12 Minute Meditation
12 Minute Meditation offers guided meditations from leading mindfulness experts, based on scientific research showing that 12 minutes of daily meditation can improve attention, focus, creativity, calm, resilience, and compassion. Each week, a new mindfulness meditation is released, inviting listeners to incorporate mindfulness into their daily lives. The podcast is produced by Mindful.org, a platform dedicated to mindfulness and meditation.
Episodes
A Breathscape Practice for Cultivating Mindfulness
It is natural as finite human beings to want to feel certain. To our brains, certainty equals safety. It's normal to wish we could control the future, because uncertainty can be unsettling and scary. But as today's teacher observes, as difficult as it is, the only real leverage we have to positively influence the future is to learn to inhabit the present moment fully, without trying to fix it or
A 12-Minute Body Scan Meditation for Letting Go of Stress and Falling Asleep
Stress and tension can easily build up in our bodies during busy days or weeks, and often we don't even realize how much that is affecting our ability to let go and fall asleep at night. In this guided practice, teacher Kelly Boys offers a simple body scan meditation that uses sensory awareness and intentional breathing to invite a sense of lovely heaviness and relaxation. Kelly Boys is a mindful
A Meditation to Help Build Your Capacity to Navigate Difficulty
When we're facing disappointment or challenge, it's easy to default to negative narratives about who we are inherently: I'm a failure. What's wrong with me? I never do anything right. This week, teacher Rich Fernandez invites a different perspective: When we shift from naming an existential trait (like, I must be a loser) to naming a temporary experiential state (like, I'm experiencing a setback
A Meditation to Befriend Vulnerability
By definition, to feel vulnerable is to feel exposed and undefended. It's natural, in moments of emotional risk or tenderness, to feel the urge to pull back from vulnerability, to deny it or dismiss it as weak or needy. But decades of research have also revealed that we can't really form strong bonds with others if we're unwilling to take the risk of being our true selves. This week, Dr. Stacee R
A Meditation for Resting in the Flow of Experience
This week, Ed Halliwell guides us through a practice to be with the inevitable moment-to-moment uncertainty of life. We can't control what's happening around us, but we can practice letting go of the stories we create about uncertainty that add unnecessary stress and pain. Ed Halliwell is a mindfulness teacher and writer, based in Sussex and London, UK. He is author of three books: Into The Hear
A Grounding Practice to Focus Your Busy Mind
There are times when we're so busy thinking, planning, worrying, stressing that it's really hard to focus on the breath or the body, or whatever particular meditation object we're using. This practice with Mark Coleman offers an alternative that's helpful when we feel like we're going a million miles an hour. It uses soft, focused attention: relaxed eyes, soft gaze, and just being aware of the vis
Laughter Yoga: A Gentle Movement Practice to Get the Giggles Going
Beyond just feeling good, laughter releases dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, and endorphins, and also works on our heart, our lungs, our muscles, our thoughts, our behaviors. In short: laughter actually is good medicine. And here's a funny thing: whether we laugh in response to something, or we create a situation that gets laughter going, the body will still release the same endorphins. Try this qui
A 12 Minute Meditation to Unhook from Negativity and Savor Joy
Joy aids us in waking up to our lives, and savoring is a practice that allows us to slow down, immerse ourselves in experience, and deeply appreciate the moment we're inhabiting. These two together are a powerful antidote to the gravitational pull of negativity, doomscrolling, and despair. Jessica Morey is a meditation teacher and coach. She has been practicing meditation for almost 3 decades. Sh
A Meditation to Rest Your Attention
When we talk about attention, we often use active and extractive verbs: pay, give, court, leverage. In mindfulness, attention isn't a commodity to be used; it's a gift to be nurtured. What might it feel like to rest our attention? This week, teacher Sharon Salzberg offers a guided meditation that's down-to-earth and deeply restorative as we practice holding our awareness with the lightest touch p
Embodied Compassion for Difficult Emotions
One of the core principles of mindfulness practice that can be a challenge for people is the notion that it actually makes more sense to accept our emotions rather than resist them. Especially when it comes to painful, confusing, or frightening emotions, this move towards ourselves in compassion can feel incredibly counterintuitive. This week, author and recovery coach Emily Jane guides us throug
A 12 Minute Meditation to Make Movement Mindful
Our bodies come in all varieties, and we all have different interests, skills, and abilities. As today's teacher Cara Bradley observes, movement of any kind—from the slightest stretch to the most intense exercise—can be mindful. This simple meditation helps you celebrate your physicality with practices to connect with your breath and your body, expand your awareness, and appreciate the gift of be
A Mindfulness Meditation for Beginners
This week, Mindful founding editor Barry Boyce reminds us of the basic why behind mindfulness meditation: We get off-kilter at various times throughout the day, and we need a way to pause and reconnect—with reality, with our senses, with our steady center. That's what meditation helps us do. This practice is called "Taking Your Seat," and it's perfect if you're getting started with meditation, or
A Meditation to Bring Comfort and Kindness to Pain and Illness
Learning to live with pain and illness is challenging, arduous work. Often, people can go for months or even years without sufficient answers. Life gets turned completely upside down. The body you thought you had suddenly becomes something you don't recognize or know how to work with. This week, meditation teacher and hypnotherapist Juliana Sloane offers an imaginative meditation that invites sof
A Meditation on the Art of Stopping (Extended Version)
We often think of mindfulness and meditation as sustained states—when in reality, it's just a collection of micro-moments of stopping, breathing, really noticing our own bodies and our own lives, getting distracted, and then coming back again. Over and over. As this week's teacher Shalini Bahl puts it, today's guided practice is about the art of stopping: letting go of our regular habits of the
The Art of Stopping (Micro-Practice Version)
You can find the extended 20-minute version of this meditation here. Want to explore how micro-practices can help shift your patterns in your real everyday life when you're off the meditation mat? Check out Shalini's article, How Micro-Practices Can Be the Bridge Between Your Meditation and Your Choices.
A Meditation on Working With Our Fear And Parenting From Love
In our concern for our children, sometimes we respond from a place of fear and worry. From time to time, we can even lose touch with the love that lies beneath that concern. Reconnecting with the ground of our love and the wish for our children to be happy and well, especially in moments of difficulty, can be incredibly beneficial. This practice from Wendy O'Leary offers a pause of support and en
A 12-Minute Meditation to Rest Your Body in Gratitude
Our bodies are so overworked and often ignored. This guided awareness practice offers space to feel a sense of gratitude for our body, in all of its beauty and mystery. Rashid Hughes (he/him) is a writer, meditation teacher, yoga instructor and a restorative justice facilitator. He is the co-founder of the Heart Refuge Mindfulness Community, a mindfulness community in Washington, DC that is dedica
A Light, Slow, Deep (LSD) Breathing Meditation
Thanks to our autonomic nervous system, life-sustaining processes like our heartbeat, digestion, and breathing all happen without us even having to pay attention. But our environments, stress levels, and other factors can definitely affect the health and efficiency of these processes. For example, sitting hunched at our desks and staring at screens often means that our breathing gets shallow and
A Guided Walking Meditation to Notice the Beauty Around Us—Even in the City
City life can often feel frantic, loud, and cut off from natural beauty. It's not often we slow down and take in all there is to experience. But even in urban areas, if you pay attention, you can hear the call of a bird, notice your favorite color in shop windows, and look up at the vast sky above. In this guided meditation, we slow our roll and take in the beauty of our surroundings, no matter w
A Meditation to Meet Yourself Where You Are—No Matter What
Mindfulness meditation involves a willingness to be with ourselves as we are. It offers a way of learning to work with ourselves, and not on ourselves, especially if we are healing from perfectionism. Mindfulness reminds us that not everything has to be "fixed"—and very often, our movement back to wellness starts when we stop trying to change ourselves and simply accept where we are with care and
A Meditation to Create Inner Balance in the Face of Change
Change of any kind—whether it's small, momentous, expected or unexpected—can make us feel so vulnerable and unsteady. This week, Susan Bauer-Wu offers a guided meditation to invite and nourish inner strength in the face of change. Susan Bauer-Wu, PhD, is a registered nurse and nursing educator, as well as a mindfulness teacher and researcher. She is president of the Mind & Life Institute and aut
A Meditation to Approach the World With a "Don't-Know Mind"
Our culture prizes certainty and tends to regard not-knowing as weakness or failure. But research has shown that uncertainty is a quality that we're meant to engage, not reject. Not only does it spark curiosity and help us learn, but it also strengthens confidence and resilience. This week, Dr. Sará King offers a practice to help us build comfort with our "don't-know mind" so that we can stay co
A Meditation to Allow Genuine Happiness, Even In Hard Times
When we are going through a difficult season personally, or we are bearing witness to the pain of others, our relationship to genuine joy or happiness can get complicated and confusing. Happiness can feel out of reach, or it can feel like a betrayal, like it's something we don't "deserve" in hard times. But strengthening our ability to notice and soak in moments of beauty, tenderness, connection,
A Meditation to Settle Mind & Body for Sleep
There are so many reasons why we might be struggling to get to sleep and stay asleep. Work or relationship stress, health concerns, hormonal changes, the state of the world—there's plenty to keep us awake at night. This week, Mark Bertin offers a soothing sleep practice to help settle our restlessness, using the breath as a calming anchor to gently coax our busy minds and tense bodies into rest.
A Meditation to (Gently) Interrupt Habitual Reactions
Daily life is full of irritations: moments of inconvenience, situations where we don't get what we were hoping for, delays, disappointments, prickly interactions that can leave us confused and exasperated. If we're honest, we can probably admit that sometimes our reactions in those moments tend to be reflexive rather than intentional. We feel our anger or annoyance rise, and we react almost as th
Self Compassion for Nervous System Reset
It's not always an instinctual go-to for us, but self-compassion is one of the most powerful forms of healing and restoration for our mental and physical well-being. In this meditation, mindfulness teacher Shamash Alidina offers three ways to show compassion for yourself when you're stressed and need a reset. Shamash Alidina has been practising mindfulness since 1998 and runs his own successful
A Meditation to Nourish an Undefended Heart
There's a paradox inside mindfulness practice: When we want to heal something, we move toward what hurts, not away from it. It's not easy to keep our hearts soft or open, and a mindful practice doesn't change the inherent risks in being a human in a world of other humans. This week, as part of his mini-course Opening Ourselves Up to Compassion, Vinny Ferraro shares a practice to meet our pain and
A Meditation to Help You Let Go and Accept Change
Everything is impermanent. It's always changing, coming together and falling apart. This, of course, includes small daily things and massive, disruptive, and life-shattering things. It's frustrating to not be able to control these movements and outcomes. But paradoxically, when we can accept that everything is not up to us, and we stop trying to control what we can't change or trying to predict w
A Meditation to Return to Ourselves When Practicing Feels Impossible
Many of us are bearing witness daily to suffering all over the planet. We care about others, and we want desperately to be of use—and seeing the horrors in images and videos and stories every day can be deeply dysregulating to our nervous systems. When we get overwhelmed by this vicarious trauma, we tend to shut down. We disconnect from ourselves and each other. We're so spun out in our anxiety,
A Meditation to Tap Into Your Agency When Things Are Chaotic & Uncertain
We often treat experiences like restlessness, uncertainty, or the overwhelm of difficult emotions as a problem to be solved. And of course, it's normal to want relief. Today, teacher Cherl Vigder Brause leads a guided practice that's centered around meeting ourselves exactly where we are. In that pause, where we encounter ourselves without trying to fix anything, even if just for a moment, we act
A Meditation to Connect With Loving-Kindness (Even When It's Hard)
Loving-kindness seems like a practice that would feel good—but in times of tension, uncertainty, pain, or anger, it can be one of the most challenging mindfulness tools to apply. How do we love when it is most difficult to love? This week, renowned teacher Sharon Salzberg offers a guided practice to connect us to the deep heart and transformative courage of metta or loving-kindness meditation.
A Meditation to Skillfully Connect With Your Anger
As today's teacher Jessica Morey says, "Anger's fundamental role is to protect us and protect what we care about in the world. It lets us know when a limit of ours, or a boundary, has been crossed." But because of its power and volatility, anger can be a troubling emotion to be with and a difficult one to work with. Today's practice is aimed at gaining insight into our anger so that we can respond
A Meditation For When Suffering In the World Feels Heavy
Many of us are carrying the weight of the world's suffering right now. How can we acknowledge the immense suffering around us, and our own—and still tend to our hearts, minds, and bodies in a way that keeps us grounded and able to take compassionate action? This week, mindfulness teacher and author Wendy O'Leary shares a guided practice that offers refuge and reminds us of our real and loving con
A Meditation for Compassionately Noticing Food Cravings and Triggers
Our brains learn through a process that has three components: trigger, behavior, reward. Together these behaviors form what is known as a habit loop. In today's meditation, Dr. Brewer walks us through a practice to notice triggers—when they're happening and how they make us feel. When we pay attention to these triggers, we can respond to ourselves with more compassion and make choices with a lot
A Meditation on Endings with Frank Ostaseski
Even if they aren't particularly into making resolutions, for many people the New Year still feels like a fresh start: a time for taking stock, for reviewing what's passed, for turning the page on one chapter and starting another. In today's meditation, teacher Frank Ostaseski asks: How do you meet endings? We can learn a lot about how we face the new by looking at how we let go of the old, and h
A Meditation to Set an Intention for Your Future with Rich Fernandez
If you've grown weary of traditional resolutions, but you still carry a glimmer of hope that positive change is possible for us imperfect humans—then you'll love mindful intention-setting. In this practice from his mini-course, mindful leadership trainer Rich Fernandez shows us how to vividly envision the "imagine if" possibilities. When we tap into meaning, passion, and a felt sense of welcomin
A Meditation to Release & Ease Holiday Stress with Christiane Wolf
The holiday season can be a time full of commitments, planning, and (pleasant or unpleasant) anticipation. This extended guided practice with Dr. Christiane Wolf offers a quiet respite that can help you identify what you need, move to care for yourself, and navigate stress that may arise. Christiane Wolf, MD, PhD is a former physician, internationally known mindfulness and Insight (Vipassana) m
Gratitude Practice: Savor the Moment by Tapping into Your Senses with Elaine Smookler
Savoring is a practice of intentionally slowing way down and paying attention to what's right in front of us—whether that's a conversation, an unexpected moment of connection, or a favorite dessert. Savoring is also a natural way to balance the frenetic pace of the Holiday season. In this meditation, Elaine Smookler shows us how to pause and tune into our senses as a way to notice and appreciat
A Meditation for Easing Pain and Inviting Joy with Vanessa Hutchinson-Szekely
Sometimes seasons of intense suffering show up in our lives—no warning, no easy answers. This week, mindfulness teacher Vanessa Hutchinson-Szekely shares a tender meditation for those in the middle of pain. Based on her own experience with an extended episode of chronic back pain, she offers a moment of reprieve and caring attention to release tension and open to the possibility of joy. Vanessa
Stress SOS: A Quick Practice When You Need It Most with Shamash Alidina
The start of the holiday season can be amazing: festive energy, time with loved ones, and delicious food. But it can also be super stressful. This week, we're offering a quick practice from Shamash Alidina that you can turn to when you're in the thick of it. It's not the usual 12 minutes, but it's perfect for when you're running errands, preparing for visitors, or just need a moment to gather you
A Meditation for Working With Our Self-Judging Voice with Diana Winston
As today's teacher notes, self-compassion is different from self-esteem. Relying on building up our self-esteem tends to lead us to need a lot of external validation in order to feel ok. Instead, self-compassion is the idea that even with all of our flaws, we can still care about ourselves and see ourselves as infinitely worthy of love and belonging. In this extended 30-minute practice, mindfulne
A Forgiveness Meditation to Let Go of Added Suffering with Mark Bertin
Forgiveness is almost never a one-and-done action. Whether what we're forgiving is big or small, our own error or someone else's—most often, there are residual feelings of anger, hurt, or resentment to contend with. In this guided practice, Mark Bertin addresses this tendency to compound our suffering when we hang onto these difficult emotions. He offers a way to gently surrender this extra emoti
A Meditation to Meet the Body In Pain
Having chronic pain often feels incredibly lonely. You might not know anybody else who has the same condition. In addition, most people you're close to, even though they might be well-intentioned, might not understand what you're going through. But the fact is that probably thousands and thousands of people all over the world know exactly what you're feeling. In this meditation, Christiane Wolf o
A 12-Minute Meditation to Get Curious About Your Cravings
We often imagine that our actions are the result of choice and awareness, which means that we can be extra critical of ourselves when we're struggling with habits that aren't serving us. But researchers in the science of habit and craving have found that much of our decision-making process is the result of unconscious neuro-chemical loops that reinforce themselves over time. In this meditation, a
A 12-Minute Meditation on Our Relationship to Thoughts
The nature of the mind is to make thoughts. All day long, mostly without our even noticing, the mind is generating thousands of thoughts. People often misunderstand mindfulness and meditation as ways to control or even stop our mind's churning—but that isn't even really possible. With mindful attention, we can learn to notice and be aware of what our minds are up to, and that awareness is what gi
A 12-Minute Meditation to Rewire Your Brain for Optimism
What do you do when you've made a plan, you've done everything you can to make it work…and things still don't turn out the way you hoped? In frustration and disappointment, it's easy to focus on what's wrong. This exercise—adapted from Start Here: Master the Lifelong Habit of Wellbeing by Eric Langshur and Nate Klemp, and led by mindfulness coach Priti Patel—offers a quick way to realign toward w
Peace Begins With Me: A 12-Minute Meditation
When painful emotions are circling all around, our instinct is often to reach for external reassurance. In this practice, law professor and author Rhona Magee offers a gentle reminder that the key to calm starts with a simple pause—and we get to choose that. Rhonda V. Magee is a professor of law at the University of San Francisco. Also trained in sociology and Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction
A Mountain Meditation to Help You Shift Out of Panic Mode
If you've ever tried to push away anxiety or depression when they show up, you probably already know: Fighting these complex, difficult emotions usually doesn't work. In fact, our resistance often makes the experience even more challenging. In today's practice, Ed Halliwell offers a guided visualization based on a foundational mindful question: What if you don't try to push this experience away,
A Meditation for Kids: Coming Back to the Positive
Our brains are hardwired to notice the negative. It's part of how our ancient ancestors were able to survive in constantly threatening environments. But this negativity bias can also make it difficult for us and our kids—even in our comparatively less threatening environments—to navigate daily stressors, like big tests, arguments, or disappointments. In this shorter practice specifically design
A Teaching and Meditation to Relax and Welcome Deep Rest
Rest isn't a "reward" for working hard enough. It's a human need and birthright. This week's episode is a little different. We're not only sharing a guided meditation from mindfulness leader and professional coach Jenée Johnson, but also her teaching on some of the brain science behind relaxation—why it's essential for our well-being, how it works, and how to incorporate intentional relaxation pra
A Guided Meditation You Can Do Sitting at Your Desk
Most of us spend most of our waking hours at some kind of job, whether that's in an office, a classroom, or in our own homes. This week, mindful leadership expert Jancie Marturano leads a practice you can do at your desk—or anywhere—to give yourself a mindful pause during busy days. Janice Marturano is founder and executive director of the Institute for Mindful Leadership, a nonprofit that trains
A Meditation for Cultivating Daily Gratitude
We often think about gratitude as happening in response to "good" things—but what about moments that aren't grand or overtly happy, but are small and emotionally neutral? This week, Kim Armstrong leads a guided visualization practice to help you notice, take in, and consciously appreciate even the basic things we do every single day. Kimberly Armstrong is a cofounder and facilitator at Space Betwe
A Meditation for Finding Safety in the Body
When we are experiencing a lot of stress or recovering from trauma or addiction, we can find ourselves living in a fight-flight-freeze state, where we feel either disconnected from or unsafe in our bodies. This practice is designed to gently cultivate a sense of safety and then create a kinesthetic anchor (rooted in awareness of how our body is moving) to start building a felt sense of security th
A Meditation to Get Into the Flow of Sensations
You may have heard of "impermanence" as an important theme in meditation. In this guided practice, Toby Sola introduces us to the ease of flow state with two simple but profound techniques: exploring impermanence directly by noticing changes in our body sensations, and using labels to hone concentration. Toby Sola is dedicated to helping you create a feedback loop between your meditation practic
A Meditation to Create Space in a Storm of Emotions
When difficult or painful emotions feel like they're swirling all around you, it can be challenging to find a steady place to catch your breath. In this guided meditation, mindfulness teacher Scott Rogers uses the metaphor of a hurricane to help us recognize the qualities and the impermanence of even our stormiest emotions. Scott Rogers is founder and director of the University of Miami School of
A Body Scan Meditation to Prepare Mind and Body for Sleep
If you've been having trouble falling asleep lately, this body scan meditation with Diana Winston offers a gentle, soothing way to be with the tension in our minds and our bodies. Take a deep breath, let go, and ease into rest. Diana Winston is the Director of Mindfulness Education at UCLA's Mindful Awareness Research Center and author of several books including The Little Book of Being: Practic
A Meditation to Be At Peace with How Things Are
In this week's meditation, Dr. Mark Bertin walks us through a practice that is both concrete and compassionate. It guides us to take note of our tendency to either deny or try and "fix" what's going on in our lives, and then find a third way—one where we aim to see things as clearly as possible, so that our decisions are filled with awareness, skill, and care for everyone involved. Mark Bertin, MD
A Loving-Kindness Meditation to Expand the Warmth of Your Heart
Loving-kindness meditation, also called metta, springs from a basic understanding of human nature: On one hand, we might truly believe that compassion makes the world better—and on the other, we might struggle to offer it to ourselves and to others for various reasons. Metta practices, like the one Dr. Emma Seppälä leads this week, offer a simple, structured way to help us gently expand our ca
Transform Shame to Self-Trust
Shame is one of the most complex and difficult human emotions to experience and process. This week, we're refreshing a meditation from Dr. Patricia Rockman, who offers a practice to meet shame with courage, tenderness, and curiosity. The more we can sit with these difficult emotions, the more we build resilience, self-knowledge, and self-trust—which are the most powerful natural antidotes to sham
SOS Meditation to Unwind Anxiety
In this week's guided meditation, teacher and author Melli O'Brien offers a practice that uses gentle, steady awareness to help you find your calm center again when you're feeling wound up with stress or anxiety. Melli is a mindfulness educator and mental health coach with over two decades of experience. She is also cofounder of Mindfulness.com and the Mindfulness Summit—the world's largest mindfu
A Meditation for When You Need a Break
Sometimes the best gift we can give ourselves is just a moment set aside for quiet, breath, and reminding ourselves of who we really are. In this gentle guided practice, Kimberly Brown uses simple repeated phrases to ground attention and offer a place to rest and reset. Note that this practice includes longer pauses of complete silence for reflection and presence. If you want more time, feel fre
Use Distraction to Hone Your Focus
It might seem counterintuitive, but intentionally tuning into what's distracting you can actually help strengthen your ability to focus. In today's guided practice, meditation teacher Toby Sola introduces what he calls a "concentration algorithm." This practice will help you identify which type of sensory experience you are naturally drawn to, and then give you a structure for how to focus on it,
A 10-Minute Full Body Scan Meditation
When we are stressed or overwhelmed, or when our mind feels like it's spinning out of control—it's easy to forget that simply dropping into the body can be a powerful way to interrupt thEse thought loops. In this week's refresh, meditation teacher Tara Healey guides us through a practice to calm the mind, notice sensations in the body, and bring awareness to the present moment. If you'd like th
A Walking Meditation to Savor the Day
We mostly think of walking as an activity that is supposed to accomplish something: getting from point A to point B, exercising, reaching our daily step goals. And of course, those are all great reasons to go for a walk. In today's practice, meditation teacher and bestselling author Jon Kabat-Zinn offers up another way that you can experience a walk—simply as a way to enter more deeply into the v
A Meditation to Breathe Out Love
Tonglen, sometimes called loving-kindness meditation, is a Tibetan practice of giving and receiving. In Tonglen, we open ourselves to our entire experience, including what is painful and difficult. We acknowledge our suffering, including the suffering we share with others. Then, we release intentions for peace, healing, and love out into the world. In today's meditation, teacher Kimberly Brown
A Practice for Turning Toward Difficulty
When we are experiencing difficult emotions or situations, our first impulse is often to look for a way out—usually through distracting, numbing, running, or denying. But what if the key to getting to the other side of difficulty is to simply be with it, offering the discomfort our courageous awareness and presence? In this week's practice, author and meditation teacher Ed Halliwell guides us t
A Meditation to Help You Make Any Decision—Big or Small
You might not think of mindfulness as being a resource to help with decision-making, but moments of intentional silence can sharpen our mental clarity and help us discern which choices feel most aligned. In this guided practice, meditation teacher Toby Sola offers a simple technique you can use, whether you're facing a life-changing choice or are just feeling overwhelmed by all the small decision
A Meditation to Ease Into Sleep
If you've ever been awake at three a.m., tossing and turning and wishing you could snap your fingers and get back to sleep, then you know: the more you try to fall asleep, the less likely you are to drift off. In this week's guided practice, we're revisiting a meditation with Mark Bertin that can release the striving, let go of tension, and make it easier for body and mind to settle into rest. A
Explore 3 Techniques in This Meditation Buffet
Have you ever wondered why there are so many varieties of meditation practices, and why some of them seem to contradict each other in approach, style, or even objective? In today's guided practice, meditation teacher Toby Sola walks us through three common types of meditation. Plus, he explains why the word "meditation" is very much like the word "sport"—and how all these different practices actu
A Meditation on Connecting Lands and Stories
Many modern Western cultures don't have a deep understanding of land as a source of collective identity, story, or purpose. There is a sense that, yes, land can be lovely—but it is mainly seen as a source of recreation or extraction, not necessarily as an integral part of what shapes us and future generations. In this guided practice, Indigenous scholar and teacher Yuria Celidwen introduces a fr
A Meditation for Clarifying Your Motivations for Using Tech
Recent studies have confirmed that the constant presence and use of tech in our lives have become a hazard to our well-being on multiple levels. Meditation teacher, mindful tech designer, and self-identified tech lover Jay Vidyarthi observes, "It's okay to enjoy technology. Tech becomes a problem when we get so attached to it that our lives fall out of balance—and this happens because a certain d
An Interbeing Meditation for Connection and Understanding
If you've faced challenging or polarizing conversations lately, you likely know how difficult it can be to connect and cooperate with the person on the other side of that interaction. In today's guided practice, Dr. Shalini Bahl invites us to explore our innate interconnectedness by recognizing our needs and those of others, so that we can be empowered to work together in new and creative ways th
A Forgiveness Meditation with Will Schneider
Forgiveness is a cornerstone practice of mindfulness, and it's also one of the most difficult. Extending forgiveness to others and to ourselves requires a kind of awareness and vulnerability that can feel deeply uncomfortable, especially if we are carrying heavy stories of shame, anger, or resentment connected to that experience. In today's guided practice, Will Schneider from Men Talking Mindfu
A Meditation for Finding a Middle Way When We Are In Pain with Vidyamala Burch
Being in pain makes being present extra challenging. On a physical level, being in the present moment while our body is in pain is often extremely unpleasant. There is a part of us, understandably, that wishes we could escape from it entirely. At the same time, the experience of pain itself can be overwhelming—to our senses, our thoughts, our emotions. It can feel like drowning, when what we lon
A Meditation for Creating an Anchor of Inner Strength with Melli O'Brien
What does it feel like to experience ourselves—in our own minds and bodies—as a reliable place we can come home to in order to feel grateful, calm, and resilient? In this week's guided meditation, Melli O'Brien walks us through a practice we can return to in times of uncertainty or challenge to remind us of our own inner strength. This meditation is part of our Powerful Women of the Mindfulnes
Dual Anchor: A Neurodiversity-Informed Meditation for Wandering Attention with Sue Hutton
Traditional meditation practices can sometimes be frustrating and alienating for those who are neurodivergent. Bodily discomfort or intense mental restlessness can make even the most mindfulness-curious person feel like classic meditation techniques might not be for them. Sue Hutton believes that mindfulness can be for anyone, and she's dedicated her work to making mindfulness practices like medit
A Meditation for Unconditional Love When You're Struggling with Caverly Morgan
When we're wrestling with experiences that challenge our identities or our confidence—like failures at work, relationship struggles, or letting go of old belief systems — it can be tempting to reach for positive self-talk that pushes back against the difficult feelings we might be having. In today's guided practice, Caverly Morgan offers something much sturdier, what she calls unconditional reas
A Meditation on the South African Greeting Sawubona with Dr. Shelly Harrell
In recent years, mental health professionals have raised the alarm about the growing epidemic of loneliness. Millions of people feel separated and isolated, even when they are surrounded by colleagues or thousands of social media acquaintances. In today's guided practice, Shelly Harrell offers one mindful approach that can counteract this sense of lonely atomization. It is the South African greet
A Meditation for Allowing the Possibility of Possible In Deep Grief with Brenda K. Mitchell
When we are adrift in the wide sea of grief, it can be difficult to imagine any world other than the world of our intense sorrow and loss. In this guided meditation, Brenda K. Mitchell offers one tiny heart-opening invitation: simply allowing what she calls "the possibility of possible." There isn't an expectation that you have answers, or lots of hope, or a clear path forward. Rather, this is a t
A Journaling Practice to Help You Let Go of Limiting Habits with Caverly Morgan
In a world filled with challenges and distractions, we often find ourselves repeating automatic reactions that once helped us survive but now hold us back. Mindful journaling offers a lifeline—allowing us to slow down, listen inwardly, and meet ourselves with compassion. Today, we're refreshing a powerful journaling practice guided by Caverly Morgan, focused on letting go of limiting habits. With
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The Swerve Podcast: Obscure Topics | Conspiracy Theories
