Russell Brand, the British comedian and actor, has made a career of outrageous antics. It is jarring, then, to hear Mr. Brand, 35, speaking sincerely about the emotional solace he has found in Transcendental Meditation .

“Transcendental Meditation has been incredibly valuable to me both in my recovery as a drug addict and in my personal life, my marriage, my professional life,” Mr. Brand said of the technique that prescribes two 15- to 20-minute sessions a day of silently repeating a one-to-three syllable mantra. “I literally had an idea drop into my brain the other day while I was meditating which I think is worth millions of dollars.”

Mr. Brand was the master of ceremonies at a benefit for the David Lynch Foundation, an organization that offers TM at no cost to troubled students, veterans, homeless people, prisoners and others. Mr. Lynch, the enigmatic film director, has been a devout practitioner of TM, founded in 1958 by the spiritual leader Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, since its first wave of popularity in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. The Beatles, Mia Farrow, George Lucas and Clint Eastwood were early enthusiasts.

Since then, the celebrity endorsements, and therefore the enrollment numbers, had quieted down. That is, until the last three years, when, according to the national Transcendental Meditation program, enrollment tripled.

At Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, the women’s squash league began meditating together after every practice last year. The Doe Fund, an organization that assists homeless Americans, has begun offering TM to its residents along with computer skills and job training. And Ray Dalio, the billionaire hedge-fund manager , has long credited his success to his daily TM practice.

The Transcendental Meditation program attributes the resurgence to a series of recent studies that suggest TM can help reduce blood pressure and stress, and to the relatively recent affordability of TM. (The adult course, which had ballooned from $75 in the ‘60s to $2,500 in 2007, dropped, because of the economy, to $1,500 in 2008.) No less important has been Mr. Lynch’s foundation, started in 2005.

The singer Moby said TM helped him quit drinking . “I used to think that TM was for weird old hippies,” he added. “But then I heard that David Lynch was involved .”

Mr. Lynch’s sister, Martha, persuaded him to try TM when he was having marital difficulties with the first of his four wives, in the early ‘70s. “Two weeks after I started, my wife comes to me and says, ‘This anger, where did it go?’ I felt a freedom and happiness growing inside. ” ( A year later, the couple divorced.)

It’s easy to shrug off such utterances as New Age prattle ? who can forget Jeff Goldblum’s flaky character in “Annie Hall” on the phone, complaining that he’d forgotten his mantra? ? but less so when the person reciting it has dreamed up his best films on the days when he was dropping out of consciousness .

In the last decade, independent studies have found that the technique may reduce hypertension, obesity and diabetes in patients with coronary heart disease and can be beneficial to brain function and cognitive development .

But Sara Weber, of New York University’s postdoctoral program in psychotherapy and psychoanalysis, warns that TM could have adverse side effects. “Some people report falling apart,” she said. “They can have very intense and bad emotional experiences.”

Indeed, at least one guest at the Lynch benefit had already moved on from TM.

“I tried it 10 years ago,” said Rose McGowan, the actress. “It was fantastic, but now I do fight training. For me, personally, it’s the only thing that gets me out of my mind. I think even David Lynch would approve.”

By IRINA ALEKSANDER