8 Simple Types of Mindfulness Meditation Suitable for Beginners
Jump-start your mediation journey
Many beginner meditators become intimidated or frustrated because they don't know how or where to start. Some quit before they even try.
It's no wonder. Enter Types of Meditation Practices into google, and you're bombarded with options. The list of styles of meditation is long and varied. Transcendental, Chakra, Vipassana, Mindfulness, Progressive Relaxation, Yoga.
However, there is one method that is welcoming to beginners.
Mindfulness.
Mindfulness meditation practices are accessible and simple to implement in daily life. They are a great jumping-off point for beginning meditators. Here are eight you can try.
Mindfulness Meditation Techniques
Breathing
Here's something we do every day without thinking about it most of the time. If we stop for a few moments and pay attention to it, we can unlock its power to help us in times of distress.
Breathing meditations are simple to do, and there's no mediation app or music required. (They are optional, of course.) You can do these seated, standing, or lying down.
A few examples:
Balanced Breathing: Inhale slowly through your nose for four counts, and then exhale slowly for four counts. Try for ten rounds.
Box Breathing: Inhale for four counts, hold for four counts, exhale for four counts, hold for four counts. Start with five and work your way up to 10 rounds. If the hold is too much for you initially, you can drop the bottom hold or reduce the breath count.
4x8 Breath: Inhale for four counts, slowly exhale for eight counts. This is great before bed, or anytime you need to relax. Focus on the belly rising on the inhale and falling on the exhale.
4x7x8 Breath: Inhale for 4, hold for 7, exhale for 8. Work your way up to this. You can always reduce the counts when first starting.
Counting Breaths: Useful for managing anxiety. Pick a number such as 10. Then count your breaths until you reach that number. Repeat until you feel calmer. Inhale 1, Exhale 2, Inhale 3, Exhale 4, Inhale 5, Exhale 5, etc.
Breath Awareness: In this mediation, focus on the sensations in your body as you breathe. Belly rising and falling, how the breath feels as it enters and exits your nose, what's its temperature, etc.
When to do these: Anytime you want. These are particularly good right before or after a stressful moment. 4x8 and 4x7x8 are good to do in bed for relaxation before sleep.
A simple breath-focused meditation has several cognitive benefits from increased ability to focus, less of a wandering mind, improved arousal levels, more positive emotions, less emotional reactivity, and many other benefits.
Body Scan
In a body scan meditation, participants are guided through a process of taking inventory throughout the body. This can cover the whole body or a section. Regardless, you will focus on one body part at a time and only that, noting sensations, emotions, whatever is present in the moment.
It encourages you to be aware and present in that moment without judgment. Not only does this potentially refocus your attention away from what was stressing you, but it also helps you engage your mind/body connection. You can begin to learn to recognize how your body and mind react to stress.
During body scan, participants saw the biggest increases in how aware they were of their bodies (unsurprisingly) and the sharpest decline in the number of thoughts they were having, particularly negative thoughts and thoughts related to the past and future.
When to do this: When you are experiencing physical discomfort, fidgety, antsy, or simply disconnected, before sleep is also a good time as it can be deeply relaxing, particularly if you practice a full body scan.
Sound Awareness
This is an excellent practice to heighten focus. It brings attention to the present moment and your environment by engaging your sense of hearing to connect with what is around you without judgment.
This practice is best without any background music. This way, you can focus on your immediate environment. There are excellent guided meditations available on many of the mediation apps. You will want to skip the noise-canceling headphones for this one.
When to do this: This is perfect anytime you need to take a break, re-center, or re-focus.
Loving Kindness (Meta)
This is a wonderful practice for building and expressing compassion for yourself and others. You can find these on a mediation app by searching for Meta, Loving Kindness, or Self Compassion.
Here's an example of what a teacher may guide you through. Repeating a series of phrases to express self-compassion, such as:
May I be safe, May I be healthy, May I be happy, May I live with ease.
And then rephrasing it to express compassion towards others:
May you be safe, May you be healthy, May you be happy, May you live with ease.
When to do this: Practice this during moments of negative self-talk, when you want to send compassion to someone in particular, like a sick friend or relative. Or perhaps you are out of sorts with friends, family, or the universe and want to release the negative and offer healing to yourself and them.
Lovingkindness meditation led to the greatest boost in their feelings of warmth and positive thoughts about others.
Noting
In a noting meditation, we practice observing and noting our thoughts as they are in the moment. The key is that you are not engaging or entertaining these thoughts. You are simply noting them.
As you are meditating, and a thought comes into your mind, you label the thought. Use terms like Thinking, Hearing, Ruminating, Worry, Planning, Past, Present, Future.
Keep in mind meditation isn't always about comfort and joy or being zen. Sometimes sitting with our thoughts when they are difficult can be an uneasy experience. But it helps us to be able to sit with them, deal with them, and not run from them. We can also separate ourselves from them and observe them more objectively.
Meanwhile, the observing-thought meditation seemed to increase participants’ awareness of their thoughts the most.
When to do this: Anytime you can, like when you're feeling overwhelmed or unable to concentrate, lacking focus, out of sorts in general. Sit with your thoughts and note what is coming up when this situation occurs.
Walking
People often don't think about a moving mediation, but they are as good as a still meditation.
For people who have trouble sitting still for a regular meditation practice, walking meditation can be very healing.
The nice thing about walking meditations is they can be done inside or outside. You can practice pacing in a room or walking around the house barefoot. Slowing the pace to note and feel the floor beneath your feet, how your leg and back muscles engage. In some ways, it's like a body scan on the go.
Walking outside, practice by engaging with the sights, sounds, and smells around you. Also being conscious of your body's movement and connection to the earth.
Try to be present at the moment. How often do you move from one place to another, and you do it on auto-pilot, unaware of your progress or the effort? In a walking mediation, your focus is on the journey and fully experiencing it.
When: Anytime. It's great if you tend to be a bit antsy or fidgety. Also, it's good to move throughout your day anyway. Use that time to practice some mindfulness too.
Mantra/AffirmatioN
The term mantra may seem off-putting to some beginners. It may conjure up visions of people sitting and chanting Ohm or some other phrase. It's not off-putting because it's bad, but it may make them feel like a beginner or not sure what to do.
Affirmations are a form of mantra meditation that may come more easily for beginners. Affirmations are words or phrases that you repeat out loud or silently to yourself.
I am strong, I am calm, I am worthy, etc.
The act of audible practice and repetition helps reinforce the affirmations. Thus, they begin to internalize and believe them.
When to do this: Anytime you need a little encouragement or pick me up. These can be helpful during bouts of depression, fear, or self-doubt before a significant event. Many people like to start their day using affirmations to set an intention for the day.
Bonus: One Meditation that isn't strictly a Mindfulness Practice
Visualization
During my Mindfulness training, we were taught mindfulness is about being present and aware in the moment. True.
The discussion around visualization meditations was about how they take a person from the present moment to somewhere else. This is counter to what we are trying to practice with mindfulness mediation. While I don't dispute this point, I think there is a place for guided visualization meditations.
In my experience, you can guide someone through visualization while incorporating mindfulness by guiding them to be present in the scene, using their senses, and fully immersing themselves. So while we are not in the present moment, we are still teaching them to engage with and be mindful of what is around them. They can take that skill with them.
I've had positive responses to visualization meditations to relieve stress, and while not strictly mindfulness, they are accessible to beginners, so I include them here.
When to do them: Anytime you want, they can be pleasant during times of deep stress/anxiety or when you're sad. They are also wonderful before bed to help you drift off to dreamland.
Summary
Mindfulness offers a variety of accessible practices for beginners to try and see what they like. They don't require any particular skill, or experience, or even time. Once you become comfortable with a mindfulness meditation practice, you may decide to branch out and try other styles. If so, that's great!
There is so much to explore. But, if you find that mindfulness meditation is where you're most comfortable, then stick with it. Remember, this is your practice. There is no right or wrong choice. Try some on for size and keep only that which fits you.
If you’d like to try some of these techniques, follow me on the InsightTimer app or you can also find them on my on-demand platform along with yoga classes.
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