What Is Mindfulness Meditation? A Simple Guide to Getting Started 💜
Lovely friends,
I’ve been creating guided meditations since 2007, and one of the things I’ve learned in all those years is that people put an incredible amount of pressure on themselves to meditate correctly. They think they’re supposed to sit perfectly still, completely empty their mind, feel peaceful within thirty seconds, and somehow stay there without remembering the laundry, tomorrow’s appointment, the weird thing somebody said three days ago, or the fact that their nose suddenly itches.
Then their mind wanders and they think, Well, I’m terrible at meditation.
You’re not.
Your mind wandered because that’s what minds do.
And honestly, understanding that is a pretty good place to begin talking about mindfulness.
What Is Mindfulness Meditation?
At its simplest, mindfulness meditation is the practice of intentionally paying attention to what is happening in the present moment. You might notice your breathing, sensations in your body, sounds around you, your thoughts, or your emotions. When your attention wanders, which it will, you notice that too and gently bring your attention back.
That last part is important because mindfulness isn’t about becoming completely thoughtless.
I’ve heard people say for years that they can’t meditate because they can’t shut their brain off. I can’t shut mine off either. I don’t think I’d particularly want to.
The practice is learning to notice where your attention went without immediately getting swept away by it.
Maybe you’re focusing on your breathing and suddenly you’re planning dinner. At some point you realize, Oh, I’m planning dinner.
That’s mindfulness.
You noticed.
You don’t need to get irritated with yourself, start the meditation over, or decide you’ve ruined it. You simply return your attention to your breath.
Five seconds later you may be mentally reorganizing the garage.
Come back again.
That’s the practice.
Mindfulness Is Really About Paying Attention
I think the word mindfulness sometimes makes the whole thing sound more complicated than it is.
Most of us spend an enormous amount of time physically doing one thing while mentally doing something completely different. We’re in the shower thinking about work. We’re eating lunch while scrolling through our phones. We’re having a conversation while mentally preparing what we’re going to say next. We’re trying to fall asleep while reviewing everything that happened during the day and occasionally adding a few imaginary problems from tomorrow just to keep things interesting.
Mindfulness asks us to notice where we actually are.
If you’re drinking coffee, you can feel the warmth of the cup, smell the coffee, taste it, and actually be there for a minute.
If you’re walking your dog, you can notice the air, the movement of your body, the sounds around you, and whatever your dog has apparently decided needs twenty-seven minutes of investigation.
That can be mindfulness.
You don’t always need candles, music, a meditation cushion, or twenty uninterrupted minutes.
Sometimes mindfulness is simply realizing, I’m here.
You Are Not Trying to Stop Your Thoughts
If I could clear up one misconception about meditation forever, this would probably be it.
You do not need to stop thinking in order to meditate.
Thoughts are going to appear because your brain is doing its job. Some days your mind may settle fairly quickly, while other days it may behave like someone dumped a box of puzzle pieces onto the floor and told you to organize them immediately.
I’ve had both kinds of meditation.
The skill you’re developing isn’t the ability to prevent thoughts from appearing. You’re practicing the ability to notice a thought without automatically following it wherever it wants to go.
Imagine you’re sitting quietly and suddenly think:
I need to email that person.
That thought can become:
I need to email them because I forgot yesterday, and now they’re probably wondering why I haven’t answered, and I really should be better about answering emails, and speaking of email I still haven’t dealt with that other thing…
And we’re gone.
Mindfulness gives us a tiny moment where we can notice, There’s a thought about email.
Then we return to the breath.
That little bit of space between noticing something and automatically running with it is one of the things I find most valuable about mindfulness.
What Does “Without Judgment” Actually Mean?
You’ll often hear mindfulness described as paying attention to the present moment without judgment, and I think this phrase can confuse people too.
It doesn’t mean you stop having opinions or lose the ability to recognize when something is unpleasant.
If your back hurts while you’re sitting, mindfulness doesn’t require you to think, This is wonderful.
You can notice, My back hurts.
The judgment often arrives immediately afterward:
My back hurts. I’m getting old. Why does everything hurt? I shouldn’t have sat like this. I’m terrible at meditation. I knew this wasn’t going to work.
We’ve gone from one physical sensation to a complete personal crisis in about eight seconds.
Mindfulness helps us notice that progression.
There’s the sensation.
Then there’s the story we’re telling ourselves about the sensation.
Those aren’t always the same thing.
That awareness can be surprisingly useful outside meditation too.
Why I Think Mindfulness Helps in Everyday Life
For me, the real value of meditation isn’t what happens while we’re sitting with our eyes closed.
It’s what begins happening when our eyes are open.
If I’m practicing noticing my thoughts during meditation, I may become a little quicker at noticing them when I’m irritated, anxious, impatient, or about to react to something. I might catch myself before I send the text, answer the email, make the assumption, or spend the next hour mentally arguing with somebody who isn’t even in the room.
I am still going to get irritated sometimes.
Meditation has not transformed me into a person who floats peacefully through every inconvenience.
But awareness gives us options.
If I can notice, Wow, I am really worked up about this, I have a chance to decide what I want to do next instead of letting the emotion make the decision for me.
Sometimes I still make the spicy decision.
I’m an Aries. We’re doing our best here.
But at least I know I’m making it. 😂
What Does Research Say About Mindfulness?
Mindfulness has become much more widely studied over the years, particularly through programs such as Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, commonly called MBSR.
Research has explored mindfulness practices in relation to stress, anxiety, attention, emotional regulation, sleep, pain, and overall well-being. Some studies and research reviews have found benefits in these areas, although the size of those benefits varies and mindfulness isn’t a magic solution for every person or every problem.
I think that’s important to say because wellness practices have a tendency to get oversold.
Meditation can be a wonderful supportive practice. It can help us develop awareness, create moments of calm, and change the way we relate to thoughts and emotions. It isn’t a replacement for medical care, mental health treatment, medication, or whatever professional support someone may need.
I don’t need meditation to cure everything in order to believe it’s valuable.
I’ve spent years creating and practicing meditation because I’ve seen how useful it can be when it becomes something people can actually incorporate into their lives.
And that word practice matters.
You Don’t Have to Meditate for an Hour
I create longer meditations, and I personally love giving people enough time to settle into an experience. But that doesn’t mean everybody needs to begin with a 30-minute or hour-long meditation.
If you’re brand new, five minutes is fine.
Seriously.
Sit down for five minutes and pay attention to your breathing. If your mind wanders twenty-seven times, notice it twenty-seven times and return to your breath twenty-seven times.
You meditated.
I would rather have somebody practice for five minutes regularly and discover that it genuinely helps them than force themselves through thirty miserable minutes because someone told them that’s how long spiritual people meditate.
You can always stay longer later.
A Simple Mindfulness Meditation for Beginners
If you’d like to try mindfulness meditation right now, get comfortable somewhere you won’t need to do anything for a few minutes. You can sit in a chair, on the couch, on the floor, or anywhere else that allows your body to relax without falling asleep immediately.
You don’t need a special position.
Let your hands rest comfortably and allow your eyes to close if that feels good. If closing your eyes makes you uncomfortable, keep them softly open and let your gaze rest somewhere in front of you.
Take a normal breath.
You don’t need to breathe in a special way.
Notice what breathing feels like.
Maybe you feel the air moving through your nose. Maybe you notice your chest rising and falling, or your belly moving with each breath. Pick whichever sensation is easiest for you to notice and let that become your anchor.
At some point, you’ll realize you’re thinking about something else.
That’s okay.
Notice where your mind went, and gently bring your attention back to the physical feeling of breathing.
You may repeat that process again and again.
That’s mindfulness meditation.
It really can be that simple.
What If Sitting Still Makes You More Anxious?
This deserves to be talked about because meditation isn’t automatically relaxing for everybody.
Some people sit down, close their eyes, and immediately become more aware of thoughts, emotions, physical sensations, or anxiety that they’ve been staying busy enough to avoid noticing. People with certain trauma histories may also find some meditation practices uncomfortable or activating.
You don’t have to force yourself through that.
Try keeping your eyes open. Try a shorter practice. Focus on something outside your body, such as sounds in the room, instead of focusing internally. Walking meditation may feel much better than sitting meditation.
You can also work with a qualified mental health professional if meditation is bringing up distressing material.
I don’t believe spiritual growth requires us to overwhelm ourselves.
We can work with ourselves where we actually are.
Mindfulness Doesn’t Have to Happen During Meditation
This may be my favorite part of mindfulness because it means we can practice it anywhere.
You can practice while washing dishes by actually feeling the water and paying attention to what your hands are doing.
You can practice while eating by slowing down enough to taste your food instead of inhaling it while looking at your phone.
You can practice while walking by noticing the feeling of your feet touching the ground.
You can practice during a conversation by noticing when you’ve stopped listening and started preparing your response.
And you can practice when you’re upset.
That doesn’t mean pretending you’re calm.
You might simply notice:
I’m angry.
My shoulders are tight.
I’m holding my breath.
I keep replaying the same thought.
Now you’re aware of what’s happening.
Maybe you take a breath before doing anything about it.
That tiny pause can change a lot.
Mindfulness, Intuition, and Spirit
This is where mindfulness naturally overlaps with my spiritual work.
I talk a lot about intuition, Spirit, angels, Reiki, and learning to recognize what we’re sensing. One of the challenges people run into is that there is already so much noise happening inside their heads that they’re trying to find intuition in the middle of twenty other conversations.
Mindfulness can help us become familiar with our own mental patterns.
You start recognizing what worry feels like. You notice the repetitive thought loops. You become aware of how quickly fear starts building a future that hasn’t happened yet.
That awareness can make it easier to recognize when something feels different.
I don’t think every quiet thought is intuition, and I don’t think mindfulness automatically makes someone psychic. What it can do is help us become better acquainted with our own minds.
That’s incredibly useful when we’re learning discernment.
It’s much easier to recognize your intuitive voice when you’ve spent some time learning what all the other voices sound like.
Mindfulness and Guided Meditation Are a Little Different
Because I’ve been creating guided meditations since 2007, this distinction is worth explaining.
In a basic mindfulness meditation, the focus is usually on present-moment awareness. You might use the breath, body sensations, sounds, thoughts, or emotions as the object of attention.
A guided meditation can take you somewhere else entirely.
I may guide you through a visualization, invite you to work with an angel, lead you through grounding or energy clearing, help you imagine releasing something, or create a meditation around sleep, confidence, intuition, healing, or manifestation.
There can still be mindfulness within that experience.
You’re noticing your breathing. You’re noticing sensations. You’re becoming aware of thoughts and emotions. You’re practicing presence while also working with imagery and intention.
I don’t think we have to pick one meditation style and declare it the winner.
Different practices do different things.
Sometimes I want a journey.
Sometimes I need five quiet minutes and my breath.
What If You Keep Falling Asleep?
I get this question too.
If you fall asleep every single time you meditate, your body may simply be tired.
That’s information.
If you specifically want to practice mindfulness while awake, try sitting instead of lying down. Practice earlier in the day rather than right before bed. Keep your eyes slightly open or choose walking meditation.
But if you’re using a meditation for sleep and you fall asleep?
Congratulations.
It worked. 😂
I don’t think we need to make that complicated either.
How Often Should You Practice Mindfulness?
There isn’t one perfect schedule.
Regular practice is generally more useful than doing one heroic meditation every few weeks, but what “regular” looks like depends on your life.
Maybe you start with five minutes in the morning.
Maybe you practice for ten minutes after work.
Maybe you use a guided meditation several times a week and practice little moments of mindfulness throughout the day.
I like habits that can survive real life.
If your meditation routine only works when nobody needs you, nothing goes wrong, the house is quiet, you’re perfectly rested, and you have forty uninterrupted minutes available, you’re going to have a hard time keeping it.
Make it fit your life instead of waiting for your life to fit your meditation practice.
What I’ve Learned From Years of Meditation
When I started working with meditation, I probably thought the peaceful part was the point.
I understand it differently now.
Peace is lovely when it comes, and sometimes meditation can bring us into a deeply relaxed state. But some of my most useful meditation practices haven’t been particularly peaceful. They’ve shown me what I was thinking, what I was avoiding, where I was holding tension, or how quickly my mind was trying to drag me ten steps into the future.
Mindfulness gives us a way to notice ourselves while we’re actually living.
And once you start noticing, you have choices.
You can notice that you’re exhausted before you’re completely depleted. You can notice that a conversation is making you uncomfortable before you’ve agreed to something you don’t want to do. You can notice that your mind has spent twenty minutes imagining everything that could go wrong and bring yourself back to what is actually happening right now.
You won’t catch it every time.
Neither do I.
We’re human beings with busy brains living busy lives. The goal isn’t perfection.
For me, the practice has become very simple.
Notice.
Come back.
And when you wander again, come back again.
You can do that with your breath.
You can do it with your thoughts.
And sometimes you can do it with your whole life.
Much love,
Lisa Beachy 💜
Practice With Me
If you’re new to meditation or you’ve been practicing for years, I share guided meditations for relaxation, grounding, sleep, intuition, spiritual development, Reiki, and more on my Guided Meditations by Lisa Beachy YouTube channel.
You don’t need to be good at meditation before you begin. Pick something that speaks to you, get comfortable, and let me guide you through it.
About Lisa Beachy
Lisa Beachy is a Reiki Master, spiritual intuitive, and guided meditation creator who has been creating and sharing guided meditations online since 2007. Her work combines practical meditation, Reiki, intuition, angelic support, and spiritual development in ways designed to fit into everyday life.
Originally published May 16, 2019 · Updated October 14, 2026 · By Lisa Beachy
