In an age of smartphones, instant messaging and 24/7 availability, its increasingly hard to find time to step away and reconnect with ones self, especially in fast-paced tech hubs like Silicon Valley.

But before you lock your smartphone in a closet for an hour a day, check out some of the apps and websites available for learning and practicing the ancient art of meditation and the more contemporary mindfulness-based stress reduction.

You dont need a new gadget to meditate all the equipment necessary comes installed in the product.

But some meditation and mindfulness trainers are using technology in interesting ways. They range from simple meditation timers to complete courses.

Its almost using the enemys weapons against them, said Dada Nabhaniilananda of the Ananda Marga Yoga & Meditation Center in Los Altos Hills, Calif. Hes developing a meditation app with some computer-science grad students, and plans to have it available in several languages.

Classes in mindfulness practices have become popular at some of Silicon Valleys signature tech giants, where Los Altos psychotherapist and educator Renee Burgard conducts training.

There are more teachers of this in the San Francisco Bay Area than any other place in the world except Toronto, Im told, Burgard said.

The apps and a growing awareness of the benefits of meditation are helping expand the practice in a big way, according to mindfulness pioneer Jon Kabat-Zinn, who founded the Center for Mindfulness at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center in 1979.

Kabat-Zinns website is one of the oldest commercial websites, launched in 1998 when the World Wide Web was still in its swaddling clothes. Now, colleagues in Sweden have developed apps containing Kabat-Zinns series of guided meditations.

The idea is basically to make this as widely available as possible so people can practice the meditation on a regular basis in their own lives, Kabat-Zinn said.

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Meditation apps gaining popularity in tech hubs

Bethany Hiatt The West Australian October 19, 2014, 11:50 am

Primary schools are teaching children how to meditate in a bid to reduce stress, anxiety and depression when they are older.

Carine Primary School is one of 200 schools and other community groups in WA using the free website or smartphone app Smiling Mind, which was developed by a team of psychologists to introduce children to mindfulness meditation.

Its creators hope to see it included in the national school curriculum by 2020. Carine's school psychologist Jane Lindesay said all classes from Years 1 to 7 started using the program in May.

Teachers used it every day after students returned from lunch to help them settle back into class and pay attention during afternoon lessons.

"The research has shown that mindfulness meditation improves working memory and the ability to pay attention," Ms Lindesay said.

"It also reduces stress and increases resilience."

She said the children would sit or lie down and listen to the mindfulness meditation for about seven minutes each day.

"The teachers are saying the kids are more settled in the afternoon, they're more focused," she said.

Child psychologist Michael Carr-Gregg, who helped develop the Smiling Mind program, said it was a preventive approach.

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Meditation key to beating child's stress

Fr Laurence Freeman OSB, Director of the World Community for Christian Meditation (WCCM), will arrive in Trinidad on October 29 to commence a series of Caribbean-wide presentations.

His visit to Trinidad begins with a public presentation on October 30 titled Meditation: A Way of Peace, at the Movie Towne Conference Centre, Port of Spain. The following day, at the request of Archbishop Joseph Harris, he will host a session with Catholic principals and teachers. Anglican educators have also been invited to participate and the venue is Assumption Church, Maraval. Fr Freeman will also conduct a three-day retreat for local Christian meditators.

During his visit to Trinidad in late 2012, Fr Laurence tells secondary school students: Connect to your Creator - Dec 2 Fr Freeman described meditation to St Joseph Convent students as a gift you cant put a price tag on, explaining that it was about people paying attention to Gods presence in themselves. He said: God is always paying attention to us. The great thing about God is God is never distracted. From Trinidad, Fr Freeman will visit St Lucia (Nov 3) to meet with clergy and religious and hold a public session; and then St Vincent and the Grenadines (Nov 4-5) where he will talk to priests, students and the wider public. His final stop during his Caribbean tour is Barbados (Nov 6-7) where he will address clergy, youth and members of the public, including a range of professionals. WCCM-Caribbean was formally established in November 2013 with the appointment of Sr Ruth Montrichard SJC as regional coordinator for the Caribbean and national coordinator for T&T. Bishop Jason Gordon of Bridgetown, Barbados and Kingstown, St Vincent and the Grenadines, is the patron. The mission of WCCM-Caribbean is to communicate and nurture meditation as passed on through the teaching of John Main in the Christian tradition in the spirit of serving the unity of all.

Sr Ruth and her guiding board members, Michele Jodhan and Judy Joseph Mc Sween, through a collaborative approach and with active support from Caribbean Bishops, have introduced Christian Meditation into schools, parishes and business communities in T&T, St Lucia, St Vincent and Barbados. Later this year, Sr Ruth and her team will respond to invitations received from Dominica, Antigua and the Bahamas to conduct similar introductory sessions.

For further information on the local and Caribbean meditation groups and Fr Freemans upcoming visit, contact Sr Ruth at 678-8436 or McSween at 684-9827.

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Mindfulness has come from nowhere (seriously whod even heard of it until, like, five minutes ago?) to become ubiquitous to the point of being quite annoying. I would be terribly annoyed by it (how tiresomely over-invoked it is, how bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and pious its disciples!) if I werent a rabid convert to mindfulness myself. But I am.

No one is more surprised by this than me. I am a sceptic by tradition: an arched eyebrow, with an option on a rolled eyeball, is all very much part of my shtick. I believe in Nurofen for pain and rigorously tested psychotherapy for the demons, and really very little else. God, tarot, reiki and feng shui, exorcisms, life decluttering and feeling the fear and doing it anyway are all pretty much the same thing as far as Im concerned. Specifically: nonsense.

Goldie Hawn speaking about mindfulness at Davos in January (ALAMY)

I think that self-improvement programmes are for losers, snake oil for those who feel bewildered by life but dont have the balls to risk formal therapies or organised religion, and that alternative therapies are placebos, assuming they work at all. (Admittedly, I took up with an acupuncturist about four years ago, but a) Im in denial about that and b) I never let him use the word Xi in my presence. Ive told him if he ever does I will get up and leave, even if there are needles in me.) Ive never read a self-help book, never even made a New Years Resolution that wasnt have more fun.

And yet somehow, here I am, as mindful as Ruby Wax crossed with Sadie Frost with top notes of Goldie Hawn, having not so much clambered on board the mindfulness bandwagon, as insisted I ride upfront, in the cab, so that I can see where were all going.

How does a sceptic turn mindful? In my case, with an app. Headspace is a neat, jazzy little download that sits on your smartphone and promises to change your life by leading you through 20-minute daily meditation practices voiced by a bouncy surfer from Somerset, a circus-trained ex-Buddhist monk called Andy Puddicombe. Its become incredibly successful in the two and a bit years since it launched, scoring more than two million downloads in more than 150 countries and turning Puddicombe into a poster-boy for mindfulness: Davina McCall, Arianna Huffington, Emma Watson and Millie from Made In Chelsea have all extolled his and Headspaces virtues. At The Priory treatment centres the app is dished out as part of the welcome pack.

The Headspace app and its creator Andy Puddicombe (GETTY)

I first downloaded it in the summer of 2013, my interest piqued by who knows what? Celeb patronage, the fact that the first 10 sessions are free, or possibly the buzz around the word mindfulness. I may be a sceptic, but I am also a lifestyle journalist, which means I have to be fully genned up on the thing everyone else is doing (ideally slightly before they realise theyre doing it), even if I suspect it for a load of crock.

I emerged from my first meditation session feeling very much like it was not a load of crock: within a week, I was hooked. Something about Puddicombes easy breezy, blokey, defiantly non-hippie delivery, or just the act of sitting quietly for a set period of time, resonated with me, sceptic or not. When my 10 freebie sessions had passed, I practically dropped my iPhone in my frenzy to pay for a year-long subscription.

I should say at this juncture that meditation is weird. Dont let anyone else tell you otherwise. Not even Hugh Jackman. You sit upright (and, FYI, in mindfulness circles the verb to sit gains whole new levels of awed reverence, and probably a capital letter. Did you Sit yet today? the mindful will ask each other, meaning, Have you meditated?) in a position that is supposed to be relaxed yet alert, you pay attention to your breath, and you chant or stay silent, or, in the case of Headspace, listen to an ex-Buddhist monk surfer tell you a thing or two about the human condition. And, yeah, that is a weird thing to do. Its nearly, but not quite, doing absolutely nothing, and who ever heard of such a thing? Particularly in this era of Tinder and WhatsApp and multi-channel television and hot-and-cold-running distraction? On top of being weird, its hard. Physically hard. I ached and also itched wildly when I started out. Even now, a year and a bit on, I have days when my back and shoulders so used to either constant support, or the latitude to shift about at will kick off in complaint.

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Mindfulness: does it really live up to the hype?