Rebecca Crozier

Rebecca Crozier, known as Bec, is an accredited meditation teacher and mindfulness coach who teaches under the name The Modern Meditator. She describes herself as a former stress-head, and she helps busy overthinkers who struggle with stress, anxiety and overwhelm. Her aim is calm, clarity, creativity, connection and confidence, "without the woo".

Her own practice began in 2012. Her anxiety had grown into full-blown panic, and a friend's copy of David Michie's Buddhism for Busy People led her to sit down and meditate. She has written that she felt almost instant relief from that first awkward sit, and a sense that things were going to be OK. The first technique she learned was breath counting, from Michie's Hurry Up and Meditate, and she says she still gravitates to it. Since then she has learned and practised many other styles, including walking and eating meditations, visualisation, mantras and body scans.

Bec describes her style as modern mindfulness with a splash of compassion. It draws on the compassion of Buddhism and takes an open, permissive approach in which her guidance is a suggestion and the student's own experience is what counts. She works through coaching, beginner's courses, weekly small-group classes, daylong retreats and guided meditations. She aims to help each person find an instinctive practice they will actually keep doing.

She is based near Ringwood and Heathmont in Melbourne's outer east, and teaches live online to students across Australia. She also writes a blog of articles and guided meditations on themes such as breath, loving-kindness, gratitude and working with difficult emotions. Her students describe her as kind, knowledgeable and fun.