Posts

A 12 Minute Meditation on Our Relationship to Thoughts

Image
Collecting Art, take a look All day long, mostly without our even noticing, the mind is generating thousands of thoughts. What is our relationship to thoughts? Not only does the mind have a mind of its own, but, literally, we can have thoughts about not having thoughts. We get in our heads that if there were no thoughts we would be at peace, but even that’s just another thought. It’s very easy to villainize thought as some kind of enemy of practice. We get in our heads that if there were no thoughts we would be at peace, but even that’s just another thought. So, we’ll be using a noting practice, where we practice seeing thoughts clearly as they arise, gently noting them, and returning to the breath and body. If there is no mindfulness of mind, we live in a world completely defined by our thoughts. Here, we let go of that orientation and just see things as they are. When we see how compulsively these thoughts repeat themselves, we begin to understand the circular, repetitive nature of ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Can We Normalize Meditation Breaks on Family Hikes?

Image
Collecting Art, take a look Lifestyle Can We Normalize Meditation Breaks on Family Hikes? When hiking, I used to power walk to the top for a breathless peek at the view. Then, my toddler taught me to exhale along the way. Share Icon Share Bookmark Icon Save Photo: Canva For three euphoric months, a newly opened climbing gym near my house allowed me to bring a dozen rowdy toddlers from my kids’ friend group to strap into their sit harnesses for a brief, adorably awkward clamber up the rock wall. Alas, all good things must come to an end, especially the ones that should never have been allowed in the first place. Just as we were gearing up for new enrollments, the gym owners informed us that their insurance agent cautioned them against welcoming such young aspiring mountaineers into their space. As a twin toddler mom suddenly left with an adventurous activity void and a gaggle of rambunctious littles, I set out to find the one guide in San Miguel de Allende who would agree to pivot, ta...
Post a Comment
Read more

A Meditation on the Art of Stopping (Extended)

Image
Collecting Art, take a look In this practice, teacher Shalini Bahl reminds us that in its simplest form, mindfulness is just about stopping—stopping to notice, to breathe, to gently interrupt our engrained habits of thought with our quiet presence. We often think of mindfulness and meditation as a drawn-out, sustained exercise—when in reality, they’re just a collection of micro-moments of stopping, breathing, really noticing our own bodies and our own lives, getting distracted, and then coming back again. Over and over. As this week’s teacher Shalini Bahl puts it, today’s guided practice is about the art of stopping: letting go of our regular habits of the mind—the pushing, pulling, running in circles— and instead just being for a moment. This is an extended practice, but as a bonus, we’re also sharing a micro-practice version below that you can take into busy days. And don’t miss Shalini’s article on Mindful.org that’s all about the power of micro-practices to affect our daily cho...
Post a Comment
Read more

This New Take on Moving Meditation Levels Up Your Daily Walk

Image
Collecting Art, take a look If you buy through our links, we may earn an affiliate commission. This supports our mission to get more people active and outside. Learn about Outside Onlines affiliate link policy The integration of mindfulness and movement is not a new endeavor. In fact, one could argue that any type of movement becomes mindful when you’re striving for a certain level of awareness. But sometimes, getting intentional about how you’re moving can transform your chosen activity into something approximating meditation—as with the trend of “walking yoga.” Walking yoga is an approach to walking meditation that asks that you meet the moment—in this case, being aware of your steps—and focusing less on your thoughts and more on what you’re doing and the world around you. The practice has been gaining popularity in recent months, mentioned in movement programs there’s even a designated app and across social media. At its core, walking yoga is about aligning your breath with your ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Research Finds Benefits of Meditation Can Occur in 30 Seconds

Image
Collecting Art, take a look If finding the time or the capacity to sit in stillness has prevented you from experiencing the benefits of meditation, recent research has good news: even a super short practice can be effective. A quick search for “short guided meditation” pulls up videos and apps featuring meditations of 3 to 5 minutes, an incredibly accessible entry point. But for those with a bit more experience, an article published in journal Springer in March 2026 finds that the benefits of meditation can be seen in brain scans just 30 seconds. The Benefits of Meditation—But Faster Quieting your mind and tuning in with your breath has been proven to ease symptoms of depression, stress, and anxiety while also boosting your brain power and ability to emotionally self-regulate. But even with all of this ancient spiritual and modern scientific evidence, sitting in silence can be tough. Learning to switch off your monkey mind—known as chitta vritti nirodha, which Patanjali considers th...
Post a Comment
Read more

Attention! How Mindfulness Training Is Helping People Reclaim Their Ability to Focus

Image
Collecting Art, take a look In 2025, mindfulness teacher Andrew Safer tracked the effects of attention training for workshop participants with ADHD. What he learned has implications for all of us. It seems that distraction is the oxygen we breathe nowadays, with infinite bits of information at our restless fingertips. Each time I open my Edge browser, captivating news headlines and flashy images assault me. Half the time, I forget where I was headed! Is the effort to maintain control of our attention a fool’s errand? Nicholas Carr, in his best-seller, The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, notes that more than a few top journalists have stopped reading books because 1 they can easily find the information they need at Wikipedia and other online sources, and 2 their attention spans have withered. Mindfulness meditation nudges us in the opposite direction. Rather than surround ourselves with endless options, we simplify. The practice has us paying attention to this pre...
Post a Comment
Read more

Healthy Sleep Can’t Be Forced. Try this Sleep Meditation, Instead

Image
Collecting Art, take a look Striving and stress make getting a healthy sleep more challenging. Try this guided meditation to help you settle down and drift off. Are you getting enough healthy sleep? If you’re like many of us, your answer is no. And not getting the rest we crave can be quite painful and can exacerbate other health problems. As with pretty much anything health-related, we may know better, but we don’t stick to what we’d tell our best friend: Keep to a regular bedtime and a consistent routine, and avoid whatever disrupts sleep, like caffeine, alcohol, and screens. Not that complicated, but what’s often hardest is what’s frustratingly out of our full control. Even following solid advice, sometimes we suffer through rotten nights, feeling anxious or struggling to settle ourselves. We have nothing but empathy for a friend with insomnia, yet as we lie awake in the dark we may not give ourselves the same degree of care. A good place to start, then, might be an adapted versi...
Post a Comment
Read more