Andy Puddicombe

This is the same mind that we depend upon to be focused, creative, spontaneous, and to perform at our very best in everything that we do.

And yet, we don't take any time out to look after it.

In fact, we spend more time looking after our cars, our clothes, and our hair than we... Okay, maybe not our hair, but you see where I'm going.

The result, of course, is that we get stressed.

You know, the mind whizzes away like a washing machine going round and round, lots of difficult, confusing emotions.

And we don't really kind of know how to deal with that.

The sad fact is that we are so distracted that we're no longer present in the world in which we live.

We miss out on the things that are most important to us.

And the crazy thing is that everybody just assumes, well, that's the way life is, so we just kind of got to get on with it.

That's really not how it has to be.

So I was about 11 when I went along to my first meditation class.

And trust me, I had all the stereotypes that you can imagine, sitting cross-legged on the floor, the incense, the herbal tea, the vegetarians, the whole deal.

But my mom was going, and I was intrigued, so I went along with her.

I'd also seen a few kung fu movies, and secretly, I kind of thought I might be able to learn how to fly, but I was very young at the time, you know.

Now, as I was there, you know, I guess like a lot of people, I assumed that it was just an aspirin for the mind.

You get stressed, you do some meditation.

I hadn't really thought that it could be sort of preventative in nature until I was about sort of 20 when a number of things happened in my life in quite quick succession.

really serious things which just flipped my life upside down.

And all of a sudden, I was inundated with thoughts, inundated with difficult emotions that I didn't know how to cope with.

Every time I sort of pushed one down, another one would just sort of pop back up again.