Whether you have just heard of mindfulness meditation for the first time, have already begun dipping into mindfulness meditation recently or have been practicing mindfulness meditation for years, here are a few more resources relating to the subject.
From mindfulness meditation videos to exercises, books, and courses, this is a compilation of resources that should help take your practice to the next level. Before we begin, let’s define mindfulness meditation.
Before you start reading this article, I recommend you to download our three Mindfulness Exercises Pack for free. With this package, you will not just be able to understand mindfulness on a theoretical level, but you’ll also have the tools to apply mindfulness in your work with clients or students.
For many people, the first thing that comes to mind when hearing the word “mindfulness” is meditation. Indeed, research has revealed a relationship between meditation experience and levels of mindfulness. For instance, in a study by Vinchurkar, Singh, and Visweswaraiah (2014), more years of meditation practice was found to be significantly associated with higher levels of trait mindfulness.
According to the 9th edition of Mosby’s Medical Dictionary, mindfulness meditation is
“A technique of meditation in which distracting thoughts and feelings are not ignored but are rather acknowledged and observed nonjudgmentally as they arise to create a detachment from them and gain insight and awareness.”
There are several different types of mindfulness meditations (many of which you will see if you read on), from sessions meant to be done first thing in the morning, to quick sessions meant to be done whenever one can, to longer sessions meant to aid in drifting off to sleep. Whatever type of mindfulness meditation sessions one chooses to do, the benefits of mindfulness meditation are clear.
The most commonly used mindfulness meditation is sitting meditation with a body scan. However, during the past years, different meditations have been developed and tested as well.
The so-called “soles to the feet” meditation, for instance, was designed to help youngsters and people with limited intellectual abilities to deal with anger (Fix & Fix, 2013). In a similar vein, acceptance-based meditations have been found to successfully allow people to deal with emotions and cravings (Alberts, Schneider, & Martijn, 2011; Alberts, Thewissen, & Raes, 2012).
Importantly, however, it must be recognized that mindfulness does not equal meditation. Irrespective of formal meditation experience, dispositional mindfulness levels appear to vary among the population (Brown & Ryan, 2003).
In other words, a person who has never heard of mindfulness and never meditated before can still live a very mindful life. Furthermore, research has shown that meditation is just one way to cultivate mindfulness. By integrating mindfulness into everyday routines, mindfulness levels can be increased as well (Hanley, Warner, Dehili, Canto, & Garland, 2015).
For conciseness, we had to limit the list of benefits to just a few prominent topics, but in reality the benefits of mindfulness meditation is exceedingly long.
One way to examine the efficacy of mindfulness meditation is to examine the efficacy of programs which use mindfulness meditation, most popularly Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) and Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT).
MBSR was initially developed for use by anyone looking to reduce stress levels, and MBCT was adapted from MBSR to:
“prevent future episodes of depression in people with a history of recurrent depression.” (umassmed.edu)
Since many mindfulness courses revolve around MBSR and MBCT and both of those programs rely on mindfulness meditation, reviewing the effectiveness of those programs is an indirect way to review the effectiveness of mindfulness meditation.
One group of researchers reviewed several randomized controlled trials involving MBSR and MBCT, and found concrete benefits of both programs:
Mindfulness meditation can also help people with headaches, as one study examined the effects of mindfulness meditation on college students with migraine headaches (Azam, Katz, Mohabir, & Ritvo, 2016, p. 72). They found that:
“… brief mindfulness practices, and mindfulness-based interventions, can promote post-stress recovery in headache-affected populations.”
Specifically, mindfulness meditation was found to help regulate the heart rates of participants with headaches after a stressful event.
A meta-analysis of the effects of mindfulness meditation on people with insomnia also showed benefits (Gong et al., 2016). For example, mindfulness meditation significantly reduced the amount of time participants spent awake as well as how long it took them to fall asleep, while also increasing the quality of their sleep.
Interestingly, another study looking at insomnia in postmenopausal women found that postmenopausal women with insomnia rated themselves as less mindful and attentive than postmenopausal women without insomnia, indicating that a lack of mindful practices may be partially responsible for the development of insomnia (Garcia et al., 2014).
These two studies show that mindfulness levels can both explain the presence of insomnia as well as ameliorate the effects of insomnia.
At North Carolina University, experiments were conducted using electrical stimulation on participants. The participants were given brief electrical pulses which increased and decreased in strength depending on each person’s pain tolerance.
Once participants’ tolerance ratings on pain were recorded, they then practiced mindfulness meditation for 20 minutes each day over a period of three days. After those three days, participants’ pain tolerance ratings were measured again using the same method.
The experiment’s results showed that participants’ pain tolerance ratings had significantly decreased since the commencement of the three-day meditation. The participants were less susceptible to pain just after three days of meditation.
A similar study has been done to better understand how meditation influences sensory experiences. Zeidan et al (2011) used an arterial spin labeling fMRI to identify neural mechanisms that were influenced by mindfulness in healthy participants. The study involved four days of mindfulness meditation training.
After this period, (through a multiple regression analysis) results showed a significant decrease of 57% in the unpleasantness of pain and a reduction of 40% in pain intensity ratings. The reduction in pain intensity ratings was associated with an increase in activity in the anterior cingulate cortex and anterior insula, and was also linked to orbitofrontal cortex activation.
These findings are consistent with previous studies that have also shown that when participants were taught to experience the full extent and intensity of a sensory event, meditation reduced the unpleasantness of the pain. It is thought that this is due to the enhancement of cognitive control and the reframing of the contextual evaluation.
Meditation has also been associated with improved cognitions, including but not limited to working memory, visual-spatial skills and attention. The question is: can results be experienced with only a brief amount of training, just like with the electrical stimulation experiment?
Researchers set out to test this idea in four sessions through fostering basic mindful meditation such as breathing exercises and body awareness, while another group of participants was instructed to mindfully listen to the audio recording of the novel “The Hobbit.” After the sessions participants completed self-report measures and various cognitive tasks to assess effects on mood and mindfulness or whether they had improved cognitive abilities.
Both groups improved on mood, but the mindful meditation group surpassed the second group on cognitive measures (memory and attention) and mindfulness. These levels had previously only been found in long term meditators.
This illustrates that even short-term meditation training can result in improved cognitive functioning and mood.
These findings indicate that programs involving mindfulness meditation, as well as mindfulness meditation sessions by themselves, can help improve the wellbeing of both mentally- and physically-healthy people as well as people with mental and physical conditions.
The fact that mindfulness meditation can be useful both by itself and as a complement to more traditional medicine shows the value of its teachings. In other words:
whether you have a physical or mental condition and are taking medication for it or are completely healthy and not taking any medication, mindfulness meditation can increase your wellbeing.
These detailed, science-based exercises will help you or your clients enjoy the benefits of mindfulness and create positive shifts in their mental, physical, and emotional health.
Download PDF
By filling out your name and email address below.
If mindfulness meditation is beneficial for adults with varying levels of health, it follows that it should be helpful for children as well. Fortunately, there is research available that explores this claim.
According to one study, children who had mindfulness exercises (including mindfulness meditation) built into their daily schedules felt better about themselves, were rated as more pro-social by both themselves and their peers, and had better math outcomes than children who did not exercise mindfulness in their curriculum (Schonert-Reichl et al., 2015).
This indicates that mindfulness meditation can be helpful both academically and socially for children.
Interestingly, these benefits were found after incorporating mindfulness into the curriculum for less than an hour a week for just twelve weeks, making the implementation of similar programs very accessible to schools.
Roy Hintsa, an MBSR facilitator based in Toronto, Canada says there is value in teaching mindfulness to children so they can have an easier time managing stress in adolescence. He has some tips involving teaching mindfulness meditation to children here.
One useful tip from Hintsa is that younger children “tend to respond
more to physical activities,” so he suggests teaching breathing meditation to young children by having them lie down and place their favorite stuffed animal on their belly.
He also suggests that children of all ages respond better to mindfulness teachings if the whole family gets involved, so he suggests parents model mindfulness by having family-based mindfulness sessions, even short ones. This can also have the added benefit of making it easier for parents to find time for their own mindfulness meditation practice.
There is currently a clinical study in progress looking at the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of mindfulness meditation training in children with attention-deficit-hyperactivity-disorder (ADHD) as opposed to the more traditional treatment of methylphenidate (Meppelink, de Bruin, & Bögels, 2016). It should be stressed that the cited paper is only a study protocol and that no findings have yet been published.
The fact that mindfulness meditation is even being considered as an alternative to medicine, however, shows that people are starting to understand the value of its teachings.
Of course, while mindfulness teachings in the home are useful, children spend a lot of time at school. School is also the source of many different types of stressors for children (from academic difficulties to social difficulties, each playing into issues of self-esteem), meaning it is important how children spend their time in school. Mindfulness meditation in the classroom is, therefore, a crucial component of any mindfulness teachings aimed at children.
MindSpace, a website concerned with mindfulness in schools which also offers its own meditation app, offers several resources for mindfulness in the classroom.
One of these resources is called Five Minutes to a Calmer Classroom, which is an easy way for teachers to introduce mindfulness meditation into their classrooms and includes videos. Teachers can either lead a 5-, 10-, 15- or 20-minute meditation in their classrooms with this resource.
The Center for Teaching at Vanderbilt University has several useful mindfulness activities for the classroom here.
One of these is called Guided Meditation on a Raisin, where students are:
“instructed to silently contemplate a raisin for 10 full minutes: to take a close look at, touch, smell and, finally, taste, chew, and swallow a single raisin.”
This exercise could be particularly useful in a classroom setting because it only requires a single box of raisins for an entire class. All of the activities offered by the University’s Center for Teaching are meant to be extremely low-cost (or completely free), meaning teachers only have to find the time to implement them into their curricula.
The George Lucas Education Foundation also encourages introducing mindfulness meditation into the classroom, supported by further research.
The author points out a few key aspects of bringing mindfulness meditation into the classroom, such as suggesting that the teacher have their own meditation practice before introducing it to their students, as well as providing multiple meditation options for students to try out. The author also stresses the importance of being consistent, such as using the first five minutes of every class period for meditation sessions.
The Body Scan is an aspect of mindfulness meditation that involves becoming aware of your physical self during meditation.
A 30-minute introduction to body scan meditation (including a guided audio meditation) can be found at Mindful.org.
Mindful claims that the body scan can “enhance your ability to bring your full attention to real-time experiences happening in the present moment” and help you “feel what’s going on in ‘body-land’ without trying to fix or change anything.”
The University of California at Los Angeles’s Mindfulness Awareness Research Center (MARC) offers several guided meditations for free, including a short body scan meditation (three minutes) and a longer (thirteen minutes) body scan meditation for sleep. The MARC also offers a few guided meditations in Spanish, although none of the Spanish-language meditations involve the body scan.
The Positive Psychology Toolkit© is a groundbreaking practitioner resource containing over 500 science-based exercises, activities, interventions, questionnaires, and assessments created by experts using the latest positive psychology research.
Updated monthly. 100% Science-based.
“The best positive psychology resource out there!”
— Emiliya Zhivotovskaya, Flourishing Center CEO
While there are several different online resources available for mindfulness meditation, some people might still prefer on-site training.
The easiest way to find mindfulness meditation training centers around you is simply searching for “mindfulness meditation [your location].” There are a few tools out there, however, that do the work for you and show you centers based on your location. These tools vet the centers and only show mindfulness meditation centers and teachers approved by the sites, as opposed to Google which shows all results.
For people living in the United Kingdom, Be Mindful offers a handy tool where you can find mindfulness training centers and courses near you. You just type in your postcode and Be Mindful does the rest.
For people living in the United States, the McLean Mindfulness Institute offers a similar tool where you can search by state or by city. There are also options for Australia, Canada, China and New Zealand, though there are many more teachers based in the United States.
If you are in the United States and prefer a mindfulness meditation retreat, this article lists several different options around the country. It should be noted that retreats are not meant for beginners, but rather for experienced meditators looking to deepen their practice (or even begin on the road to teaching mindfulness meditation to others).
If you are specifically looking for an online MBSR course, the University of Massachusetts Medical School has several options.
If you prefer reading books on a subject over internet articles or on-site training, here are the top 7 books on mindfulness meditation to further your learning.
While guided mindfulness meditation videos and audio sessions can be helpful, some people might prefer to have a script which they can work through themselves. One idea is to record yourself reading the script and to then play it back while you meditate. This can be helpful for people who prefer listening to reading, as well as people who might feel less distracted by their own voice rather than someone else’s.
Below you will find several different scripts:
A study looking at the efficacy of several mindfulness-based iPhone apps (Mani, Kavanagh, Hides, & Stoyanov, 2015) looked at 560 different mindfulness apps available for the iPhone (focusing on apps in English) and concluded that Headspace was the highest-rated, followed by the Smiling Mind app. The apps were rated on “engagement, functionality, visual aesthetics, information quality, and subjective quality.”
Some people prefer guided mindfulness meditation sessions in the form of videos. These are the top 11 YouTube videos on mindfulness meditation which are all completely free and accessible on all sorts of devices.
No matter how deep your mindfulness meditation practice is, inspiration never hurts. Here are some of the most inspiring quotes on mindfulness meditation, in no particular order.
“Breath is the finest gift of nature. Be grateful for this wonderful gift.”
“Feelings come and go like clouds in a windy sky. Conscious breathing is my anchor.”
Thich Nhat Hanh
“Mindfulness isn’t difficult, we just need to remember to do it.”
“Don’t believe everything you think. Thoughts are just that – thoughts.”
“We might begin by scanning our body… and then asking, ‘What is happening?’ We might also ask, ‘What wants my attention right now?’ or, ‘What is asking for acceptance?’”
“Every time we become aware of a thought, as opposed to being lost in a thought, we experience that opening of the mind.”
“You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf.”
“Use every distraction as an object of meditation and they cease to be distractions.”
“Meditation practice isn’t about trying to throw ourselves away and become something better, it’s about befriending who we are.”
Ani Pema Chodron:
“Mindfulness meditation doesn’t change life. Life remains as fragile and unpredictable as ever. Meditation changes the heart’s capacity to accept life as it is.”
Use these 17 Mindfulness & Meditation Exercises [PDF] to help others build life-changing habits and enhance their wellbeing with the physical and psychological benefits of mindfulness.
Created by Experts. 100% Science-based.
Some of us learn best through audio and can absorb the most information just by hearing it. Here are some podcasts relating to mindfulness meditation practice.
Mindfulness Meditation Podcast: The Rubin Museum of Art in New York hosts weekly mindfulness meditation sessions led by prominent New York-based meditation teachers. For those who can’t make it in person, they produce a podcast of these meditations. This podcast is a good opportunity to sample different meditation teachers and see which ones you like.
Weekly Podcast at the Hammer: The MARC at UCLA offers a free weekly guided meditation at their Hammer Museum. For those who can’t make it, they upload these meditations to their website in podcast form for free. Not all of these are mindfulness meditations, but a significant number of them are (and are clearly marked as such). This podcast is led by the same person every time, offering consistency.
If you prefer audio to listen to while meditating on your own (but do not prefer guided meditations), here are a few options:
Rainy Mood is a website that simply delivers the sounds of a rainstorm, which some may find helpful in their practice. They also offer a paid app for iOS and Android, but the website is completely free. Keep in mind that the rainstorm track loops every 30 minutes, which may be distracting for longer mindfulness meditation sessions.
Mindfulness Meditation & Self Acceptance | Free Relaxation Music for Positive Thinking: This YouTube video is an hour of mindfulness meditation music some might find useful. The video information includes a link to buy the track on iTunes if you like it.
As the benefits of mindfulness meditation continue being identified by more and more people, so has the potential of mindfulness meditation for pain relief, stress relief, and the treatment of depression.
In fact, one paper set out to identify just how much mindfulness meditation could do in these cases (Goyal et al., 2014). The authors of this paper looked at 47 randomized trials (with over 3,500 participants total) involving mindfulness meditation. They concluded that:
“mindfulness meditation programs had moderate evidence of improved anxiety… depression… and pain” and that “meditation programs can reduce the negative dimensions of psychological stress.”
A similar study looked at the potential of mindfulness meditation as a treatment for various mental disorders affecting soldiers after combat (Khusid & Vythilingam, 2016). After looking at 52 clinical trials and reviews, they concluded that MBCT was effective for treating depressive episodes and that MBSR was effective for treating post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The researchers ultimately concluded that mindfulness meditation:
“can be recommended as an adjunct to standard care or self-management strategy for major depressive disorder and PTSD.”
Mindfulness meditation as a method of pain relief has a number of proponents. One article pointed to two randomized trials that show mindfulness meditation’s effect on relieving back pain and argues that mindfulness meditation should start being looked to as an alternative to opiate prescription (Jacob, 2016).
Interestingly, a paper looking at the mechanism of action of mindfulness meditation-induced pain relief found that it does not rely on the same mechanisms as opioid pain relief (Zeidan et al., 2016). This means that mindfulness meditation can perhaps be used in concert with opiates for extreme cases and that people can use mindfulness meditation for pain relief without having to worry about it dulling the effect of their medication.
It is clear from the above findings that mindfulness meditation practice is a viable treatment option for pain, stress relief and depression. This should not be surprising, considering the existence of MBSR and MBCT programs, although the pain relief findings show just how wide-ranging the benefits of mindfulness meditation are.
As this resource has explored several different ways to learn and practice mindfulness meditation, it should be clear that there is no single right way to do it. Instead, anyone looking to practice mindfulness meditation should find the techniques and methods which work best for them and their daily schedules. Whether you have the ability to visit an on-site training center or prefer to learn about mindfulness meditation in the comfort of your own home, there are several different ways to do so.
Find what you are most comfortable with so mindfulness meditation can benefit your life as much as possible. It should also be clear from all the different options presented above that mindfulness meditation can be practiced no matter what your daily schedule looks like. For example, many of us have smartphones which can guide us through mindfulness meditation sessions no matter where we are.
Even if you do not have a smartphone, a mindfulness meditation book can be carried around and read whenever you have time. There are also guided meditation sessions of all different lengths mentioned above, meaning that no matter how busy you are, you can fit mindfulness meditation into your life if you wish to do so.
We hope you enjoyed reading this article. Don’t forget to download our three Mindfulness Exercises for free.
ReferencesJoaquín Selva, Bc.S., Psychologist is a behavioral neuroscience researcher and scientific editor. Joaquín was both a teaching assistant and a research assistant and conducted research that led to the publication of three peer-reviewed papers. Since then, his work has included writing for PositivePsychology.com and working as an English editor for academic papers written by non-native English speakers.
Share this article:
i went thru all your meditation practices including videos and text etc. Still i feel a missing link between practice and theory as taught in Scriptures. Try in practice and read with real progressive wisdom of Bhante Vimalaramsi’s Brahmavihara meditation. The clear understanding comes about the real meditation of loving kindness. Please try with practical approach. Reply
kvssiyer on August 19, 2020 at 10:28Thank you very much for a very comprehensive analysis with practical. tips and further reference on mindfulness meditation the very need of the day for regular practice
thank you ver muc Reply
Thanks, Joaquin for spending your precious time writing this amazing article. I’m sure that it will help lots of people improve things that are causing them some harm. Congratulations. Greetings from Brazil! Reply
