Jon Kabat-Zinn’s Simple Guide to Meditation

Meditation is a practice that involves using a variety of mindfulness techniques to create or achieve a calming mental state and physical well-being. Meditation uses a blend of mental focus, awareness, pointed observation, and breathing exercises to give you a stable mindset, helping you process your emotions and thoughts so that you can live a more fulfilling, present life. According to scientific research, regular meditation can have a therapeutic effect on your mental health and wellness while helping with stress reduction. There are many types of meditation, including guided, Kundalini, mindfulness, Transcendental, and zen, all of which use their own unique techniques to help meditators obtain a calming mental state.

When developing your own mindfulness practice, consider these meditation techniques:

1. 1. Breath awareness: Breath awareness is a meditative practice that focuses on breathing, using deep inhalation and exhalation to push out any intrusive or banal thoughts. This meditation style aims to prevent the mind from wandering, allowing you to clear your thoughts and establish emotional stability during your session.
2. 2. Guided: Guided meditation refers to an instructor-led meditation session, performed live during a meditation course or via pre-recorded audio, which you can listen to online or using a meditation app on your phone. The guider speaks in a soothing voice, guiding the listener through their meditation. They may instruct the meditator to do a body scan (mentally visiting the various parts of your body), hold their breaths for a certain number of seconds, or form specific visualizations in their minds.
3. 3. Kundalini: Part of the popular yoga practice, Kundalini meditation uses a combination of deep breathing, mantras, and hand movements, and mantra meditation to wake and distribute dormant energy in the body.
4. 4. Loving-kindness: Loving-kindness meditation, or Metta meditation, centers compassion, directing the meditator to feel love and kindness towards everyone in their lives, even those they consider their enemies. The meditation’s goal is to cultivate feelings of love and kindness that can erase the negative thoughts and feelings that cause stress.
5. 5. Mindfulness: Mindful meditation is a form of meditation that focuses on staying in the present moment and being completely aware of your body and the surrounding environment. This form of meditation can entail a quick check of your current public surroundings or a deep, quiet observation of your room at home. The goal of mindfulness meditation is to achieve a relaxed state of awareness without judging your thoughts, body, or environment.
6. 6. Progressive: Progressive relaxation, or body scan meditation, focuses on scanning the body for areas of stress or tension. In this meditation technique, users focus on body awareness, starting at one end, slowly combing their way through, and releasing each point of physical stress as they identify them.
7. 7. Transcendental: Transcendental meditation, created by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, uses the repetition of a silent mantra to help rise above oneself. This meditation practice introduces bubbles of thought into the mind gradually, causing a state of de-stress and relaxation.
8. 8. Vipassanā: With links to early Buddhism, vipassanā meditation uses concentration and awareness to help push out mental impurities and strip away the illusions that muddy the way we see the world. Liberation and self-transformation are the primary goals of vipassanā, commonly practiced by Buddhists in Southeast Asia. In Buddhism, vipassanā (also spelled vipaśyanā) is a term that means “insight” or “without seeing.”
9. 9. Walking meditation: Also known as “movement meditation,” walking meditation uses gentle, low-impact movement to set the mind wandering. Walking, gardening, and qigong—a gentle form of martial art that combines breath with slow and steady movements—are all popular movement meditation forms.
10. 10. Zen: Zen meditation is a Buddhist tradition that allows the meditator insight into how their mind works. This meditation style is a common spiritual practice in Buddhism that uses pointed observation to help the meditator process and address core issues, providing clarity and increasing compassion.

Professor Jon Kabat-Zinn is the founder of the Stress Reduction Clinic and the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. In his view, learning how to meditate doesn’t need to be complicated: the simplest forms of meditation focus on the breath, partly because it’s so intuitive, but also because doing so makes us relax. Here’s a simple guide to meditation developed by Jon:

1. 1. Adopt a posture. It doesn’t matter whether you’re lying down, sitting in a chair, or sitting on the floor. You simply need to assume a position that “embodies wakefulness and dignity.” Beginners may find that sitting on a chair is the easiest option. Decide the length of your meditation session and set a reminder or alarm, if necessary.
2. 2. Drop in. When you embark on formal meditation, try not to frame it as setting off to achieve a goal—it should be quite the opposite. Meditation is not a “doing”—it’s an “experiencing.” It’s helpful to think about the start as simply “dropping in” to your being. Feel what it’s like to inhabit your body at the present moment: sitting where it’s sitting with the back positioned as it is and its weight anchoring you. If it helps, you can shut your eyes, but you can keep them open if you prefer.
3. 3. Be “breathed.” Avoid pushing and pulling your breath; instead, allow yourself to “be breathed” by your body. Notice the physical sensations. They might be most obvious just inside the nose—but where else can you feel them? Play around, shining the spotlight of your attention on different places: the chest, say, or the stomach. Some find that the stomach is a helpful location to tune into because it’s far from the chatter of your brain. Now, notice the breath itself and the spaces between, and ride the ins and outs like a wave. “Rest in awareness of that cycle,” says Jon.
4. 4. Guide your mind. Your thoughts will wander. This isn’t a failure but merely a natural feature of having a mind, so avoid judging yourself. Instead, simply become aware that your attention has moved elsewhere, which, in itself, is a mindful act. Next, note what is on your mind completely dispassionately. Then invite your mind to return to the feelings of the breath within the body once more, and inhabit the present moment. This may happen time and time again—but be reassured: When the mind wanders, it’s not a break from the meditation; it’s an inextricable part of the meditation.
5. 5. Finish mindfully. Whenever your meditation comes to an end, invite your eyes to open if they have been shut. Adjust your posture, and ready yourself to get up. As you transition out of formal meditation, maintain your awareness of the breath, which is a way of rehearsing the crucial principle that meditation and life itself are ultimately the same.

Find something comfortable to sit or lie on, grab a MasterClass Annual Membership, and dial into the present moment with Jon Kabat-Zinn, the father of the Western mindfulness movement. From formal meditation exercises to examinations of the science behind mindfulness, Jon will prepare you for the most important practice of them all: life itself.