Today's Friday • 11 mins read
— By Dr. Sandip Roy.
If you’ve been wanting to try mindfulness meditation, this step-by-step, beginner-friendly guide is here to help. Even if you have zero prior experience, you will learn to meditate mindfully.
Mindfulness is nonjudgmental awareness of present-moment experiences. It is one of the most studied topics in positive psychology, and research shows many benefits.
Mindfulness is not a state of thoughtlessness. It’s a state in which you focus and observe sensations, thoughts, feelings, and events happening right now, away from both the future and the past.
You can be mindful in many ways, like mindful breathing, mindful walking, and mindful eating. The best way for beginners is through mindfulness meditation (this guide).
[Use the link at the end to download the free “Mindfulness Meditation Guide PDF.” Learn it and then launch your practice. You’ll be ready to start mini-workshops to teach others after 6–8 weeks of self-practice.]
“Be happy in the moment, that’s enough. Each moment is all we need, not more.” ― Mother Teresa
Learn how to do so in this step-by-step guide:
7-Step Beginner Guide To Mindfulness Meditation
- Breathe in deeply, then breathe out slowly and let your body relax.
- Gently set aside worries and concerns, asking your mind for a brief pause.
- Bring full awareness to your breath, noticing sensations at nose, chest, and belly.
- Count each breath slowly from one to ten, returning attention gently when it wanders.
- Sink into the present moment, letting sights, sounds, and thoughts fade without grabbing you.
- Accept thoughts and emotions as they arise, observe them without judgment, then let them pass.
- Stay a few moments in your state of peaceful awareness, then open your eyes and reorient gently.
1: Breathe in deeply, and breathe out slowly, letting yourself relax.
Close your eyes and take a deep breath, hold briefly, then exhale slowly. Take a few more deep, calming breaths until your body relaxes.
Notice the many sounds around you, then choose one and focus on it with curious attention. Explore it: where it comes from, how you would describe it, and what other sounds it resembles.
After a short while, let that sound go and find another to examine.
If your mind drifts, acknowledge the thought and gently return to listening. All along, keep breathing slowly and releasing with each out-breath.
You can practice this anytime without a full meditation session.
[Learn how to relax by ➜ stimulating your vagus nerve.]
2: Gently ask your mind to keep aside all your worries and concerns.
Drop all your concerns now, like unshouldering a heavy bag.
Imagine putting your worries into a bag and setting it down beside you.
If that feels uncomfortable, remind yourself you are only putting them aside for a few minutes. You can pick up the bag after the session, any time you wish.
Feel the weight lift as you set the bag down, notice the relief, and use that space to guide your attention to the present.
Thinking is natural, and your mind will produce thoughts. The idea is to unhook it from past memories and future worries, so that you can focus on one chosen thought.
3: Bring more awareness to breathing, feeling it with your senses.
Now bring your full awareness to the sensation of your breathing.
Focus fully on the air movements in your breath. Notice the cool air as you inhale and the warm air as you exhale.
Taste the air if you can: dry, salty, or fresh. Listen to the whoosh of each breath. Feel your chest rise and fall, belly expand and contract.
Track the air’s path from the nostrils down the windpipe to the lungs and the tiny air sacs.
Pause briefly after an inhale to sense gas exchange: oxygen in, carbon dioxide out. Then follow the breath back out through the nose.
With each inhalation, tell your mind you are breathing in calmness and relaxation. With each exhalation, tell yourself you are breathing out the stresses and anxieties.
4: Start counting your breaths slowly. Bring your mind back if it wanders.
Start a soft count of each breath from 1 to 50. Pause briefly at fifty, then begin again at one.
Expect the mind to wander; that’s normal. When you notice attention has drifted, gently say to yourself, “Let’s get back to counting,” smile, and return to one.
If it happens again, do the same. No judgment, no struggle. Just a gentle reminder to return to breath-counting.
Why count the breath? Because the breath is always with you. Counting it gives the mind a simple, repeatable task, anchoring it to the present.
Do not chase or push away thoughts. Let them arise, notice them, and allow them to pass. As if your thoughts are clouds crossing the sky of your mind. Observe them without latching on.
You cannot fail at mindfulness. Each time you notice your attention has wandered, and you bring it back, you are being mindful. Noticing distraction is itself mindfulness.
Try this gentle redirection:
“I notice my thoughts, but I choose not to let them carry me away. When I notice my mind is not where I want it to be, I gently ask it to return.”
5: Get immersed in the present, losing consciousness of your surroundings.
Immerse yourself more and more in the present moment. Open your entire consciousness to the unfolding experience of the present moment.
This is the crucial stage in which you lose awareness of your surroundings and become semi-conscious. You become so relaxed that your body feels lighter, your mind relieved and even ecstatic, and you lose track of everything but the awareness of your being.
This is the stage of stabilizing the mindfulness state into a state of Mindful Presence.
Mindfulness and consciousness are inextricably intertwined concepts. Things in our consciousness can come from external (environment) or internal (thoughts, emotions, intentions, memories, and sensations) inputs.
When we eliminate external awareness in mindfulness, we allow the rise of the mindful presence. Also called conscious presence, it is defined as “the subjective sense of the reality of the world and of the self within the world” (Seth, et al., 2012).
At this point, your mindfulness state gets stabilized and evolves into pure awareness. This is the state of mindful presence. As this presence grows, so does your sense of being.
Actually, this is a stage when you don’t have much to do; most of this stage happens on its own.
When you notice the emergence of mindful presence, your goal is to hold on to it without letting your mind drift. It’s a fleeting experience at first, and it’s gone before you can truly appreciate it. It becomes longer with practice.
You are being being. Doing and having no longer contain little moments of being; instead, being is increasingly the ongoing space through which ripples of doing and having come and go. — Rick Hanson. Ph.D.
The brain areas thought to be involved in conscious presence are the orbitofrontal cortex, the anterior cingulate cortex, and the insula (Critchley et al., 2004; Seth et al., 2012).
6: Accept the thoughts and emotions moving across your mind just as they are.
This step is perhaps the most important one in your practice of mindfulness meditation. It involves understanding yourself and accepting your thoughts and emotions.
Acceptance is a key attitude in mindfulness meditation. It can relieve us of many burdens, such as shame and regret. Remember, mindful presence is a necessary precondition for acceptance and self-awareness.
Acceptance in mindfulness is trying to see the situation as it is now, and allowing your thoughts and feelings to “be” just as they are, without adding your interpretations.
Acceptance is an active state. So, open yourself up and make room for the thoughts, feelings, and sensations, whether painful, pleasant, or neutral, that pass through your mind.
Acceptance begins with acknowledging your discomfort and suffering. You can’t move on from where you are if you don’t acknowledge where you are and what is currently happening.
Once you have acknowledged your current situation or your painful past, label the emotion it brings. Like, “I’m feeling angry presently.”
Then, be curious about it and inquire, “Where did this feeling come from? Where am I feeling it?”
Then, relax that part where the feeling hurts, and release it, “I have accepted it and I now release it.”
If you see a beautiful cow standing at your door, you know it won’t be there forever. You accept its presence but do not accompany it.
Similarly, let yourself accept and embrace your thoughts and feelings, wishes and plans, imaginations and memories that arise in your mind.
7: Stay for a few moments in your state of peaceful awareness before exiting the session.
Feel a growing sense of peaceful awareness within as you keep settling into a state of non-doing.
Russ Harris, an internationally acclaimed Acceptance and Commitment Therapy trainer and author of the world’s best-selling ACT book, says:
Self-acceptance trumps self-esteem. True success is living by your values. Hold your values lightly, but pursue them vigorously. Don’t obsess about the outcome; get passionate about the process.
In this final stage, let the moments pass by and notice how it feels not to do anything apart from sitting there in a state of peaceful awareness.
Once you are there in a state of peaceful awareness, continue being in that state as long as you want.
Finally, you may bring the mindfulness session to an end by opening your eyes, stretching out your hands, and getting up.
“Few of us ever live in the present. We are forever anticipating what is to come or remembering what has gone.” ― Louis L’Amour
Infographic: A Beginner’s Guide To Mindfulness Steps
Tips For Beginners at Mindfulness
Top Tip: Record the steps on your phone in your voice.
- Read and Record: Reading the whole post would take around 15 minutes. Once done, record the steps on your mobile in your voice. Listening to your own voice helps you focus and perform the process better.
- Place and Posture: Find a comfortable place where you will not get disturbed or interrupted. You may sit on a chair, a cushion on the floor, or lie down on a yoga mat. Your posture should be both relaxed and alert, with your back reasonably straight if sitting.
- Timing: Decide how long you’re going to dedicate. Set a timer. You can meditate for as short or as long as you like. Start with around 2-5 minutes. Target 10-minute sessions in 3 weeks.
- Regularity: It may not come easily at first. Your first attempt may be shaky and imperfect, but you will be one practice ahead. Just give it some patience and discipline, and you will soon be good at mindfulness.
- Do It Today: Give it an honest attempt today. Do not postpone it until tomorrow; do it now, even if for 2 minutes. As soon as you finish reading this, find a distraction-free place, and do it. You can easily do it daily, as 10 minutes of 24 hours is 0.7% of your day.
Why does focus on breathing matter in mindfulness meditation?
A crucial process in mindfulness meditation is Interoceptive Attention (IA), our ability to recognize and analyze internal bodily sensations, like digestion, blood circulation, and breathing. IA in mindfulness practice increases functional neuroplasticity in the medial and anterior insula of the brain, areas that are linked to the awareness of the present moment (Craig, 2009).
Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) training has been linked to decreases in negative emotion and social anxiety symptom severity (Goldin, 2013).
Final Words
- Download a rich PDF of this guide (Right-click and Save the link.)
The goals of mindfulness practice are to become more aware of one’s own mental processes, focus on the work at hand, become flexible, recognize our biases and judgments, and respond with compassion.
Read through this whole post first to get a fair idea of the steps. Then record them on your phone in your own voice, right away (you can do a better recording next time). Let it play when you start your first session of 7-Step Mindfulness meditation.
So start your self-practice today. Prepare yourself in the coming weeks to set up a place to hold mini-workshops and teach others this easy and effective method.
Don’t wait until tomorrow to make your move. Even if you’re considering doing it at another time, remind yourself you already know how to do it. You have your breath with you, so why not do it now?
√ Please share it with someone if you found this helpful.
√ Also Read: 20 Most Practical Mindful Eating Techniques (PDF)
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