It’s often in the third session of my Vedic Meditation course that the penny drops for people about how meditation works

They’ve had two previous sessions and five meditation experiences by this point and are ready for what we call the “bubble diagram”.

This is where I get up and do my best (barefoot) school teacher impression at the whiteboard.

I love the simple picture it paints of consciousness being like an ocean.

Thoughts begin in the peaceful depths and bubble up through consciousness until we experience them at the wavy surface.

We experience them one after the next as an endless procession of often repetitive thoughts.

When we introduce the mantra, this lets the mind dive downwards away from the chaos at the surface towards the more peaceful depths.

The mantra, thought silently and effortlessly, has a charm to it which occupies and settles the mind.

As the mind relaxes, so does the body, allowing it release stresses it's been holding onto.

When the stresses unwind, they trigger thoughts which take us back up to the surface.

When we realise we’re back thinking, we pick up the mantra again and dive back under with as little fuss as possible.

Usually during this section there’s a lot of ‘ahhhhh’s as people realise that thinking during meditation isn’t just an unwelcome by-product, it’s an intrinsic part of the stress release process.

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