We make meditation easy. In Finding Time Sitting Still there are no complex maps to follow or techniques to master. We know how the mind works and have tailor-made our course to neutralize mind chatter. Anyone who can sit with their eyes closed can do this.

Another difference is that our explanations are completely Western and secular. We don’t use foreign words or promise mystical awareness. There is no guru, avatar or saint to follow. Finding Time Sitting Still is extremely practical and will improve your life within a few days.

People often object to meditation because they are afraid of committing the time. And many meditation schools require a lot of time. Not with Finding Time Sitting Still; our method works with as little as 5 minutes a day and no more than 20 minutes, which is only 2 percent of your waking hours. Surely you deserve 2 percent of your day just for you.

Another thing that distinguishes Finding Time Sitting Still is our focus on practice. Any day you meditate will be a better day, but it is the practice of meditation that transforms your life.

Practicing what we teach in Finding Time Sitting Still produces peace of mind because it focuses on detaching from emotional content rather than emptying the mind of thoughts. Thought stopping puts you in conflict with your mind; thought watching puts you in control of yourself. There’s a huge difference.

Every religion has a tradition of meditation, prayer and contemplation, although the practice of meditation is not necessarily religious.

What we teach is "doing nothing" for a few minutes every day. We emphasize the nature of the mind--a river or stream that never stops--and a method for watching thoughts without drowning in them. Over time, this practice defuses the emotional charge that our repetitive thought patterns generate, thus emptying the emotional reservoir of your mind. This produces peace, calm and harmony to fill the void. It's the kind of trade-off that changes lives.

The practice that we promote is based in psychology and the physiology of breath, not religion. Religions are based in scriptural teachings. We use no scripture of any kind in our classes. While the practice of meditation may produce spiritual insight, that is not our goal. Our goal is to show people how to make peace with their mind so they can enjoy peace of mind. This takes daily practice.

Our experience is that everyone gets what they want from meditation, whether it is lowering their blood pressure, decreasing stress, improving their golf game, or meeting the Divine. It's very personal.

It’s not just your mind, every mind is full of chatter, that's its nature. You will never eliminate it, so stop expecting to. That's the bad news.

The good news is that you aren't your mind. The more often you practice observing your mind in meditation, the better you will become at it. Knowing the contents of your mind allows you to make peace with your mind.

Using our method, you will learn to observe your thoughts without reaction or resistance.

A synonym of meditation that may describe what we do more accurately is introspection. This is not a thought-free state but rather thought-filled, and relaxed. Finding Time Sitting Still is thought watching, not thought stopping.

First, stop "shoulding" on yourself. There shouldn't be a "should" in your meditation practice. If meditation is not a "get-to," it won't be a part of your life for long. Any time you can and will meditate is the right time for you. "Should" is a guilt verb. No shoulds allowed.

That said, there is a difference between morning and evening meditation: When you sit in the morning, you carry that benefit with you through the day. And it is undeniably true that starting your day with calmness changes the course and quality of your day.

This is not to say that evening meditation is defective in any way. It's a great way to end your day and decompress. Turning inward after all those hours of being outwardly focused has unmitigated benefits.

Of course, using our method is so easy you could do it twice a day and cut in half the time it takes to experience the benefits.

Meditation has an expansive effect on you whenever you do it. The natural result of getting quiet and calm is to expand your energy field. When you sit in meditation with a group of people, the energy field of each person in the room expands similarly, and everyone feels the effect of that expansion. There are many opportunities to meditate in a group in cities, but you can also have the experience by inviting people to your home. There is power in numbers.

When you sit by yourself, you can expand your experience of group energy by "tuning in" with the millions of people all over the world who are sitting at the same time you practice. Don’t try to feel anything, just imagine others sitting quietly like you.

Often people ask what kind of meditation we teach, anticipating that we'll say some foreign brand name that identifies a technique, like TM® or Kriya. Our method would fall into the category of meditation called “mindfulness” meditation. We think of it as contemplation or introspection. We call it Finding Time Sitting Still because it makes time.

Meditation techniques usually involve breathing in a special way, reciting a word or phrase (mantra), manipulating imagined or felt energy by breath or visualization or using a rosary or japa beads. Many of these techniques are useful for dealing with the monkey mind. The strategy is to distract or absorb the mind in repetition, enabling a person to become relaxed.

However, using a technique is doing something – breathing consciously, reciting, manipulating energy or directing thoughts – and our method is doing nothing. Sometimes practicing techniques agitates rather than relaxes. What we’ve experienced and others have verified is that doing nothing has a unique effect.

Introspection involves learning to observe your mind without reaction or resistance. You can’t do that if you are distracting yourself from your mind by doing a technique.

Our meditation method is doing nothing, and running is definitely doing something, so the two aren't the same. Just as running gives you a unique benefit, introspection affects your life uniquely. Nothing you can do affects your life in the way quiet introspection will.

Running may produce similar "feelings" in you, but the product of meditation is not so much feelings as awareness of what is in your mind. This awareness comes through daily introspective practice. It must be daily because your mind produces emotional content every day, and emotions (feelings) destroy your ability to detach from your thoughts.

Don't despair, meditation does produce peace of mind, but it's a process. It doesn't happen overnight. Here's how the process works: To have peace of mind, you must make peace with your mind, and to do that you have to know what's in there.

Everyone has disquieting thoughts – regrets, resentments, worries, fears – and those come to the fore when you attempt to quiet your mind. Over time, observing your thoughts in meditation allows you to disengage from the emotions connected with those thoughts.

Even after you have many days of practice behind you, there will be days when your thoughts pull you from your calm center. That's why meditation is a practice, not a status: You have to do it every day, otherwise those disquieting thoughts will dominate your mind.

This is a common problem, and it's easy to handle: Keep a pad by your side and when things come up that seem to demand your focus, open your eyes, write it down and go right back to meditating. If another idea comes up, write it down. If you do this, in a matter of days, the tendency to come up with those items will pass, and you can put the pad away and stay quiet more.