12 Minute Meditation

This week, Rose Felix Cratsley offers a meditation to honor equity by uplifting and celebrating the power of pausing together. In this mindfulness framework, each letter of the word BREATH serves to remind us of our responsibility to ourselves and to others to honor and promote equity. So she invites us to breathe, renew, exercise equity, activate and advocate, trust the power, and heal. Rose Feli...

Life doesn't always serve us exactly what we want. Sometimes it offers pain, confusion, and sorrow. There's no way to stop those circumstances, nor to stop the difficult emotions that might arise alongside them. This week, Frank Ostaseski offers a meditation to investigate all of the circumstances of our lives with curiosity, and that can help us welcome everything that comes, or at least allow it...

Nurses help those who are sick or injured, they hold the hands of others as their life ends or offer solace to those pained by loss. To mark National Nurses Week, Cynda Hylton Rushton calls on nurses to pause for a moment to honor their hands—and to acknowledge the joys, sorrows, disappointments, fears, and triumphs in their professional lives. Show Notes:  More from Cynda Rushton on Mindful.org H...

As Mark Coleman says, listening is a beautiful doorway to the present moment, a tuning in to what's here. With listening practice, we develop the qualities of receptivity, relaxation, and a sense of naturalness. We don't need to make much effort to hear anything. A sound arises and is known quite easily and naturally in awareness. So, with this particular meditation, we can cultivate a sense of ea...

In this practice, Sharon Salzberg invites us to allow ourselves to feel our emotions, notice the sensations that arise in our body, and forgive ourselves for what we feel. And while your mind might wander during the meditation, Salzburg reminds us that it is always possible to let go and begin again. This practice is featured in the June issue of Mindful magazine, which you can find on Mindful.org...

As this week's meditation teacher Mark Coleman says, "We know being in nature is good for us, but how do we put this into practice in a way that will really serve and nurture us?" This is a question we address in the June issue of Mindful , and in our new course, Nature Meditations. And with Earth Day happening this week, it seems like the right time to get outside and appreciate what the natural...

This week on 12 Minute Meditation, Jenée Johnson leads a practice to remind us that we are enough.​​ In this practice, Jenée offers five affirmations that are designed to help us be more compassionate toward ourselves, and in turn build a solid base to be more compassionate toward others. Show Notes: Find more from Jenée Johnson here: Jenée Johnson, Author at Mindful   And more from Mindful here:...

Mindful managing editor and your regular 12 Minute Meditation host Stephanie Domet leads a mindful writing practice for settling into your body, noticing your surroundings in a real or imagined setting, and using your experience as a writing prompt. This practice is drawn from Stephanie's new course, Mindful Writing. She shares tips, practices, and prompts to strengthen your existing writing pract...

This week, Shalini Bahl-Milne shares a practice to replenish our energy.  If we draw from a pool of resources without replenishing them, we can begin to feel depleted—our brain gets sluggish, and we don't make good decisions. By resting our attention on our senses, we are taking a moment to reconnect with ourselves and feel fully present. This practice was featured in the April issue of Mindful ma...

This engaging meditation uses the energy and imagery of the four elements to foster inner connection and emotional regulation. Follow the guided practice and join your child on a mindful adventure.

This week, Dr. Sará King offers a practice to explore, "don't know mind"— an idea that is sometimes used in meditation to evoke a sense of curiosity. So in this practice, we'll explore what it's like to approach the world with a don't know mind. How does that land in the body? What is it like to explore not knowing, not being quite certain? Show Notes: Find more from Dr. Sará King here: Where Scie...

When we're aware that events of war and injustice are unfolding wherever we are in the world, we often feel a powerful sense of connection with those who are at the center of the conflict. This week, the invitation with this practice is to put aside ideas and concepts about differences, shame, fear, survival, and to simply see if you can begin to develop a felt sense of common humanity—that all of...

This week, John Taylor shares a five-step practice for finding some peace and freedom after trauma. John's work as a mindfulness teacher is focused on racial equity and reconciliation initiatives. He is a Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction teacher and serves as adjunct faculty for UCSD's Center for Mindfulness. Here, he reminds us that we all have potential for healing and for positive change. All...

This week, Kimberly Brown leads a practice to cultivate curiosity. We might not always think about curiosity as a part of mindfulness, but this powerful quality is what allows our everyday experiences, even the ones we really don't want to be having to get some breathing room and maybe even to shift in unexpected ways. Our curiosity practice can start with the simplest tools we have at hand: Our b...

In this practice from Mindful founding editor Barry Boyce, we investigate the relationship between our heart and mind. What our heart feels is influenced by what our mind perceives, which is sometimes one of the reasons developing kindness, a loving heart, and compassion can be so challenging. The quality of the warmth and openness in our heart emerges not just from generating warmer feelings, but...

Cardiologist Jonathan Fisher leads a body scan to notice sensations in the body and bring awareness to the present moment.

This week, Mindful 's founding editor Barry Boyce leads a "touch and go" practice. In this practice, we're not trying to deal with the issues in our thoughts or with the difficult emotions that might be arising. There's nothing to solve. There's nothing to change. Instead, we're spending time with our mind in this way, and over time, our thoughts can become more transparent and have less power ove...

This week, Barry Boyce leads a practice for mindfulness of the body and our embodied experience because whatever is happening isn't happening in an abstract way—it's happening here in our bodies, so we have to return home to ourselves, to our body. This practice is drawn from a live, guided meditation session from Barry's new course called Come As You Are. Whether you're an experienced meditator o...

This week, Judy Lief leads a meditation for grief and loss. Most of us have come up against the experience of grief and loss over the last several years. These feelings can be hard to hold, even as we see how widespread they are. Judy, who wrote the book Making Friends With Death , says that "There's nothing really to be said about grieving that doesn't sound trite. There's no simple way through i...

When we're under pressure, our ability to care and to lead can feel compromised. Mindfulness can provide a path to cultivate the focus and determination of grit and the care and calm of grace, to learn from growth and change. In this practice to arrive, breathe, and connect, Dr. Lili Powell, a professor at UVA Darden School of Business, offers space to fully arrive in the present moment and make a...

This week, Frank Ostaseski leads a practice to welcome everything. And we hear you—there's a lot going on that you may not feel like welcoming right now. To welcome something doesn't mean we have to like it, and it doesn't mean we have to agree with it; it just means we have to be willing to meet it. In this practice which you can also find in the February 2022 issue of Mindful magazine, Frank Ost...

Dr. Cynda Hylton Rushton, the Anne and George L. Bunting Professor of Clinical Ethics and Professor of Nursing and Pediatrics at the Johns Hopkins University Berman Institute of Bioethics and Schools of Nursing & Medicine, invites us to welcome whatever feelings are present right now and to trust what we discover in body and mind without judgment. Show notes:  More from Cynda Rushton on Mindful.or...

This week, Cheryl Jones leads us in a practice to foster self-acceptance—another of our top guided meditations of 2021. 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 you are healing from perfectionism. We can start to notice whatever is happening within us and around us with curi...

This week, Jenée Johnson leads us in a guided meditation to encourage deep relaxation at any point during the day. With a reminder to listen to our bodies and acknowledge when it's time for us to rest, she shares an effective technique known as quiet sitting to inspire us to simply be. Jenée Johnson is the program innovation leader at the San Francisco Department of Public Health, Mindfulness, Tra...

This week, we bring you one of our top 10 guided meditations of 2021, a practice for allowing the storm of our emotions to pass. Scott Rogers guides us to take the role of observer to difficult emotions, so that we can more easily create the space we need to let them go. Rogers is founder and director of the University of Miami School of Law's Mindfulness in Law Program where he integrates mindful...