Self-Transcending Meditation vs Mindfulness

If you ask most people what meditation is, the answer is usually something like this:

Listening to a guiding voice

Focusing on the breath

Trying to stay present

This understanding doesn’t come from nowhere. It’s shaped by what people are exposed to - apps like Headspace, Calm, Insight Timer, guided sessions on YouTube, Buddhist practices like Vipassana, or the short meditations often included at the end of a yoga class.

That’s what meditation looks like for most people.

It’s also the exact reference point almost every student brings to me when they arrive. And in my experience, that’s where a lot of the confusion begins. Because what most people think of as meditation is only one category of practice - not the whole picture.

Before I learned to meditate 'properly', way before I taught meditation, I spent about a year doing what most people do. I followed guided meditations online (I LOVED Mooji - if you know you know), mainly through YouTube, trying to be consistent, trying to “get better” at it.

Some days it felt calming. Other days it felt like I was just sitting there with my thoughts, wondering if I was doing it right. There was always a subtle sense that I needed to try, to stay focused, or bring my attention back to the voice, or maintain some level of awareness.

And while I could see the value in it, it never felt effortless. It felt like something I had to manage. But that all changed when I was introduced to self-transcending meditation.

The change wasn't gradual - it was instant. Because my entire relationship with meditation shifted from doing something with my mind to allowing something to happen.

To understand the difference properly, it helps to separate out what’s actually happening in the practices most people are familiar with.

Mindfulness is typically built on two approaches: focused attention and open monitoring. Focused attention is exactly what it sounds like. You choose an object - a flickering flame or your breath - and you keep your attention there. Often with some level of force or intensity to try and disable your mind from wandering.

Open monitoring, which includes practices like body scanning and Vipassana, takes a broader approach. Instead of focusing on one thing, you observe whatever arises - thoughts, sensations, emotions - without reacting to them.

Both approaches can be useful. They can improve awareness, help you notice patterns in your thinking, and build a level of mental discipline. But they also share something important.

They both involve effort.

Not necessarily obvious effort, but a subtle, ongoing engagement with attention. You are either focusing it, or you are monitoring what it’s doing. And for many people - especially those with busy lives and busy minds - that’s where friction starts to appear.

So, whilst many meditation practices involve focus or control, my approach is different.

Self-transcending meditation doesn’t require effort or concentration. It works by allowing the mind to move beyond active thinking — naturally and effortlessly. Rather than training attention or observing thoughts, it works with a natural tendency of the mind to settle when it’s given the right conditions.

In my own practice, this felt less like trying to meditate and more like something dropping away. I was encourage to meditate with no effort. No monitoring. No concern about doing it right... and what was left was a kind of quiet that didn’t need to be created.

This isn’t just a subjective difference in experience. It shows up very clearly in the research. Modern science shows different types of meditation produce different patterns of brain activity.

Focused attention and open monitoring practices are generally associated with increased beta and gamma activity - brainwave patterns linked with active thinking, attention, and cognitive processing.

In contrast, self-transcending practices have been shown to produce increased alpha coherence across the brain, alongside patterns of slower brainwave activity associated with deep rest. What makes this particularly interesting is that this state has been described as “restful alertness” - the body is deeply relaxed, but the mind is not asleep. It’s awake, but without the usual level of mental noise.

A well-known study exploring these differences can be found here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1053810010000097

And a more accessible overview comparing meditation types is outlined here: https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/the-meditating-mind/202106/what-type-meditation-is-best

Importantly, you don’t need to get lost in the neuroscience to understand the implication. Just understand different meditation techniques produce different states. And if the goal is to access deep rest while remaining mentally alert, not all techniques are designed to take you there.

In practical terms, this comes down to something very simple. Mindfulness asks you to do something with your attention. Self-transcending meditation removes that requirement. And that difference becomes very real when you sit down to practise.

In mindfulness, if your mind is busy, you are continually relating to that activity - noticing it, labelling it, observing it, staying present with it.

In self-transcending meditation, the mind can be busy, quiet, somewhere in between - and none of that needs to be managed. In fact, one of the most common things I explain to students is that a more active mind in meditation isn’t a problem. It can often be a sign that stress is being processed and released. So instead of working against the mind, the practice allows the system to settle in its own way.

An analogy that helps us understand this, is if you imagine your mind like the surface of water, mindfulness is like watching the ripples or trying to keep your attention on one part of the surface. Self-transcending meditation is what happens when you stop interfering with the water altogether and allow the surface settles on its own.

Why does this matter? Well, most people aren’t interested in meditation as a concept. They’re interested in how it makes them feel - less stressed, better quality sleep, more clarity, calmer, more emotionally balanced... In my experience, the reason self-transcending meditation tends to be more effective for those outcomes is because it doesn’t rely on sustained mental effort. It works at the level of the nervous system. And when the body begins to rest more deeply, everything else starts to reorganise around that - thinking, mood, energy, behaviour.

If your understanding of meditation has come from apps, YouTube, or traditional mindfulness practices, then it makes complete sense that you would associate meditation with focus, awareness, and managing attention. That’s what you’ve been shown. But it’s not the only way to meditate.

And in my experience - both personally and in teaching - when people are introduced to a method that works with the mind rather than trying to control it, meditation stops feeling like something you have to get better at. And starts becoming something that simply works.

This is exactly what I teach — a self-transcending approach that is simple, natural, and designed to work in real life. I emphasise words like 'effortlessness' and 'ease' rather than 'concentrate' or 'focus' - see how nice that sounds?

If this way of approaching meditation sounds interesting, the next step is to experience it for yourself. Reading about it can be helpful, but meditation is something you understand through doing - not analysing. I run free online taster sessions where you can learn how this works in a simple, guided way, ask questions, and see whether it feels like the right fit for you. It’s an easy, no-obligation place to start.