All these distractions affect our ability to concentrate, perform and live at anywhere near our optimum level. Needless to say, if the mind is always racing from one thought to the next, then our ability to focus will be seriously impaired.

You won’t want to run out into the road quite so often and you’ll find it easier and easier to just sit and watch the thoughts go by. This is the process of meditation.’

What goes down, must come up

As you’ll soon discover, the practise of meditation is about much more than simply sitting down for a set period of time each day. Although it may be a key component, it is just one part of a broader system of mind training that incorporates three distinct aspects. Each aspect is equally important and, in order to get the most out of your

sounds so obvious when it’s put like this, doesn’t it? ‘Happiness is just happiness,’ he went on, ‘no big deal. It comes and it goes.

In order to get the very most from meditation, you’ll probably want to integrate it with your everyday life. And in order to do that, you’ll need to add the second component – clarity. This way you get to see what’s causing the tension in the first place, you get to understand how and why you feel the way you do in certain situations. It’s the

Have you ever noticed how quiet the mind becomes when you really focus on something? How, even if your mind is all over the place beforehand, once you’re engaged in something you enjoy doing and are focused on that activity wholeheartedly, the mind starts to settle and feel calm? Well, meditation is a very similar process.

One of the most important was that the emotion itself is often not the problem. It’s the way we react to it that causes the problem.

Having gained a sense of familiarity with the technique, the emphasis would be on the integration of that quality of mind into everyday life.