The Calm Centre

The Calm Centre is a non-profit meditation teaching, training and meeting center established by Paul Wilson in 1983 in Sydney, Australia. The Calm Centre presented a secular approach to meditation, on a face-to-face basis, at no charge .
In the mid-Eighties Paul Wilson’s meditation book The Calm Technique was released. Its success meant that his secular approach to meditation could now be broadened and disseminated more effectively through the media, rather than face-to-face in a physical center.
Because Wilson was now spending more time in Europe, USA and, in 1990, in South East, the Calm Centre re-established itself as a non-profit research group , in Sydney and London, largely funded by the profits from Paul Wilson’s books. It employed psychologists and electroencephalograph technicians to explore the impact of meditation on long-term meditators. While the initial purpose of this was to prove or disprove some of meditation’s claimed benefits , the Calm Centre shifted its focus to using neurofeedback as a way of finding reproducible ways of achieving such benefits in more streamlined ways.
As an extension of these experiments, the Calm Centre introduced additional technological streams to its research: particularly in the areas of computer software and sonic entrainment .For example, it could be demonstrated that various combinations of light and sound frequencies could produce a meditative-like state in a passive user, which led to the development of a portable neurofeedback device called the Little Calm Machine .
During this phase composer, Colin Wilson, determined that similar results could be achieved using musical harmonies alone , without the discomfort of beat, frequencies or the intrusion of electronic devices . This led to a number of recording ventures teaming up leading classical artists such as shakuhachi grandmaster, Dr Riley Lee with traditional artists such as didgeridoo player Matthew Doyle , with a band of contemporary musicians. A collection of 12 albums flowed from collaborations such as these, including titles such as Masters of Calm and Alone .
In 2006, after the release of Paul Wilson’s most spiritually-focused book, The Quiet , the Calm Centre disposed of its commercial arms and returned to its original mission: as a place that sought to demystify meditation and spiritual practices, and to spread calm in whichever way it can. Today the Calm Centre is once again a teaching center, focusing on yoga, meditation retreats , spiritual discussion and providing a free online service to all meditators.
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