HOW TO find peace ANYTIME, ANYPLACE

Meditation is simpler than it sounds. Follow these directions from a sceptic who tried and liked it

- Dan Harris and Jeffrey Warren with Carlye Adler

If you had told me as recently as a few years ago that I would someday become a travelling evangelist for meditation, I would have coughed my beer up through my nose.

In 2004, I had a panic attack at work. Unfortunately for me, that meant I was in front of millions of people, delivering the news, live, on the US television show, Good Morning America. In the wake of my nationally televised freakout, I learned that I had undiagnosed depression. For months, I’d been having serious trouble getting out of bed in the morning and felt as if I had a permanent lowgrade fever.

The panic attack ultimately led me to embrace a practice I had always dismissed as ridiculous. For most of my life, to the extent that I’d ever even considered meditation, I ranked it right alongside aura readings and Enya.

Further, I figured my racing type-A mind was way too busy to ever be able to commune with the cosmos. And anyway, if I got too happy, it would probably render me completely ineffective at my hypercompetitive job.

Two things changed my mind. The first was the science. In recent years, there has been an explosion of research into meditation, which has been shown to reduce blood pressure, boost recovery after your body releases the stress hormone cortisol, strengthen the immune system, slow age-related atrophy of the brain, and even mitigate the early symptoms of depression as well as anxiety.