How to be calm

CHRIS Greathead tells a neat little story to illustrate the restorative powers of transcendental meditation. Thirty years or so ago, when he was 18, Chris was enduring a hellish North Sea crossing. He was returning to the UK from Switzerland, and boarded the ferry at Ostend.

Also on the boat was a group who had been to a beer festival in Germany. Everyone was noisy, singing and happy.

Before they sailed, they were warned the weather had been dreadful, and that their boat was the first to try a crossing for two days. They still had no real idea of what lay in store.

Within ten minutes of setting off, Chris says, all the singing stopped. As the waves grew bigger, everybody mysteriously vanished - presumably to the loo.

Chris wasn't spared. As the pitching became worse, he was violently sick, throwing up again and again, until there was nothing left.

He decided he couldn't face another five or six hours of this. "So I propped myself up in my seat and started to meditate," he says. "I intended to just do it for 20 minutes or half an hour. But the next thing I knew was someone tapping on my shoulder to say we were docking. Five hours had passed."

He had not been into transcendental meditation for long, back then. Now, he's been practising for 30 years and teaching for much of that time. "But even now, I still find it staggering, the effect it has," he says.

One headteacher he worked with described meditation as being like a "nice cup of tea for the mind". It is deeply soothing and relaxing, he says, a wonderful way to recharge your batteries and great for relieving stress.

That also makes meditation of great benefit for people who suffer from stress-related conditions such as anxiety, depression, insomnia, high blood pressure, irritable bowel syndrome and eczema.

So what is meditation? Essentially, it is a technique for helping yourself to become deeply relaxed. There is no mysticism or New Age nonsense attached to transcendental meditation, Chris insists. And, unlike some other forms of meditation in which you have to concentrate hard to empty your mind of other distractions, it is effortless.

You simply focus on your mantra - usually a simple, one-or-two syllable word - and gently repeat it to yourself, often just in your mind.

You remain aware - but at the same time find yourself sinking into a state of relaxation that is deeper even than sleep. "There is no concentration," Chris says. "Your mind naturally flows to a deeper level of relaxation, in which you resolve deep tension and tiredness."

He says some people can feel shattered after their first experience, because of the tiredness that comes out. "But then they find a new shine, a sparkle, coming back into their life."

Hilda Scaife, a 65-year-old widow and retired nursery nurse from Whitby, was sceptical when she first tried transcendental meditation. She was put off by the 'hippie' image associated with it, she says.

However, she turned to meditation after two bereavements. She lost her husband, Jack, ten years ago, and then her new partner, Jim, died recently.

Hilda virtually fell to pieces when Jim died. "I was frightened, anxious and panic stricken," she says. "I had an upset stomach, high blood pressure and I couldn't sleep."

A friend had read about transcendental meditation and after researching it on the Internet, they discovered a class Chris was teaching.

They attended a weekend course in October last year and Hilda was amazed by the results. She now meditates for 20 minutes twice a day, morning and evening.

"Just 20 minutes, twice a day, relaxing in a chair and repeating a mantra has resulted in my feeling much calmer and more at peace with myself," she says. "My anxiety and panic attacks have disappeared and my normal sleep pattern has returned. And I find I have more energy and my concentration has also improved."

This didn't happen at once. It was three to four months before Hilda noticed her stress levels were coming down and only after that that her sleep improved.

Now, she says, she would recommend it to anyone.

Although simple to learn, Chris stresses it is important you learn the correct techniques - otherwise you will not get the full benefit. Once you have learned it is with you for life. You don't even need to have absolute silence to meditate, which means you can fit in a few minutes on the bus or train on the way to work in the morning.

Normally, Chris teaches in the North East. But on Saturday he will be running a course at the York Clinic on Tadcaster Road, York. During individual one-hour sessions, Chris will teach participants their own private mantra and show them how to use it to relax into a state of deep meditation.

This will then be followed by three more two-hour group sessions on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday evenings at the York CVS in Priory Street, where participants' technique will be refined.

Chris says some people resist the idea of meditation.

"They say 'I'm going to be a difficult case, because I've got a very busy mind'," he says. "But I have never met anybody who hasn't."

The beauty of meditation is that as your mind begins to drift, it settles effortlessly into a deep state of relaxation, says Chris. "And as the mind settles down, surprise, surprise, so does the body."

The cost of a four-session course with Chris ranges from £290 down to £90 on a sliding scale, depending on income. To find out more, call Chris on 0191 2813507, or visit his website at www.tm-meditation.co.uk.

Updated: 10:03 Monday, November 17, 2003