Welcome to the School of Meditation. Since 1961 everyone who’s walked through our door has done so with one common aim - to learn, enjoy and share the benefits of meditation.
Here we help you understand what meditation is, how to practise it and how you can apply it to your life beyond our door. Visit us and find out for yourself what meditation can do.
Learn to Meditate
Evening Stillness
A guided meditation available to everyone: Tuesday evenings 7.00 to 8.00 pm.
Open Door
Public guided meditation sessions, open to all. Online during the health crisis.
Four Week Course
Guided meditation, exploration of what has been experienced, learning about a lasting meditation practice.
Straight to Meditation
One to one meeting, teaching of mantra, lifetime membership and ongoing support.
What is Meditation
Meditation is any process that stills the mind and brings the attention to nothing but what is here in the present moment.
People find that with the focus on the here and now, fears and anxieties about things that happened yesterday or might happen tomorrow can simply be let go. You can feel more at one with the world instead of feeling at odds with it. And life can be viewed with an easy understanding and clarity where it might otherwise seem difficult and complicated.
Regularly practised, the meditation can lead to that ease of understanding and clarity becoming more and more part of your everyday.
About the School
The School of Meditation is 59 years old and has taught meditation to thousands of people. It’s a non-profit, registered charity based in London but also has branches around the UK as well as further afield in Greece and Holland.
The meditation we teach comes from an ancient Indian tradition called Advaita Vedanta. It involves sitting quietly in a relaxed uncomplicated position and repeating a mantra in your head. No contortions, no chanting, no burning of incense. All you need is a relatively quiet space and a chair.
The process of learning the meditation is delightful and simple. It doesn’t require you to follow any particular philosophy or figurehead or special diet, just the mantra. And when the mantra’s received, so is membership of the school. Not for a term, or a year, but for life. In return, the school makes no demands of members, it’s purely there for them to use as much or as little as they wish in mutual support of their practice.
Evening Stillness
A guided meditation
Evening Stillness sessions at the school are regularly available to everyone. On Tuesday evenings at 7.00pm you can join complete beginners and long term meditators alike and be guided through some elementary processes that’ll give you a very real taste of deep meditation. You’ll also get a chance to chat with people who’ve been meditating for years and ask them anything.
You are welcome to attend as many sessions as you wish. If at some point you decide that you’d like to learn a technique for meditating regularly on your own, you can arrange this at the end of a session.
Tuesday evenings 7.00 - 8.00pm
Cost: £5.00
Evening Stillness sessions resume on Tuesday 13th October 2020 at 7pm at 158 Holland Park Avenue. The sessions will be held in accordance with the latest guidance around social distancing.
Booking is essential. You can book a place by clicking here.
Open Door
During the health crisis we have replaced our normal Open Door meetings with online sessions, which are available to everyone. You can join a simple guided meditation every Monday, Wednesday or Saturday morning at 11am. If you want, you can remain anonymous.
You are welcome to attend as often as you wish. Sessions are free, and last no more than half an hour.
Discover a deep, inner rest - an enduring part of the mind that is beyond our normal cares and worries.
Sessions are held via Zoom. To join a session click here.
From Sunday 27th September 2020, we are moving to a different Zoom account. The new access link is as follows:
https://zoom.us/meeting/99539766942 and the new passcode is 'som'.
From that date forward, the old details will no longer be valid and the new details will need to be used.
For Zoom Instructions - click here
Stay apart in body and together in consciousness.
Four Week Introductory Course
This course is designed to give people the experience of stillness and quiet, using guided meditation exercises. Open discussion of the group’s experience of these exercises is encouraged and there is the opportunity to meet some experienced meditators during a refreshment break. The course is preparation for those interested in taking up mantra meditation.
New courses have just started on Wednesday evenings and Thursday mornings. If you want to join these please contact the office. The next full course is on Monday evenings and starts in May. Cost - £50.00
COURSES ARE SUSPENDED DURING THE COVID-19 OUTBREAK. THEY WILL RESUME WHEN OFFICIAL RESTRICTIONS ON SOCIAL CONTACT ARE LIFTED.