Meditation has played a big role in my life over the last decade or so, but I’m also highly aware that it’s not for everyone. I even wrote a substack post on just that topic called, ‘Please don’t tell me to meditate’ - aiming to address the people who are tired of being told that meditation would be good for them.

In my own journey with meditation, I’ve found many different layers:

• Initially I used meditation as a form of stress relief - the 10 quiet minutes in my day in which I attempted to release the pressure valve. This is around the same time that I began to teach some simple forms of meditation at the end of my yoga classes, which served a similar purpose.
• Then I started to see its utility as a means of training myself to focus and concentrate more effectively.
• Then I began to see meditation as a functional means of trying to retrain my brain more generally - planting the seeds for new forms of growth.
• I became increasingly curious to go deeper and understand the depths of change that might be possible, leading to experiences like 10 days of silent meditation. Those experiences opened up new depths for me and showed me that it was possible for my brain to work fundamentally differently.
• After that I started to go deeper into non-duality - the idea that this sense of a ‘me’ sat behind my face is actually somewhat of an illusion.

I’m still exploring, and that exploration will likely last a lifetime.

The point I’m trying to make is that meditation has many different layers to it; there are many different schools of thought and traditions; people approach it with different intent - so it can be hard to make sweeping generalisations about it. And even if you could, I’m not sure I’m well enough equipped to be the one making those generalisations.

All I can offer is the suggestion that if you’re interested to explore it further then I’d suggest one of the following:

• Find a local meditation class or centre - there are so many around and if you don’t know where to start then perhaps search for your nearest buddhist centre. There is definitely something special about meditating in person with a great teacher as opposed to using technology but it of course comes with a sacrifice of convenience
• Of the apps out there, I’d suggest Sam Harris’ Waking Up is the best I’ve come across for depth and variety of teaching