by Georgina Safe

Meditation is the new yoga.With benefits including increased clarity, improved productivity, better sleep and less stress, itis being embraced by everyone from frazzled executives to anxious creatives. But with so many types of practice on offer from traditional Vediccentres to the designer studios popping up faster than you can say om which one is right for you?

Life & Leisure road-tests a few.

I turn up to my first meditation session at The Broad Place in Paddington, Sydney, with three pieces of fruit, six flowers and an open mind. Co-founders Jacqui Lewis and Aaron Russell teach "integrative meditation", a twist on Vedic meditation with a few extra bells and whistles for the modern world.

In three sessions over three days, Lewis teaches me how to meditate with a mantra, beginning with a ceremony of gratitude in which she makes an offering of the fruit and flowers and sings in Sanskrit, acknowledging the wisdom of ancient teachers.

After that, it's down to business: I'm assigned a personal mantra and my group engages in a 20-minute meditation. I find it difficult to let go of my outside thoughts, which is doubly disconcerting given Lewis works from an incredibly tranquil designer studio space calibrated for extreme relaxation. But that night I sleep better than I have in years, and in the second session I find it easier to let my mind drift off.

In the third session I inexplicably break down into a huge sobbing fit in front of my fellow participants a chief executive, a midwife and a dancer with one of Australia's pre-eminent contemporary companies. It's beyond embarrassing, but Lewis tells me it's perfectly normal; the meditation is bringing old and useless negative emotions to the surface and letting them go.

I really do feel better and lighter afterwards, which is why after the course I continue to meditate for 20 minutes once a day (Lewis recommends twice daily, but that's a little too much for me). It might be my imagination, but it feels easier to write for work, too.

The Broad Place also offers courses in Melbourne and retreats and workshops in Byron Bay, India, London and Los Angeles.

A fashion designer friend recommends the Tibetan singing bowls meditationat City Fringe, so I'm initially disappointed to discover there's been a bookings glitch and I've actually signed up for "How to meditate with noise" instead. But how glorious the noise is.

The session has been arranged because there'sa flute and harp recital scheduled for the performance venue downstairs, and as the music flows we learn a simple three-minute meditation designed to help us relax in noisy or busy situations. It's easy and effective, in a welcoming space filled with comfy couches, fresh flowers and a Himalayan salt lampglowing softly in the semi-darkness.

The centre teaches in the Brahma Kumaris tradition, a religious movement from India in which women play a prominent role.

BrahmaKumarisalso offers meditation in Adelaide, Melbourne, Tasmania, Perth, Brisbane and Canberra, See meditationspace.com.au

The best thing about the Headspaceis the voice of Andy Puddicombe. His mellifluous British accent think the David Attenborough of the meditation world is enough to transport me to serenity, even without pressing play on one of his hundreds of bite-sized app sessions on everything from managing stress to better sleep.

The second-best thing about Headspace is it's a mobileapp, rather than a place, so you can carry it around in your pocket or handbag. It also prompts you to set a daily reminder to meditate at a chosen time.

I found this a little guilt-inducing on days I was too busy to fit it in, but there's good reason Headspace is the world's most popular mediation app. It's particularly useful to block out annoying background noise and conversations in busy places.

Think of BodyMindLife as the designer gym of meditation and wellness. It offers more than 300 classes each week at four chic, minimalistlocations across Sydney, including meditation, yoga, Pilates, massage, reiki, kinesiology, and hot and cold and oxygen therapies.

I'm a bit of a princess when it comes to gyms. Dated decor and dirty carpets aren'tgoing to cut it. So I love the sleek surrounds, the change rooms equipped with organic products, hair dryers and straighteners, and the Yogi Lounge with free Wi-Fi and herbal tea. As for the meditation, it's a 30-minute guided session in a warm and dark room in which the only glow is the by now ubiquitous Himalayan salt lamp.

The beauty of BodyMindLife is the way it cater to wellness junkies rather than gym junkies. Sign up and you can access all the yoga, Pilates and mediation your heart desires, minus paying for spin, weights and workout classes you'll never use, if they're not your thing.

BodyMindLife has studios in the Sydney suburbs of Bondi Beach, Potts Point, Redfern and Surry Hills.

This is the thinking person's meditation centre. The boutique psychology and mindfulness studioprovides daily meditation and yoga classes upstairs, while downstairs professional psychologists and holistic practitioners offer one-on-one consultations.

I try the breath-based, centredmeditation, which involves focusing on your breath above all else, which I find surprisingly difficult. Another, sound-based mediation seems to be much easier perhaps because I've already had some practice but what I really want to come back to try are the nap classes.

Nap Time is a class for busy and tired workers to experience a guided relaxation meditation and sneak in some shut-eye in the middle of the day. If you are cool with essentially paying to take a siesta, the Indigo Project claims the nap classes boost productivity and refresh the mind.

The Indigo Project is in Surry Hills, Sydney.

The beauty of meditating at this Buddhist temple is the way its teachers dispense practical advice for daily life. From how to deal with getting grumpy in a queue to surviving a marriage break-up, Buddhist nun Kelsang Monlam is full of handy suggestions for solving real-life problems.

The Surry Hills centre is part of the International Temples Project, a charitable organisation founded by Tibetan Buddhist Geshe Kelsang Gyatso with the vision of creating temples dedicated to world peace in every major city in the world.

My Saturday morning class involves ateaching on how to put yourself in others' shoes, two guided meditations and a prayer for world peace. It's a long class almost 90 minutes but I emerge feeling refreshed. An added bonus is meeting several interesting women over tea and biscuits in the foyer before the class.

If you can't get to Surry Hills, the centre holds 13 classes in suburbs throughout Sydney every week. There are also Kadampa meditation centres around the world and in most Australian state capitals. See kadampa.org.

More:

Feeling frazzled? Take your pick from these 6 meditation studios - The Australian Financial Review