Raised in the solitude of the Australian outback - with vast expanses of open space and none of the distractions of today's world - Paul Wilson had a unique and unopportunity to explore how the mind worked. And to cultivate a range of concentrative and mindfulness skills.

At that early age there were no thoughts or even awareness of meditation, but that's where it ultimately headed.

Fast forward to his professional years...

Having no affiliation with any particular school or philosophy, Wilson becomes one of the first freelance meditation teachers in Sydney. This would mean that in years to come he'd be equally at home teaching in secular environments, Buddhist environments, Christian environments, yoga environments and, above all, at his own centre – the Calm Centre.

His focus was on how to relate an ancient, and poorly understood awareness-training exercise - that people knew as 'meditation' - to a busy, contemporary world. His belief was that most people were too tied up with daily life to put in the hours that a traditional meditation approach required, so an alternative was required. One that would deliver the same benefits in a more streamlined way. 

The handbook he wrote on that topic, The Calm Technique, was picked up by an Australian book publisher who turned it into a local best-seller. Not long afterwards it was published in the US.

Within a decade there was not just one Paul Wilson 'calm' title, but dozens of them. He had become the biggest-selling author in several countries.

He's taught 1,000,000+ to meditate

While all the writing and book tours and the like went on, Wilson continued to teach his ever-more-SIMPLIFIED and DEMYSTIFIED method of meditation. Small groups at his inner-city studio, larger groups on retreats in the mountains and the Central Australian desert. And even to large groups as a far afield (for him) as India.

In 2008, a journalist from the UK newspaper, The Independent, calculated that he had taught more than a million people to meditate.

In his last two meditation books, The Quiet and Calm No Matter What, Wilson summarises all he knew about meditation. The Quiet takes it further into the spiritual world. Calm No Matter What simplifies the practice.