Meditation can transform how we experience ourselves and the world. It can open us to a more spacious, clear and liberated awareness rooted in presence. While meditation is often understood as a way to calm the mind or manage stress, the heart of the path lies in awakening and liberating insight, and below are four foundational categories of practice, each offering a distinct doorway into deeper presence, clarity and freedom:

Vipassana (Insight Meditation): Vipassana is an open-monitoring practice that cultivates deep insight into the nature of mind, self and reality. The term Vipassana means "clear seeing" or "insight." By observing thoughts, sensations, and emotions without judgment or attachment, practitioners begin to perceive the impermanence, unsatisfactoriness, and selfless nature of all phenomena — known as the Three Marks of Existence: Anicca (impermanence), Dukkha (suffering or unsatisfactoriness) & Anatta (not-self).

Samatha (Calm Abiding): Samatha is a concentration-based practice that gently trains the mind to rest in the present moment. By focusing on a single object, often the breath, it cultivates calm, clarity, and sustained attention. Over time, this practice purifies the mind, reduces mental agitation, and builds a stable foundation for deeper meditative absorption known as samadhi, and accessing the transformative states known as jhana.

The Brahmavihāras (Four Sublime States): Through consistent practice, the Brahmavihāras nurture open-hearted awareness, emotional resilience, and a deeper connection to others. They also support the development of jhānic states, deep meditative absorptions. These heart-based practices cultivate qualities of Metta (loving-kindness), Karuna (compassion), Mudita (sympathetic Joy) & Upekkha (equanimity).

Emptiness & Non-Dual Awareness: Non-dual practices such as Dzogchen from the Tibetan tradition, point directly to the nature of mind, beyond concepts, stories, or egoic identity. With the practice of Dzogchen, we learn to stabilise presence, or what’s known as RIGPA and the ground of being, until it becomes the default lens — what’s already here but often overlooked.