With three strokes of a small gong, the group of meditators is plunged into silence. Punctured by the sound of planes flying overhead and students chatting on their way to class, the atmosphere remains silent for the group with eyes closed, focused on the continuous, quiet repetition of a mantra.

Twice a day, seven days a week, Georgetown's John Main Center for Meditation and Interreligious Dialogue holds 20-minute meditation sessions. Now housed in the McSherry Building, the center has seen a manifold increase in students, faculty and staff seeking a few moments of stillness.

The mediation classes first began after Father Laurence Freeman, a Benedictine monk and director of the World Community for Christian Meditation, began teaching at Georgetown in 2004. Freeman recognized the need for a contemplative practice on campus. So, he along with his friend, Dennis McAuliffe, director of the Catholic Studies Program, started classes with 10 minutes of meditation and found that students were very receptive to the practice.

"I believe that the experience of meditation connects at the center of our whole being, our consciousness with every other aspect of our intellectual and social lives," Freeman says.

With support from university administrators, Freeman and McAuliffe worked with a small group of students to establish the center in a row house on Prospect Street. One of those students, Raymond Schillinger (C'08), now meditates regularly and serves as the leader of Shabbat service meditations on Friday evenings at the center.

"Being involved with the center enlightened me to the history of Jewish meditation," says Schillinger. "[The center] is not just teaching a Christian practice, it's demonstrating to people of all religious faiths, regardless of how devout or pious you are within that tradition, that there is meditation of some form or another in all traditions."

Emphasizing the interreligious aspect of meditation became important to Freeman as the center grew. He worked with the chaplains in the Office of Campus Ministry to host interfaith dialogue events, and last semester initiated the John Main Lecture Series. Next fall, the center will start a living-learning community for on-campus students interested in spirituality and meditation who also will help run the center.

"One of the absolute necessities for learning as a part of the education of the whole person and the maturing of the individual, physically, intellectually and spiritually, is that there is a space and an interior stillness, an interior capacity for listening," Freeman says.

McAuliffe says that the center has created another sacred, prayerful space on campus.

"Many people who come, come for prayer, and it gives people another outlet for their worship in addition to the liturgy," McAuliffe says. He notes that St. Ignatius of Loyola also taught a contemplative meditation.

In addition to meeting spiritual needs, meditation has been shown to have a positive impact on physical health, says Sue Johnston, wellness counselor at the Faculty and Staff Assistance Program (FSAP).

Johnston, who leads weekly guided drop-in meditation sessions across Georgetown's three campuses, recently began holding her Monday sessions in the new John Main Center location.

"There is a great deal of research on meditation and its effects on the body," she says. "There is research showing it can lower blood pressure and help lessen the impact of chronic illnesses and diseases people have."

Johnston uses a form of guided imagery in which she plays calming music and talks people through relaxation and meditation. Additionally, FSAP offers meditation CDs through its lending library and provides short relaxation programs online.

Freeman says many students cite stress and anxiety as their key reasons for seeking out stillness at the center.

"They were aware of a need for a contemplative practice," he says. "They didn't know how to find it, and some were able to find that through the center."

The center leads meditation in the tradition of John Main, a Benedictine monk who first learned the practice as a diplomat traveling in Asia. A Catholic, Main rediscovered the roots of Christian meditation and established a community of Christian meditators in the late 1970s that has since spread around the world.

Freeman notes that more people may be seeking out the practice of meditation now due to cultural and religious upheaval around the world.

"We are sent back to very basic roots of our experience of God and our search for meaning," he says. "Meditation is a direct and simple response to that."