Master the Art of Meditation

Use your technology. Your computer and smartphone are often purveyors of stress, but they’re also a good source of guided meditation instruction. Tara Brach, a psychologist and popular meditation instructor based in Washington, D.C., offers free guided meditation podcasts (some are recorded at her Wednesday evening guided meditation sessions at a Bethesda, Md., church). You can find the podcasts on iTunes or at www.tarabrach.com/talks-audio-video. UCLA offers guided meditations of varying lengths at www.marc.ucla.edu/mindful-meditations. Sessions range from three to 19 minutes. Feeling stressed at work? Try the five-minute breathing meditation. You can do it without leaving your desk.

Take a class. For a more human touch, look for a lunchtime or daylong program. At Spirit Rock Meditation Center (www.spiritrock.org), in Woodacre, Calif., one of the most popular meditation centers on the West Coast, you can attend a drop-in class for $15 to $30. Diana Winston, director of mindfulness education at the UCLA Mindful Awareness Research Center, offers a free class every Thursday at 12:30 at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles.

The class has proved so popular that other institutions, such as Seattle’s Frye Museum and the Asia Society in New York City, have introduced lunchtime meditation sessions. Check with your local museum, college or university for classes in your area; many yoga studios also offer meditation instruction.

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Go on a retreat. If you’re ready for a deep dive, consider signing up for a meditation retreat. Options range from a weekend at a monastery, such as the Holy Cross Abbey, in Berryville, Va. (www.virginiatrappists.org/retreat-house; $200 to $350, depending on your means), to a two-week (or more) getaway at a luxury resort. The Shambhala Mountain Center, in Red Feather Lakes, Colo., which offers more than 100 programs each year, is located on 600 acres in the Colorado Rockies. When you’re not in class, you can hike on the eight miles of trails without distractions because there isn’t any cell-phone service. Costs range from $79 a night for a dorm room to $263 for a suite in one of the lodges.

For those on the East Coast, a popular meditation destination is the 40-year-old Insight Meditation Society, in central Massachusetts. The nonprofit charges fees on a sliding scale, based on participants’ ability to pay; the cost for a weekend retreat starts at about $215.