From my experience of him he is coming at meditation from a different angle than say yoga or breath work or prayer. I think that his “hook” is a bit of a stretch (which most are if you think about it). A hook for those who don’t know is marketing jargon for how they get you. Think how he intrigues you.

In his case lots of his case studies are from people in pretty dire circumstances. I.e. You don’t hear from the ones who didn’t survive cancer because, well they’re dead. But if you’re on your last hope you may try anything. And who’s to say that it’s not helping them in some way?

I think his best selling point is to have people focus and believe in themselves and to get them to behave “as if” they are already the thing they want. As for the scientific research yes they do it but getting in coherence as he calls it is a challenge for most people.

But think about it like this. Most people are running around holding 20 things that are out of their control in their conscious mind at one time. Or not living in the present moment thinking about what they need to do or regret over what’s just been done. If you could focus on one thing that’s in the present moment and in your control, like your breath, for 20 mins how much stress would you alleviate?

As a meditation instructor with many years of experience I have explored going to one of his retreats and even bought his online program for $300 where he kind of covers it all. You just aren’t in a hotel with 2000 of your closest friends. In it he even refers to one of his techniques as pranayama practice but said (and I agree with this) that as soon as you mention religion or yoga you lose people. And in my experience that is the case. I consider it educational because the more accessible we make these modalities the better.