London Meditation Centre

Vedic Meditation is a simple and natural way to settle down the mind and rest the body deeply.

In Vedic Meditation you learn a very specific sound called a mantra. The mantra is a meaningless sound that’s chosen for each meditator by their teacher. It is a particular pulsation of sound that’s resonant with the thinker. Certain sounds work best for certain groups of people.

You close the eyes and silently begin to think the sound. Immediately and spontaneously, it becomes fainter and begins to quieten down. As you gently repeat it internally, the sound becomes more soft and subtle until a point is reached where it’s almost imperceptible. And then it does its last little trick, and it disappears, and for a moment the mind falls quiet. The mind drops into an inner, serene state. You’re conscious and awake and yet you’re not thinking. Those moments don’t tend to last so long and often you’re not even aware it’s happening.

When the mind settles down, the body rests.

When the mind quietens down, the body follows. Within a few minutes of meditating your body is resting much deeper than sleep. This unprecedented rest is one of the key benefits of Vedic Meditation. And it’s what makes it different to other techniques.

When you get that kind of deep rest, the body can release tiredness and tension. You come out of meditation feeling energised and ready to go. Old stresses and anxiety are released – you feel clearer, calmer and more aware.

Vedic Meditation is very different to a mindfulness practice.

Let’s start with what it means to be mindful:

Mindfulness means to be in the present, fully engaged with whatever is happening in the moment – aware of thoughts but not distracted by them.

How do we stay in the present and not get overwhelmed by all the noise in our head?

Mindfulness practices use many different approaches. Some are done while walking, others sitting quietly and others are practised while engaged in an activity, like washing the dishes. They all involve monitoring whatever’s happening with the aim of staying in the present moment. Notice how the body feels, the contact point of the feet with the ground, the feel of the air on the skin, watch the breath and observe thoughts as they float through the mind. Try not to drift into the past or begin planning and speculating about the future.

It takes effort to hold the attention in this way. Thoughts may settle down, but the mind is still engaged in thinking and the body is active to some degree.

Vedic Meditation works differently.

Rather than being a practice of trying to stay in the moment, Vedic Meditation is effortless. You close your eyes and silently repeat a mantra. Your mind automatically settles down to its least-excited state and your body rests profoundly. As a result, you release stress and tiredness. These are like obstructions that block our ability to be fully awake and present. Then, having dissolved those blockages during meditation, you come out more available to perceive what’s actually going on. You’re more mindful. In this way, present moment awareness is an outcome of meditation.

Vedic Meditation has been shown to address the root cause of poor sleep by reducing tension and stress in the mind and body. When you’re anxious and worked up it can make it really hard to settle down at night – the mind is racing and you find yourself in a spiral of worry. And often the body feels jumpy and agitated. Over time this makes it hard to concentrate and get stuff done. Even the process of falling asleep can bring on more anxiety which only adds to the issue.

Vedic Meditation improves sleep in many ways:

• Dissolves stress

Within a few minutes of meditating, the mind and body are resting very deeply. This deep rest is what’s needed to dissolve the underlying stress in the system.

• Gets to the root cause of what’s going on

Vedic Meditation delivers a different quality of rest than sleep – much deeper and more balanced. This gets to the root cause so falling asleep is easier and smoother.

• Increases energy + better mood

With daily meditation you take the pressure off so sleep can actually be more restful. This means you wake up in the morning feeling more energised and positive. You’re ready for the day in a completely different way.

• No more napping – feel alert and refreshed all day

Meditation is much more than a power nap. Because it’s such an effective and fast way to settle your system, you come out of meditation feeling alert and refreshed rather than groggy and sluggish.

• A healthier, stronger system

Getting good quality rest is especially important for your immunity, hormone balance and digestive system. By improving the restfulness of your sleep, Vedic Meditation brings more balance, youthfulness and resilience to your entire system.

Some mini-case studies from our students on how Vedic Meditation has improved their sleep:

• Rhoda learned to meditate at the inspiring age of 83, after many years of poor sleep:

“My first, very noticeable and unexpected benefit, was sleep. For many years, my sleep patterns were erratic – I didn’t sleep for more than three hours at a time. Soon after starting to meditate, I began to sleep between 6-8 hours a night. Not every night, but more often than not.”

• James shares how meditating has transformed his morning routine:

“I was never a morning person, and always struggled with getting up. As we have a 1 year old, we decided to set our alarm early in order to meditate before the kids wake up. The alarm goes off at 06:00 and I’m now springing out of bed with genuine enthusiasm to get started. I love that I get to make a positive decision as the very first thing I do in the day. Starting on a positive note sets the tone for the whole day. 

There’s another benefit which is significant for me personally. Pre-meditation, I would wake every morning with a slight feeling of anxiety in my stomach. I couldn’t place what it was. It was nothing conscious on my mind but it had been there every morning for about two years. Since meditating, this has all but disappeared and I wake up without that feeling. It took a couple of months to go, but I’m pretty confident it’s now a thing of the past.”

• Here’s Jo’s experience of how her sleep settled down and became more restful:

“My dad died after a long illness about ten months before I learned to meditate.  I’ve always had vivid dreams, but they were getting ridiculous – to the point where I wasn’t sure sometimes when I woke up whether something had actually happened or it was a dream. And they were disturbing.  Learning to meditate really calmed my dreams down and improved my sleep quality. I still have very lucid dreams, but they aren’t disturbed like before and I don’t wake up after eight hours of sleep feeling tired like I used to.”

Yes – Vedic Meditation has been shown to alleviate chronic pain. Back pain, sore neck, tightness in the shoulders, headaches and migraines are some of the most common experiences of strain and discomfort. It’s estimated that between one-third and half the UK population are affected by chronic pain. And chronic pain is more common in women than men.

What causes this?

When the body regularly experiences overload and strain and is not able to recover and come back into balance, there’s an accumulation of constriction and distortion that is lodged in the cells and muscle fibres of the body. This build-up of stress in the system leaves you feeling tense, tight and sore.

Vedic Meditation creates the opposite state in the body. Research shows that very quickly the meditator moves out of the tensed-up, tightness of fight-or-flight and into a state known as The Relaxation Response. Meditation engages the parasympathetic nervous system – slower heart rate, lower blood pressure, less constriction of blood vessels and reduced muscle tension.

There’s a lot of evidence of the positive effect of meditation on reducing dependency on tobacco and alcohol (and other non-prescribed recreational drugs).

When someone feels anxious, bored, lacking self-worth or without purpose, it’s natural to seek escape. This might be in the form of buying a new outfit or going on a sunny holiday to bring about a temporary uplift in mood. Another way to fill the void is to turn to drugs – prescribed or recreational.

This is where meditation helps. Rather than looking outside for something to make you feel better, meditation reorients you inwards to that quiet, stable part of yourself within. As that connection to who we really are gets stronger, the need for external substances or experiences goes down.

The research consistently demonstrates this. Use of tobacco, alcohol and illicit drugs tend to fall away for meditators, and more quickly than with standard substance abuse programmes. Whereas conventional programs tend to have high levels of relapse within a few months, abstinence rates in meditators last longer.

Our experience is the longer someone is meditating, the more likely it is they will stop, or significantly reduce, their consumption of drugs.

Here’s what one of our students has to say about how meditation has been crucial on his path to recovery:

“Meditation is one of the key tools in my recovery and spiritual programme. Learning to meditate was a milestone in my life, helping me discover self-awareness and connection. I describe it as seeing the world with my eyes open. In fact, all my senses seem to work with more clarity – I now see and hear more of what’s going on around me.

Acceptance, clarity, connection, self-awareness… some of the positive effects meditation has had. Meditation guides me towards letting go, surrender, and not wanting to control – the same characteristics that are so important in my 12-Step programme. Day by day I choose to follow a spiritual pathway, day by day I choose to meditate – the two are interwoven.”

Yes. We teach many people who have been diagnosed with ADHD or who have ADHD tendencies such as a racing mind, being unable to sit still, fidgeting and finding it hard to concentrate.

A fast mind is not the problem. Whenever it’s active, your mind will think. And it will move from one thing to another. This is the nature of the mind.

And this is why techniques that aim to silence the mind by focusing and concentrating are so challenging.

Rather than fighting against the mind, we need to work with it.

This is what we do in Vedic Meditation. We don’t fight against thoughts. We don’t try not to think. We don’t even think about not-thinking.

Instead, we give the mind something interesting and charming – a simple sound that fascinates the mind and draws it effortlessly towards quieter and quieter layers. This sound is called a mantra.

Then the process is easy. Vedic Meditation works WITH the busy mind rather than trying to force it into submission. This is why those with ADHD and related symptoms find the technique so enjoyable and easy.

There is a lot of science about how Vedic Meditation supports the immune system to function in a balanced way. This leaves you stronger, more resilient and less susceptible to illness.

Good health comes about by maintaining order in the system. When a system is not orderly and balanced, it is weaker, less resilient and more likely to get sick. This is especially relevant to how your immune system functions.

Stress is an immuno-suppressant.

We know stress plays a major role in illness. Some studies suggest up to 90% of visits to the doctor have their origins in stress. The more stressed someone becomes, the weaker and less balanced their body will be. This is why stress is bad for your immune system.

It causes your immune system to become compromised. This limits the immune system’s ability to perform hundreds of vital functions including scanning for bacteria, viruses, parasites and then to destroy any infected or cancerous cells.

When you’re stressed your immune system changes its priorities and all these important functions go to the back of the queue. This imbalance leaves the system weaker and less resilient.

Meditation gets to the root cause of the weakness.

The profound rest of Vedic Meditation strengthens the immune system by getting to the root cause of the imbalance. The deep rest is an antidote to the stress, dissolving tension and restoring balance rapidly. This improved is a key part of staying strong and well.

We’ve been teaching meditation for over two decades, and in that time we’ve seen an explosion in the number of techniques and practices labelled as meditation. It’s not hard to see why. There’s an urgent need to counter-balance the roller coaster of life in a way that actually works and doesn’t have negative side-effects.

Much of the growth in meditation is in mindfulness-based approaches, now a multi-billion dollar industry. Originating out of the Buddhist tradition, mindfulness has been packaged in a way that minimises the religious overtones to make it more accessible.

The other stand-out area of expansion is the ‘meditation app’ approach. The market for these apps is huge and it’s an easy way to access mindfulness or guided techniques.

On balance it’s positive there’s more awareness about meditation. The watch-out is that with so much demand, the market fills up with products of varying quality and effectiveness. We see many things that are called meditation that have little positive impact. Many techniques don’t deliver because the fundamentals aren’t in place. This results in confusion and misunderstanding about the value of all meditations. It might also mean someone tries something and when it doesn’t work they think meditation is not for them, when the fault actually lies in having had a sub-optimal experience.

3 approaches to meditation.

Broadly there are three main styles of meditation:

1. Concentration or Focused Attention

It’s in the name. This approach involves fixing your attention on something with the aim of not thinking anything else. It might be concentrating on a candle, staring at an image or simply focusing on your breath. The goal is to create and maintain a state of silence. This approach takes effort and discipline to maintain. In my experience, people often find it too much hard work and abandon the process pretty quickly.

2. Open Monitoring

This approach is also known as mindfulness. Open Monitoring meditation directs the meditator’s awareness to feelings, thoughts or breathing, with a mood of non-judgment and detachment. The practitioner looks to maintain a sense of calm in the midst of a thought-filled mind. The goal is to become more grounded by developing awareness of the present moment, rather than overreacting to the situation.

3. Automatic Self-Transcending

This is the meditation style we practice and teach – we refer to it as Vedic Meditation. It involves the use of a sound called a mantra to orient the mind towards quieter levels of thinking. The mantra is like a vehicle that the mind hops onto, and automatically the mind moves with the mantra to experience finer and finer layers of thinking. A point comes when the mantra disappears and the mind falls quiet. This is a state of pure inner contentedness for the mind. The mind is alert, however there are no thoughts going on.

Different meditations have different effects.

Just as different meditation techniques are approached and practised differently, they also produce very different effects on the mind and body.

When examining different techniques, there are three aspects we look at:

1. What’s the effect on brain functioning?

The brain is the most important organ in the human body, governing and coordinating our thoughts and actions at the centre of the nervous system. Therefore it makes sense to know what impact a particular practice is having on the brain. Through the use of neural imaging and EEG we can see different parts of the brain are activated and developed with each of these styles.

2. How deeply are you resting?

One of the most important benefits of meditation, is the deep rest that it delivers. Much deeper than sleep. We all know how much better we feel and perform when we’re well rested, so having a regular way of resting deeply is key.

3. Is it easy, enjoyable, and practical?

Perhaps this is the most important of all. Meditation only works when you do it. Is it easy?  Do you look forward to meditating? Or does it feel like hard work? Can you fit this in to your life?

At our Introductory Talks we’ll often ask: “How many people have tried meditation?” About 8 out of 10 hands go up. Then we ask: “And how many of you are meditating every day?” Maybe one hand stays up. Yes, meditation is popular, but finding a practice that you are motivated to do and that fits with your lifestyle can be challenging.

On a personal level we know if meditation wasn’t easy and enjoyable we wouldn’t give it the priority we do. Our students look forward to meditating every day because it feels good to do it. Even more important, they feel better having done it.