How to do Transcendental Meditation (TM) and my experience doing it

How I got into Transcendental Meditation

I spent close to four or five years meditating on and off without finding a rhythm that stuck. In that stretch, I experimented with almost everything: guided apps like Headspace, Calm, Aware, and Ten Percent Happier, alongside unguided practices like Vipassana and ambient sounds. Guided apps are helpful when you’re starting out, but they make you dependent on someone else’s voice and pacing. If you don’t have your phone or headphones handy, the habit falls apart.

That changed when I figured out Transcendental Meditation (TM). I first learned about the mechanics through Emily Fletcher’s book Stress Less, Accomplish More, which breaks down a Vedic meditation technique called the Z-Technique that shares the same roots as TM. From there, I dug into online research to understand how the daily sessions actually worked.

Official TM courses charge hundreds of dollars (often upwards of a thousand) largely for a teacher to guide you and assign a personal mantra. Once I understood the technique from the book and found the traditional age-based mantra list online, paying for a course wasn’t required. I picked a sound from the list and started practicing daily on my own at home.

I still remember my first week feeling that sense of innate calm and focus. Even though I’ve since moved more into breathwork routines (and experimented with a one-hour meditation practice), TM is the meditation habit that stuck with me the longest, and I’m still a huge fan of it.

What is Transcendental Meditation (and how it actually works)

In short, Transcendental Meditation (introduced by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi) is an unguided meditation technique where you sit comfortably with your eyes closed and silently repeat a mantra for 17 to 20 minutes, twice a day.

The word mantra comes from Sanskrit (man = mind, tra = vehicle). In TM, mantras are meaningless sounds. Their value comes from the sound itself rather than any meaning. Because the syllable carries zero personal associations, it gives your mind a neutral anchor to settle down naturally.

Plain simply - TM is the easiest form of meditation I’ve tried. Most meditation styles ask for concentration, breath control, or mental monitoring. TM requires none of that. Because it’s completely unguided, you can practice it anywhere - at home, waiting in line at a busy airport, sitting in the afternoon sun at work, or on a flight - with no phone, no app, and no internet. There’s also plenty of research showing how much it helps reduce stress and anxiety (for more on managing emotional health for longevity, see my notes on Outlive by Peter Attia).

Transcendental Meditation mantras list by age (and how I picked mine)

When I first started TM, I hadn’t read deeply enough into it and made the mistake of picking a Sanskrit word that actually had a meaning. It kept triggering other thoughts during my sessions. Switching to a meaningless mantra was a task at first, so I experimented with a couple of sounds from the traditional age-based TM mantra list floating around the internet and finally settled on one that felt natural.

Pick the sound for your age bracket from the list above, or any pleasant-sounding meaningless word. If you notice in your early sessions that the mantra is triggering other thoughts, switch to another sound. You’ll know you have the right mantra when the sound itself isn’t setting off a train of thought.

How to practice Transcendental Meditation: my 17–20 minute daily routine

When I started TM, I stuck to doing the practice once a day right after waking up, before coffee and on an empty stomach so my mind was calm. Because I felt so good after my morning practice, I started squeezing in a second session at work around 2 to 3 p.m., sitting in the nice afternoon sun or blocking time on my calendar around meetings. Avoid doing it right after lunch so your food can digest. That afternoon session is a great reset - its benefits are as good as a power nap, if not better.

Here is the step-by-step routine I follow:

1. Find a comfortable place to sit. Let your back rest against the chair or wall, but let your head stay free. Your legs can be crossed or stretched out depending on what feels comfortable.
2. Take a deep breath in and out about 2 to 3 times.
3. For the next 1 to 2 minutes, focus on your senses: hear the sounds around you, notice subtle smells, and tune into how your body feels. The goal is to make the transition into the mantra as seamless as possible.
4. Let the mantra bubble up from the back of your brain effortlessly. Don’t say it out loud; just repeat it silently in your mind at whatever pace feels comfortable. Mental repetition doesn’t need crisp pronunciation - even a faint idea of the sound works, and it may get faster, slower, louder, or softer on its own.
5. Continue this for 17 to 20 minutes. Whenever you notice you aren’t thinking the mantra, gently come back to it without forcing or concentrating.
6. At the end of your session, stop repeating the mantra and sit quietly with your eyes closed for about 2 minutes before opening them to ease back into your day.

Since this is an unguided meditation where you aren’t using an app, how do you know when your session is over? You can start with a gentle phone alarm for 17 to 20 minutes (or even check the time once in the middle of the practice), though a loud alarm at the end of a quiet session can feel jarring. About 10 to 15 days into my practice, my internal clock got trained to know when time was up and I stopped needing an alarm altogether.

Why wandering thoughts mean it’s working (reps for your brain)

When I started, the mantra part felt pretty hard because my mind kept deviating. This is the main thing people struggle with when they try TM: they tell me, “I wasn’t able to hold the mantra” or “I’m not good at meditation because my mind is always too busy.”

Most people think their mind needs to be completely empty to be doing meditation “right.” In reality, the whole point of the practice is bringing your focus back to the mantra whenever your mind wanders.

Think of those returns as doing reps for your brain. Every time your mind drifts off on a thought train and you catch it and bring your focus back to the mantra, that’s one rep. Even if you get carried away with a thought for five minutes, that’s completely okay - think of it as a cleaning-of-the-mind practice, and simply come back to the sound. (Andrew Huberman has talked about this too: those repeated refocusing reps over a 17 to 20 minute session are what build your brain’s ability to focus.) The more reps you put in, the stronger your mind gets, until eventually you’ll have sessions where you hold the mantra for longer and longer stretches.

Two other mistakes I learned to avoid early on:

• Using meditation time for contemplation: In our busy schedules, we rarely get quiet time to think. When I started, I used my meditation sessions to think through ideas or things bothering me at work, and I quickly realized I wasn’t getting any closer to a calm mind. Don’t confuse meditation time with contemplation time - take a walk to reflect on your day, and keep TM strictly for letting your mind rest.
• Trying too hard to force “Zen”: Your goal isn’t to force some state of bliss. The harder you try to chase it, the further away you’ll get. Give yourself room to be sloppy with your practice, be nice to yourself, and remember that just doing the reps every day is what counts.

Resources that helped me get started

A few resources I found helpful when getting into TM:

• Stress Less, Accomplish More: Meditation for Extraordinary Performance - Emily Fletcher - A great intro to Vedic meditation and a technique called the Z-Technique that’s very similar to TM and helped me learn the practice without a teacher.
• Official TM Website
• Headspace - What is Transcendental Meditation?

You can follow me on Twitter as I continue to document my journey.