5 Posts from Mindful to Help Start your Meditation Practice

Meditation is something anyone can do to improve their mental and emotional health.

From better focus and concentration to stress reduction and more, a meditation practice comes loaded with science-backed benefits.

If you’re looking for a place to start, here are 5 simple, targeted methods from the ever-popular wellness site, Mindful.

1. How to Regain Focus When Your Mind Wanders

In today’s hyper-connected world where distractions are eminent, focus has become as elusive as ever. Science says, even without stress, anxiety, or social media, our minds are wired to wander about half of our waking moments.

So how can you bring back the focus essential for your career as well as your life? In this post from Mindful, Rich Fernandez shares a simple 3-step approach to rein in your mind and regain your focus.

2. A 12-Minute Meditation to Create Inner Balance in the Face of Change

We all face change. Whether positive or negative, change disrupts our routined lives and moves us towards uncertain or often uneven ground.

In this extensive 12-minute meditation practice shared by Susan Bauer-Wu, you’ll learn how to react to change without any attachments to an outcome or taking things personally. It is the perfect guide to learn how to maintain your composure and calmness despite life’s many ups and downs.

3. A Guided Practice to Invite Nature Into Your Life

“Nature restores, regenerates, and renews itself continually in a process of oscillation between activity and periods of rest,” says mindfulness teacher Kelly Barron.

How can we harness this regenerative power of nature during times of adversity? Like nature, can we also relax and renew? In this post, Barron shares a 14-minute meditation practice to connect and heal with nature.

4. A Guided Practice to Notice What’s Present—and What Isn’t

Spaces give things form. Whether it be the spaces between the plants in a garden, notes in a song, or the pauses in a poem, without spaces, value cannot be formed.

Similarly, spaces can also be used to tap into our creative reserves, but they often go unnoticed. In this post, authors Chris Willard and Olivia Weisser borrow from the Japanese concept of Ma and offer a mindfulness practice to explore what we often don’t focus on.

5. A 10-Minute Meditation for Deep Relaxation

Rest is identified as one of our most basic needs. Without rest, our bodies and souls cannot heal. And adequate rest allows us to experience life fully, while enabling us to explore our full potential.

But the question, how often do we go to bed and wake up tired? Are there other ways to rest in addition to sleep? In this post, Jenée Johnson shares a mindfulness practice that helps rest and activate the body’s calming response.