The 36 Guided Mindfulness Meditations and Exercises that are part of this online mindfulness program are available for download on their own, along with detailed instructions for each. You can play the 20-Minute Mindfulness of Breath Meditation and The Breathing Space Mindfulness Meditation below to give you a chance to sample the sound quality and what my voice sounds like in order to help you decide to see if these mindfulness meditations are right for you. You'll find a list of all 36 guided mindfulness meditations and exercises at the bottom of the page.
The Breathing Space Mindfulness Meditation
20-Minute Mindfulness of Breath Meditation
The 36 Guided Mindfulness Meditations and Exercises that are part of this online mindfulness program are available for download on their own, along with detailed instructions for each. You can play the 20-Minute Mindfulness of Breath Meditation and The Breathing Space Mindfulness Meditation below to give you a chance to sample the sound quality and what my voice sounds like in order to help you decide to see if these mindfulness meditations are right for you. You'll find a list of all 36 guided mindfulness meditations and exercises at the bottom of the page.
The Breathing Space Mindfulness Meditation
20-Minute Mindfulness of Breath Meditation
Click on the button below to download the meditations. Under the list of meditations, you can click on the name of any meditation to read its description, and click the button in the description to go to the instructions page for that meditation or to play the meditation online.
Below is a list of all of the guided mindfulness meditations and exercises that you'll be able to download. Please note that the meditations with the same name but different lengths are simply shorter versions of the same meditation. For example, the "20-Minute Body Scan" meditation and "30-Minute Body Scan" meditation are just shorter versions of the "40-Minute Body Scan" meditation, and not completely different meditations.
Click on the name of any meditation to read a description. If you've purchased the meditations, you can go to the instructions page or play the meditations online by clicking the button in the description of any meditation. If you haven't purchased the meditations, you can still read all the descriptions, and you can access How to Meditate, Counting Breaths, The Breathing Space, and Mindfulness of Breath for free.
Before trying the meditations, you can watch this video that describes how to meditate in five easy steps in less than five minutes.
These are three short breathing exercises designed to help keep your attention focused on your breath as you follow your breathing, a skill that is invaluable for any type of mindfulness meditation.
The Breathing Space is a brief mindfulness meditation with three steps:
"The Breathing Space" version is slightly longer and contains the complete instructions for each step, while the "Three Minute Breathing Space" uses shorter prompts with more silence rather than detailed instructions.
In the mindfulness of breath meditations we focus our attention on our breath by following the physical sensations of our breathing in our abdomen. In the 10-30 Minute meditation, a bell sounds at 10, 15, 20, 25, and 30 Minutes, allowing you to finish the meditation after 10 minutes, or continue until the final bell after 30 minutes
The Body Scan is a mindfulness meditation done while lying on your back. We begin by bringing our awareness to our breath. Then we use our breath to carry our attention throughout our body, starting with the feet and moving all the way up through the top of the head.
While doing the body scan, as we’re moving through the various regions of our body, we’re paying attention to any physical sensation, or the lack of physical sensations, that we notice. Learning to notice sensations in our body is important as it helps us recognize and regulate our mood, feelings and emotions.
In this meditation, in addition to following our breath, we then pay attention to any physical sensations that we notice in our body.
The Mindful Stretching practice is similar to body scan in that we’re paying careful attention to sensations throughout our body, but instead of lying still on our backs, we mindfully move in and out of a series of gentle stretches and postures. The Stretch and Breath begins with mindful stretching, followed by a period of mindfulness of breath and body sitting meditation.
In the Mindful Hearing exercise, we learn to relate to sound mindfully by noticing and paying attention as sounds arise, and subside, and pass through our field of hearing and awareness.
In The Mindfulness of Sounds and Thoughts meditation, we begin by mindfully paying attention to sounds, then shift our awareness to our thoughts and whatever's passing through out mind, relating to our thoughts the same way we did to sound—just noticing thoughts arising and subsiding as they pass through our mind like clouds passing through the sky.
In the Mindfulness of Breath, Body, Sounds and Thoughts meditation, we expand upon the Mindfulness of Breath and Body meditation by also incorporating mindfulness of sound and thoughts.
In a formal walking meditation, we bring moment-to-moment awareness to the physical sensations that arise as we slowly and mindfully walk out and back along a path of five to ten paces. We pay attention to our footsteps and the sensations in our feet and legs as we walk, as well as to our breath, and whatever other physical sensations arise.
In this meditation we allow a difficulty (difficult thought, feeling or emotion, situation, etc.) into our awareness and pay attention to where in our body we're experiencing this difficulty. Then we turn towards and open ourselves up to whatever we’re feeling in our body, using our breath to focus our attention on any sensations here as we breathe in, and then seeing if these sensations soften, release or relax as we breathe out.
This meditation begins with the Mindfulness of Breath, Body, Sounds and Thoughts meditation. Then we then bring awareness to our feelings and emotions and pay attention to how we're experiencing them through our body, as we do in the Allowing in a Difficulty meditation.
We then expand our awareness into a wide, open, choiceless awareness: rather than focusing our attention on any particular object such as our breath, body, thoughts, etc., we allow any aspect of our experience to pass into and out of our awareness
Because it can be difficult to sit comfortably for 40 minutes, in the final version of this meditation there is a brief period of mindful walking in the middle of thr meditation to allow you to stretch you legs. The walking also re-focuses your mind and can help you maintain your concentration better once you return to a sitting posture.
Once you've been meditating for a while, it can be distracting and annoying to listen to someone guiding you through a meditation while you're trying to focus your awareness on your own experience. In this meditation we use only minimal guided audio to get started and to provide a few prompts to help keep your attention focused, while most of the meditation is done in silence.
The final half of the meditation is in silence except for bells after 20 and 25 minutes. Three bells signal the end of the meditation. The Bells Track contains no talking, simply a bell that sounds every 5 minutes that you can use to bring your attention back into the present moment if your mind has started to wander.
In the Mindful Eating exercise we slowly and mindfully eat a raisin, as an example of how we can bring mindfulness into our everyday lives, and that mindfulness is not just reserved for when we're meditating.