10 Mindful Exercises

By Mindful Staff | December 26, 2017

Here are the top 10 most popular guided mindfulness practices from Mindful.org in 2017. You can listen to the tracks embedded below, or follow the link in the title of each practice to see full transcriptions of practice instructions.

1) A 7-minute mindfulness practice to shift out of “doing” mode

Noticing self-perpetuating thought patterns is a core mindfulness skill. Take a moment to examine how it feels to disengage from a busy mind and shift into “being” mode with this practice from Zindel Segal, co-founder of Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT).

2) A 15-minute guided mindfulness meditation: Investigating difficulty

Sometimes our experience is painful and difficult. And there may be little or nothing we can do about the arising of the pain or difficulty. In these cases. We may be able to work with what’s happening skillfully by exploring our relationship to it, says mindfulness teacher and author Ed Halliwell.

3) A 10-minute meditation to work with difficult emotions

When we deny what’s difficult by putting our heads in the sand, we create more suffering, says meditation teacher Carley Hauck. Here’s a 10-minute meditation to reverse the tendency to start digging.

4) Calm the rush of panic in your emotions

Mediation can help you explore how panic affects you not only physically, but also in your emotions and feelings. Here is a 30-minute mindful inquiry practice to explore feelings of panic with Bob Stahl, mindfulness author and teacher.

5) A daily mindful walking practice

Walking meditation can be a formal practice, like watching the breath. Or it can be informal, bringing awareness to this everyday activity, whenever you need to travel from point A to point B. Explore this 10-minute practice from Mark Bertin, mindfulness author and developmental behavioral pediatrician.

6) How to meditate with noise: A 3-minute practice for anywhere

Meditation can’t always happen in blissful silence. Diana Winston, Research Director at UCLA’s Mindful Awareness Research Center (MARC), offers a practice for tuning in to the cacophony of everyday activity, so we can find a space to rest and settle the mind.

7) Guided loving-kindness meditation from Sharon Salzberg

Sharon Salzberg, who often teaches at the Insight Meditation Society, offers a “Guided Lovingkindness Meditation” — Sending loving-kindess to people we feel neutral towards as well as those we have difficult feelings towards.

8) Tame feelings of shame with this 10-minute practice

Exploring difficult emotions and experiences may be the key to loosening their hold over us. Try this mindfulness practice from Patricia Rockman, MD.

9) A mindfulness practice for preschoolers that connects kids to nature

A practice for teaching preschool children the basics of mindfulness by drawing on the elements of nature from Scott Rogers, co-founder of the UMindfulness, the University’s Mindfulness Research and Practice Initiative.

10) A meditation for moving on

We can’t ignore the hard stuff. Here’s a 10-minute mindfulness practice for navigating—not resisting—everything life throws our way, from Holly Rogers, MD.