5-Minute Guided Meditation
Five minutes, a calm voice and a bowl at each end. Press Start: no account, no trial and nothing to install.
Level 1 · Arrive
Arrive
5 min · Sounds, body, breath
Settle in and find the breath. After a week or two you could try level 2, Steady. Levels are only a suggestion.
Not therapy. Open your eyes, move, or stop if you feel panicky, numb or flooded. With trauma or PTSD, practise with a professional. SourcesTerms
Your session
How this works: Method, 10 sources, Checked against 1 worked example,
How this works
Method
Every session is a script we wrote, following the order of the MBSR and MBCT courses (settling and the breath first, then the body, noting, kindness and open awareness). The voice is Kokoro, an open speech model, rendered once into a single audio file per session with its bells and pauses; each sentence is checked by a speech recogniser and a quality score before it is kept. Minutes are counted from what actually played, and stay in your browser.
Sources
- Basso et al., Brief, daily meditation enhances attention, memory, mood, and emotional regulation in non-experienced meditators, Behavioural Brain Research (2019)
- NCCIH, Meditation and Mindfulness: Effectiveness and Safety
- Kokoro-82M, an open speech model (Apache-2.0) (v1.0)
- Goyal et al., Meditation programs for psychological stress and well-being: a systematic review and meta-analysis, JAMA Internal Medicine (2014)
- Galante et al., Mindfulness-based programmes for mental health promotion in adults in nonclinical settings, PLOS Medicine (2021)
- Rusch et al., The effect of mindfulness meditation on sleep quality: a meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences (2019)
- Zeng et al., The effect of loving-kindness meditation on positive emotions: a meta-analytic review, Frontiers in Psychology (2015)
- Farias et al., Adverse events in meditation practices and meditation-based therapies: a systematic review, Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica (2020)
- Britton et al., Defining and measuring meditation-related adverse effects in mindfulness-based programs, Clinical Psychological Science (2021)
- Kabat-Zinn, An outpatient program in behavioral medicine for chronic pain patients based on the practice of mindfulness meditation, General Hospital Psychiatry (1982)
How it’s tested
One worked example for this page is checked by automated tests before every release: given the inputs, the tool must show the expected answer.
Limits
Not therapy. Open your eyes, move, or stop if you feel panicky, numb or flooded. With trauma or PTSD, practise with a professional.
Changes
- First version: six levels from 3 to 20 minutes, a sleep body scan that fades out, a bells-only timer, two voices, six scenes and offline listening.
What the 5 minutes are like
The five minutes move your attention in from the outside: first the sounds around you, then the places where your body is held up, then the breath, in one place you choose. After that the voice mostly steps back, coming in now and then to remind you that drifting off and coming back is the whole exercise.
Of its 5:00, about 2 minutes 38 seconds is the voice speaking and the rest is quiet. The longest quiet stretch is 28 seconds, starting at 3:13.
The session, minute by minute
Each line the voice says, when it starts, and how long the quiet after it lasts (in the Nicole voice).
| At | You hear | Then quiet for |
|---|---|---|
| 0:06 | Hello. | 3 s |
| 0:17 | Settle into a position that's comfortable, and lets you stay awake. | 3 s |
| 0:32 | Close your eyes if that feels okay. | 4 s |
| 0:48 | Start with what you can hear. | 8 s |
| 1:15 | Now feel your body where it touches something. | 6 s |
| 1:37 | Notice your breath, the way it is right now. | 3 s |
| 1:52 | Pick one place to feel it. | 4 s |
| 2:07 | If paying attention to your breath feels uncomfortable, rest your attention on your hands instead, or on the sounds around you. | 5 s |
| 2:28 | Breathing in, and knowing you're breathing in. | 4 s |
| 2:35 | Breathing out, and knowing you're breathing out. | 14 s |
Show all 14 rowsShow fewer
| 2:52 | You'll probably drift into thinking. | 28 s |
| 3:41 | Let the breath breathe itself. | 28 s |
| 4:15 | Before we finish, notice how you are now. | 6 s |
| 4:32 | In a moment, the bell. | 20 s |
Read every word of the scriptThe script
Hello. For the next five minutes, there's nowhere else you need to be.
Settle into a position that's comfortable, and lets you stay awake. Sit, or lie down, or stand if you'd rather.
Close your eyes if that feels okay. If it doesn't, lower your gaze to the floor, a little way in front of you.
Start with what you can hear. Sounds close by. Sounds further away. You don't need to name them, or like them. Just let them come and go.
Now feel your body where it touches something. Your feet. Your legs and back against the chair. Your hands, wherever they're resting.
Notice your breath, the way it is right now. Fast or slow, deep or shallow. It doesn't matter.
Pick one place to feel it. The nose, the chest, or the belly. Stay with that one place.
If paying attention to your breath feels uncomfortable, rest your attention on your hands instead, or on the sounds around you. Any of these works.
Breathing in, and knowing you're breathing in.
Breathing out, and knowing you're breathing out.
You'll probably drift into thinking. Plans, worries, a song. When you notice, you haven't failed. Noticing is the moment that counts. Just come back to the next breath.
Let the breath breathe itself. You don't have to do anything.
Before we finish, notice how you are now. Not better or worse. Just how you are.
In a moment, the bell. Then stretch a little, and open your eyes.
Is five minutes enough?
It is enough to start, and starting is the hard part. In one trial, people who had never meditated listened to a 13-minute guided session every day, and after eight weeks their attention, memory and mood had improved compared with people who listened to a podcast for the same time. After four weeks there was no difference yet. So a short practice can do something, if you keep it up for a couple of months.
Five minutes is a good size for the first week or two. If it starts to feel short, try 10 minutes of breath counting, or put two five-minute sits into one day: one in the morning and one when you get home.
Where to fit it in
Tie it to something you already do every day, so you don’t have to remember it. A few that work for a lot of people: right after you make your morning coffee and before you open your messages; in the car before you walk into work; after lunch, when the afternoon slump arrives; on the bus with your eyes open, looking at the floor.
If you use headphones, you can do it almost anywhere. The session keeps playing with your screen locked, so you can put the phone in your pocket. Save it for offline and it plays on a plane or in a basement too.
If five minutes feels too long
That happens, especially on a busy day. There is a 3-minute version of the same practice in the tool above, and a bells-only timer you can set to a single minute. A shorter sit you actually do is worth more than a longer one you keep putting off.
If sitting still makes you feel worse rather than calmer, open your eyes and stop. Some people find walking, a few slow stretches, or simply listening to sounds easier than watching the breath, and that is fine.
If it doesn’t feel right
Meditation isn’t therapy, and it isn’t for every moment. If you feel panicky, numb or flooded, open your eyes, move, look around the room and name a few things you see, or stop. You can rest your attention on your hands, your feet or the sounds around you instead of the breath, and closing your eyes is always optional. With trauma or PTSD, practise with a professional. The US National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health says not to use meditation to replace care from a health professional.
If you are in crisis or thinking about suicide, talk to someone now: in the US call or text 988, in the UK and Ireland call Samaritans on 116 123, and elsewhere findahelpline.com lists free, confidential lines.
More guided meditations
Sources
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I do a 5-minute meditation at my desk?
Yes. Sit upright with both feet on the floor and lower your gaze if you’d rather not close your eyes at work. Headphones help; the voice is soft.
What if I fall asleep?
Then you were probably tired. Try sitting up instead of lying down, or meditating earlier in the day. If you want to fall asleep, the sleep meditation is made for that.
Is a 5-minute meditation every day better than a long one once a week?
Most courses ask for a short daily practice rather than an occasional long one, and the trial of 13 minutes a day found benefits after eight weeks of daily practice. Daily and short is a good habit to aim for.
Do I have to breathe in a special way?
No. You notice the breath as it is. If paying attention to it feels uncomfortable, rest your attention on your hands or on the sounds around you instead.