The short answer:
Both mindfulness and Vedic Meditation have something to offer. But they aren’t the same, and they don’t work in the same way.
Mindfulness asks you to hold your attention on the present moment — your breath, your body, whatever you’re feeling — without judging it. That takes some effort. Vedic Meditation asks nothing of your attention. You silently use a personal mantra, and the mind settles inward on its own, until thinking becomes quiet.
Mindfulness trains you to stay present. Vedic Meditation lets you step beyond thinking and de-excite the system deeply. It’s this unprecedented rest that rapidly removes the blockages that get in the way of being present.
| Vedic Meditation | Mindfulness | |
|---|---|---|
| Tradition of origin | The Vedic tradition of India | The Buddhist tradition, secularised in the West |
| Technique category | Automatic self-transcending | Open monitoring |
| What you do | Silently use a personal, meaningless mantra | Observe breath, body and thoughts without judging them |
| Effort required | None — it’s effortless by design | Some — you keep bringing attention back |
| Direction of attention | Inward, settling beyond thought | Outward, toward present experience |
| Aim | Deep rest that de-excites the nervous system | Sustained, non-judgemental present-moment awareness |
| Resulting state | Restful alertness: body deeply rested, mind alert | Settled observance: body active, mind watching calmly |
| Dominant brainwave | Alpha1 | Theta |
| How it’s practised | Sitting, eyes closed, 20 minutes twice a day | Sitting, walking or during activity; often guided |
| How you learn it | An in-person course, with a qualified teacher | From books, apps, videos, courses, or self-taught |
What’s the difference between Vedic Meditation and mindfulness?
I’ve been teaching meditation since 2003, and this is one of the questions I’m asked most often. Usually it comes from someone who’s tried mindfulness, or downloaded an app, found it hard to keep going, and is wondering whether there’s something that suits them better. So let me take the two apart properly.
Where does each one come from?
Mindfulness has its roots in the Buddhist tradition. The word itself comes from the Pali word sati, meaning awareness or attention. Over the last few decades it’s been carefully separated from its religious origins and repackaged as something secular and accessible — which is a big part of why it’s everywhere now.
Vedic Meditation comes from a different and older source: the Veda, an ancient body of knowledge from India. In Sanskrit, Veda means “pure knowledge.” Its written records go back at least three and a half thousand years, and the tradition was carried orally for a very long time before that — passed from teacher to student, generation to generation. Vedic Meditation is one technique that comes out of that tradition.
How does each one actually work?
With mindfulness, you direct your awareness — to your breath, to physical sensations, to thoughts as they come and go — and you observe all of it calmly, without getting pulled in. The aim is to stay with what’s happening right now. Most people start with a guided version, where someone talks you through it, and there are many approaches: focusing on the breath, scanning the body, walking slowly, even washing the dishes with full attention.
Vedic Meditation works in almost the opposite direction. Instead of holding your attention on something, you let it turn inward. You sit comfortably, close your eyes, and silently think a mantra — a specific sound, with no meaning, chosen for you by your teacher. The mantra is like a vehicle that the mind hops onto. It naturally becomes fainter and more charming to the mind, and the mind follows it to quieter and quieter levels of thinking. At a certain point the mantra disappears, and for a moment the mind falls quiet. You’re wide awake, but you’re not thinking.
How much effort does each one take?
This is the difference most people feel first.
Mindfulness takes some effort. You have to keep bringing your attention back, again and again, because the mind wanders — that’s what minds do. Done well, it settles. But it asks something of you the whole time. It takes effort to go against this natural tendency of the mind to move.
Vedic Meditation takes no effort at all. There’s nothing to concentrate on and nothing to force. In fact, if you try to force the mind to be quiet, it only gets busier. Anyone who’s attempted this knows the feeling. The mantra sidesteps that entirely by giving the mind something it’s naturally drawn towards. Because the mantra is so fascinating to the mind, it settles on its own. That’s why people who’ve found other techniques hard often find this one easy.
What’s happening in the brain?
Different styles of meditation produce genuinely different effects. This is exactly why it’s a mistake to lump them all together.
Researchers Fred Travis and Jonathan Shear sorted meditation techniques into three groups (Travis & Shear, 2010). Mindfulness falls into what they call open monitoring, associated with theta brainwaves — the pattern you’d expect when the mind is watching its own activity. Vedic Meditation belongs to a different group they call automatic self-transcending, associated with alpha1 brainwaves — a state of alert, settled inner wakefulness.
Brain-imaging of this technique shows something striking. During the practice, blood flow increases to the front of the brain (the area involved in attention and higher-order thinking) while it decreases in the arousal centres lower down, the pons and cerebellum (Mahone et al., 2018). In plain terms: the mind is alert, and the body is more deeply rested than it is in sleep. That combination, known as restful alertness, is unusual. It’s the signature of this style.
A note on the research. The studies above looked at a branded automatic self-transcending technique. Michael and I were trained and teach independently, using the descriptive term Vedic Meditation. The course is taught and the technique is practised in the same way.
Which one should you choose?
It depends on what you’re after and it doesn’t have to be an either-or situation.
If you want something free and immediate that you can start today, mindfulness is a good place to begin. There’s solid research behind it: a large review in JAMA Internal Medicine found that mindfulness programmes can modestly reduce anxiety, depression and pain (Goyal et al., 2014). There are many mindfulness apps that you can download for free. Or if you like the idea of a structured course such as MBSR there are excellent teachers out there, and I’d encourage you to explore it. For others, joining a silent retreat can be a meaningful experience.
If you’ve tried mindfulness and have struggled to keep going that’s worth paying attention to. Perhaps it felt like work, or you couldn’t see the changes you were hoping for. This doesn’t mean you can’t meditate. It’s often that the technique asks for a level of effort that the busy mind resists. Vedic Meditation is built around that problem. It’s effortless, it delivers a very deep rest, and because it’s easy and enjoyable people actually keep doing it. That last part matters more than anything else, because meditation only works once it becomes a habit.
And can you do both? Yes. Many of my students have a mindfulness practice too. They tend to find that the deep rest of Vedic Meditation makes present-moment awareness easier for the rest of the day because they feel calmer and more clear-headed. Which is, after all, exactly what mindfulness is reaching for.
If you’ve tried before and it didn’t stick
Don’t take that as a verdict on you. Keep looking and researching. Read, listen to a podcast, and if you can, learn from a real teacher rather than a screen. The reason most people aren’t meditating every day isn’t that they can’t — it’s that they haven’t yet found a practice that’s genuinely easy to keep up.
If you’d like to see what Vedic Meditation is actually like, we regularly offer free introductory talks online. No commitment; just come along and take the opportunity to ask your questions.
Jillian Lavender is a meditation teacher and co-founder of the London Meditation Centre. She is the author of Why Meditate? Because it Works and Do Reset. Last reviewed: August 2026.
Sources
- Travis & Shear (2010), Consciousness and Cognition 19(4): pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20167507
- Mahone et al. (2018), Brain and Cognition 123: pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29505943
- Goyal et al. (2014), JAMA Internal Medicine: pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24395196
Related articles