"People are wasting valuable thinking time on meditation and mindfulness and should stop trying to clear their heads..."

"... an Oxford University academic has claimed."

Theodore Zeldin said too many people were avoiding using their brains and instead escaping into a state of blank mental oblivion.

Mindfulness has been widely championed for inspiring creative thought, lowering depression and improving physical health and is even recommended by the NHS.

But Dr Zeldin said the practice was distracting people [from] discovering more about other people and the world around them, and encouraged them to instead seek to make new relationships with those who shared different views. He said the world needed to move away from an era of self-discovery.