Integral Breath Academy ✦ from living traditions ✦ online worldwide
Meditation From Living Traditions — Nondual Depth
Kashmir Shivaism; Hridaya & Yoga Nidra
Not a ten-minute stress fix, and not another app. This is meditation as a path of awareness — the recognition of what lies beneath thought and feeling — taught from living traditions by a meditation master having practiced a handful of traditions for many years each.
Meditation since 1987 · trauma-sensitive mentor · consciousness researcher · rooted in Kashmir Shivaism (Trika) & Hridaya · speaker at the “Meditation & Science” congress, Berlin 2025
What is meditation?
Meditation is the training of attention and awareness — learning to rest as the space in which thoughts and feelings arise, rather than being carried away by them. In the contemplative traditions it isn’t relaxation; it’s a way of recognising what you are beneath the noise: present, clear, and whole.
Relaxation can be a welcome side effect, but it is not the point. The point is a different relationship to your own experience — one that holds steady whether life is calm or not, so that you are no longer at the mercy of every passing thought and mood.
How many kinds of meditation are there?
There’s no single number — meditation is a vast family of practices. Researchers group them broadly into focused-attention, open-monitoring, and loving-kindness styles, while the world’s traditions hold dozens of distinct techniques. Different traditions have different definitions of what meditation is, i.e. the practice vs the state of consciousness that arises. In the west what is called meditation is, infact, very often contemplation. What matters isn’t collecting them; it’s finding the few that genuinely work for you.
Over more than thirty-five years I’ve practised many. In the end I returned, again and again, to about four.
These are
• Hridaya — the meditation of the heart — resting attention in the spiritual heart, the ground of presence and being.
• Yoga Nidra — meditation lying down; effortless deep rest at the edge of sleep.
• chanting— very easy to experience a state of open heart bliss, a heart overflowing with joy and gratitude
• Mindfulness — simple, present-moment attention you can carry into daily life in the Zen Tradition of Thich Nhat Hanh
Different doors, one recognition: coming home to what was never absent.
What is Hridaya — heart meditation?
Hridaya means “the spiritual heart.” Heart-centred meditation gently rests attention in the heart rather than the head — not the physical organ, but the felt centre of being. In longer events i t combines heart centered techniques from various traditions with the Self-Inquiry from Ramana Maharshi. For people who live in their thoughts, it offers a softer, more embodied way into stillness.
It’s one of the most direct paths to presence, and a quiet antidote to a life lived entirely from the mind. Practitioners of Hridaya Meditation often experience real joy and inner freedom.
What is nondual (Kashmir Shivaism) meditation?
Kashmir Shivaism, or Trika, is a nondual tantric tradition roughly 1,200 years old. Unlike paths that turn away from the world, it treats all of experience — body, emotion, even crisis — as the expression of a single, luminous awareness. As elsewhere, there is not a single meditation. In one of the branches is it recognition: remembering you are already that awareness, not seeking to become it. In another branch one focuses on the source, i.e. spanda, the throb at the source of the universe.
These are is life-affirming meditations for people with full lives — nothing to renounce, everything to include.
Why is breath a doorway to meditation?
The contemplative traditions noticed long ago what neuroscience now measures: as the breath settles, the mind settles with it. Classical yoga placed breath regulation (pranayama) directly before contemplation and meditation for exactly this reason — a slow, quiet breath calms the nervous system and softens mental chatter, opening the door to stillness. For anyone who “can’t quiet the mind,” breath is often the easiest way in.
This is why Integral Breath Academy teaches breath and meditation as one path, not two. When sitting feels impossible, a few minutes of slow breathing can do what trying-harder never will — it gives the restless system something to settle on, and awareness follows. → Breathwork · Nervous System Regulation
Does meditation change the brain?
Yes. In long-term meditators, the brain’s “default mode network” — the circuitry of mind-wandering and self-referential worry — is measurably quieter, and attention networks grow stronger.
The default mode network is the brain’s self-referential “idle” — the inner voice that narrates, rehearses, and worries whenever nothing else claims our attention. It is worth quietening: a landmark study that sampled the thoughts of thousands of people through the day found that this mind-wandering is both remarkably constant and a reliable source of unhappiness — a wandering mind, the authors concluded, is an unhappy mind (Killingsworth & Gilbert, 2010, Science). This is precisely the circuitry meditation appears to settle. A well-known Yale study using fMRI found that experienced meditators showed reduced activity in the main hubs of the default mode network, across different styles of meditation (Brewer et al., 2011, PNAS). More broadly, neuroscientists describe meditation as a family of attentional and emotional training regimes that reshape how the brain regulates attention and feeling over time (Lutz, Slagter, Dunne & Davidson, 2008, Trends in Cognitive Sciences). As a long-term meditator, I took part in a neuroscience meditation study (EEG-fMRI) at the University of Freiburg — on the inside of the very research that measures what decades of practice do to the mind.
Try it now — a free guided meditation
Yes. In long-term meditators, the brain’s “default mode network” — the circuitry of mind-wandering and self-referential worry — is measurably quieter, and attention networks grow stronger.
Want to begin today? Enter your email and I’ll send you a short guided meditation — a gentle first taste of resting as awareness.
Why practice with Eva
Eva has meditated since 1987 and teaches from living traditions — the nondual Kashmir Shivaism (Trika), Hridaya, and Yoga Nidra , Zen Buddhism — rather than a generic script. She has received initiations in all the traditions she teaches and in some others, too such as Vajrayana Buddhism, which is often a prerequisite for practice and even more for teaching. She spoke at the “Meditation and Science” congress in Berlin (2025) and brings a trauma-sensitive, consciousness-research background to the work.
Most meditation you’ll find online is a recording by someone with a certificate and a nice voice. This is transmission from decades of lived practice inside the source traditions — depth you can feel. → More about Eva
Similar paths and beginning suggestions
The neighboring doors
• Yoga Nidra & NSDR — meditation lying down; deep rest that restores in minutes.
• Nervous System Regulation — the science of the steadiness meditation builds.
• Breathwork — the slighter active door, when the mind is too busy to sit.
Ways to begin
• Send me the free guided meditation — start today.
• The Integral Breath Reset — a guided 4-week journey including meditions, work on the subconscious, healthly lifestyle.
• Book a free connection call — for personal, in-depth practice.
FAQ
Begin small and guided: a few minutes a day with a recording, at the same time each morning. You’re not trying to empty your mind — only to notice when it wanders and gently return. Consistency matters far more than length.
Mindfulness is one form of meditation — simple present-moment attention. Meditation is the larger family, which also includes nondual, heart-centred, and insight practices that go beyond attention into the nature of awareness itself.
Yes — a busy mind is normal, and quieting it isn’t the goal. Meditation is noticing the wandering and returning, again and again; that returning is the practice. If sitting feels impossible, breathwork or Yoga Nidra can be an easier door.
It doesn’t have to be. These techniques come from spiritual traditions, but there’s no dogma and nothing to believe. You can practice them secularly or as a spiritual path — both are welcome.
Many people feel calmer and clearer within a couple of weeks of daily practice; the deeper shifts — steadiness, presence, a changed relationship to thought — build over months and years. It’s a path, not a quick fix.
A gentle note:
for most people meditation is safe and nourishing. If you live with trauma or acute mental-health symptoms, strong emotions can sometimes surface — go slowly, and practice with support. This is contemplative guidance for growth, not a substitute for professional care.
“You are not a problem to solve. You are a presence to remember.”
Eva Makkos
This is mentoring and contemplative guidance for personal growth — not psychotherapy or medical treatment.