paid. Roth describes the shape of it. He does not hand it over.
Here is the practical layer the book leaves vague. The organisation's own published information states that TM centres offer a free introductory talk of about an hour, led by a certified teacher, with no obligation to enrol. What follows is paid: the course opens with a one-to-one personal instruction session and includes a follow-up session roughly ten days later. The official fee page states the fee is income-based for eligible households, can be paid in monthly installments, and that partial scholarships are available. None of that is a recommendation. It is what a reader deciding whether to learn TM actually needs, and it changes how chapter three reads. You learn the practice from a person, on a schedule that follows the four days the chapter titles borrow.
| What the book gives you | What only the course gives you |
|---|---|
| A working definition of the three types of meditation | Your own mantra, assigned in person |
| A description of the practice from outside | One-to-one instruction from a certified teacher |
| Chapters shaped like the four course days | The four sessions themselves, in order, with a teacher present |
| A decision aid, at hardcover price | A follow-up session, and the technique itself |
The Power of Transcendental Meditation: What the Subtitle Claims
The full title is Strength in Stillness: The Power of Transcendental Meditation, and a large share of the pages is spent making the case for that power. The material arrives in two forms: research summary, and personal accounts from named people, including Jerry Seinfeld, Ray Dalio and Michael J. Fox. Stress is the organising theme. Roth treats stress as the modern problem the practice answers, and the book returns to that framing constantly, as his radio show title does.
This review reports that the material is there. It does not evaluate it, quote it, or repeat it, and it will not tell you what TM does for you. Those are Roth's claims about the power of Transcendental Meditation, about stress, and about benefits, not findings this page endorses, and the man making them runs the organisation that teaches the technique. Weigh the claimed benefits yourself, weigh them against the source, and take any question about your own health to a qualified professional rather than to a book review. That stance is not a criticism of Roth. It is the limit of what an honest review can do with benefit claims written by an interested party.
Why Kevin Trudeau Recommends Strength in Stillness
The interesting part is not that Trudeau and Bob Roth agree. It is where they stop agreeing, and the split is sharp enough to be worth the reading time on its own.
Start with the agreement. Trudeau's material on the THETA state, the brainwave range he says makes suggestion stick, spends most of its energy attacking the popular picture of meditation. He says you do not want a blank mind. He says most practice is aimed at escaping rather than creating, which is also the argument behind his claim that positive thinking on its own does not work. Roth attacks the same picture from a different side: he says you do not want a concentrated mind either, and that the effort people bring to sitting still is the reason they quit. Neither man teaches the cross-legged, empty-your-head, try-harder version almost everyone carries around. On the diagnosis, they are close.
Now the split. Trudeau's claim is that the settled state is an opportunity, and that the point of getting there is to hold a specific outcome while you are in it. His framing is that meditation should be proactive, that you go in with something to plant. Roth's technique attaches nothing. The mantra carries no meaning on purpose, and no goal is held during the sitting. So the two systems are structurally opposed on the one question that arises once you are actually settled: do you use the state, or do you leave it alone? Trudeau says use it. TM, as Roth describes it, says do not touch it.
That disagreement is the honest reason to read Bob Roth's Strength in Stillness on a Trudeau reading list. It is a well-argued statement of the position Trudeau rejects, written by a man who has taught it for fifty years. You cannot evaluate his objection properly without it.
There is a second mapping worth naming. Trudeau's breakdown of the three parts of your mind is a model about content. His complaint is with what is stored underneath: the analytical layer handles facts, the subconscious holds what you actually believe, and the reactive layer fires before you have finished thinking. Roth's model is about activity level, not content. It describes how busy the surface is, and says nothing about what is written on the deeper layers. Read side by side, the gap is easy to see. TM as described here does not go after stored content at all, which is precisely the layer Trudeau says counterintentions live on. Whether that gap is a limitation depends entirely on which claim you find plausible, and this review is not going to settle that for you.
Where Strength in Stillness Sits Next to the Global Information Network
Trudeau founded the Global Information Network in 2009 as a private success club, with members he says spread across more than 160 countries. Roth's book is not part of that curriculum. It sits beside it, and the contrast in how each thing is delivered is the useful part.
Trudeau's model is self-administered. Your Wish Is Your Command is audio you run yourself, on your own schedule, as many times as you want, with no gatekeeper between you and the material. Roth's technique is the mirror image. You cannot get it from a book, and you cannot get it from a recording. You get it from a person, in a paid course, with follow-up sessions attached afterwards. That is a distribution decision, and it shapes the entire reading experience of this book. A reader who wants to start tonight will feel stonewalled around chapter three.
Neither approach is automatically better. They answer different questions about who should be allowed to hand a technique over. For how Trudeau positions his own titles, the complete guide to his books and reading order lays out the sequence.
Common Criticisms of Strength in Stillness
The reader reviews are not kind, and the objections are specific rather than vague. Three come up repeatedly and are fair. One is not.
It reads like a brochure
This is the complaint that surfaces most in reader reviews, and it costs the book most of its rating. Bob Roth teaches for the organisation the book points you toward. A description of Transcendental Meditation, written by the CEO of the nonprofit that funds teaching it and sold at hardcover prices, will read like a sales pitch to a certain kind of reader no matter how carefully it is written. Reviews that use the word "brochure" are usually reacting to that structure rather than to a single sentence.
The Day 1 to Day 4 chapters promise instruction and do not deliver
Legitimate, and the most common single disappointment. Naming your middle chapters after the four days of a course, then declining to teach the course, misleads buyers who did not read the jacket carefully. Readers report exactly this. The book is a decision aid wearing the clothes of a manual.
The name-dropping does a lot of the work
Famous practitioners appear throughout, and the celebrity roster carries more persuasive weight than any single argument. That is a criticism of the writing, not of the technique. A reader unmoved by the fact that a particular actor or hedge fund manager meditates is left with a thinner book than the page count suggests, and reviews that call the book a list of famous names are not inventing the pattern.
The one criticism that misses
Plenty of reviews object that the book "does not prove anything". That aims at the wrong target. Roth wrote a simple, clear explanation of what a practice is and how you learn it, not a research paper, and the three-category chapter does that job cleanly. The fair version of the complaint is the first one on this list.
Who Should Read Strength in Stillness, and Who Should Skip It
Read it if you have bounced off meditation before and never worked out why. The three-category chapter is the cleanest short explanation of why two practices with the same name can feel nothing alike. Read it if you are weighing the course and want to know what you would be signing up for. Read it if you want the vocabulary to follow the argument at all, including Trudeau's side of it.
Skip it if you want instructions. The chapter titles promise a four-day sequence and then decline to teach it.
Know what you are buying. A description and a decision aid, sold at hardcover prices, with a lot of testimony inside. Go in expecting a clear explanation rather than a method and it holds up well. Go in expecting a manual and you will be annoyed by page forty.
Strength in Stillness: Frequently Asked Questions
What is Strength in Stillness about?
It is Bob Roth's explanation of what the Transcendental Meditation technique is, how it differs from other practices called meditation, and how it is taught. Simon & Schuster published it in 2018. The hardcover runs 224 pages.
Does Strength in Stillness teach you how to meditate?
No. Roth describes the shape of the four-session course and what the practice consists of, but the technique itself is taught in person, one to one, by a certified teacher on a paid course. Several chapters are titled Day 1 through Day 4, which some readers mistake for instructions.
How do you learn to practice TM?
Not from this book. The organisation's published information states that TM centres offer a free introductory talk of about an hour with a certified teacher and no obligation to enrol, and that the paid course which follows begins with a one-to-one personal instruction session and includes a follow-up session about ten days later. The official fee page states the fee is income-based for eligible households, can be paid in monthly installments, and that partial scholarships are available.
What are the three types of meditation in the book?
Focused attention, open monitoring, and self-transcending. Roth's argument is that they ask different things of you: the first asks you to concentrate, the second asks you to observe, and the third asks for neither. He places Transcendental Meditation in the third group.
Who is Bob Roth?
An American Transcendental Meditation teacher, born in 1950. He learned the technique at the Berkeley TM Center in 1969, trained with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in Spain in 1972, and serves as chief executive of the David Lynch Foundation, the nonprofit founded by the film director in 2005. He also directs the Center for Leadership Performance and is the host of the SiriusXM show Success Without Stress.
Who has Bob Roth taught?
Wikipedia records that his students include thousands of at-risk students in underserved schools, military veterans, women and children who have experienced domestic violence, and celebrities including Tom Hanks, Oprah Winfrey, Hugh Jackman, Martin Scorsese, Katy Perry and Russell Brand.
Is Strength in Stillness worth reading?
It depends on what you want from it. As an explanation of what TM is and how it differs from everything else wearing the name, it is clear and short and there is no better popular account. As a practical guide it does not deliver, which is why its Goodreads average sits at 3.21 despite the bestseller status.
Why does Kevin Trudeau recommend it?
It appears at number 13 on his recommended materials list. The connection point is his own teaching on the THETA state, where he argues that a settled mental state should be used to hold a specific outcome. Roth's technique deliberately holds nothing, so the book states the position Trudeau argues against, in its clearest form.
Further reading: Bob Roth on Wikipedia, the Transcendental Meditation technique on Wikipedia, and the David Lynch Foundation on Wikipedia. On this site, the book pairs usefully with the review of Ask and It Is Given by Esther and Jerry Hicks, which contains a sitting practice of its own, and with Psycho-Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz, which argues that a settled state is the condition for accepting new input.