'For years now, I’ve been reading and hearing about transcendental meditation'

My first ever experience of meditation was in the prayer room in my secondary school; a class of 20 girls lying down on the floor, listening to our religion teacher read out a guided meditation. (Most of us using it as an opportunity to take a sneaky nap, let’s be real.)

I didn’t think any more about it until, in my first year of university, I saw a flyer advertising a short course in mindfulness and it was there that I learned a very basic form of meditation — following the breath, in and out.