Meditation for Beginners
Start with three minutes. The voice tells you what to do, and there is nothing to get right.
Level 1 · Arrive
Arrive
3 min · A first, short sit
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, 11 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
- Goyal et al., Meditation programs for psychological stress and well-being: a systematic review and meta-analysis, JAMA Internal Medicine (2014)
- Levinson et al., A mind you can count on: validating breath counting as a behavioral measure of mindfulness, Frontiers in Psychology (2014)
- 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)
- NCCIH, Meditation and Mindfulness: Effectiveness and Safety
- Kokoro-82M, an open speech model (Apache-2.0) (v1.0)
- Galante et al., Mindfulness-based programmes for mental health promotion in adults in nonclinical settings, PLOS Medicine (2021)
- Basso et al., Brief, daily meditation enhances attention, memory, mood, and emotional regulation in non-experienced meditators, Behavioural Brain Research (2019)
- 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)
- 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 3 minutes are like
Your first session takes three minutes. You get comfortable, close your eyes if you like, and notice where your body is held up. Then you find the breath in one place and stay with it. When your mind wanders, which it will, you notice and come back. That noticing is the skill you are practising.
Of its 3:00, about 1 minute 16 seconds is the voice speaking and the rest is quiet. The longest quiet stretch is 21 seconds, starting at 1:48.
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 |
| 0:16 | There's nothing to get right here, and nothing you're supposed to feel. | 3 s |
| 0:24 | Let yourself be comfortable, and still awake. | 3 s |
| 0:32 | If it feels okay, let your eyes close. | 3 s |
| 0:44 | Notice where your body is held up. | 4 s |
| 0:58 | Now notice that you're breathing. | 3 s |
| 1:08 | Find the place where it's easiest to feel. | 3 s |
| 1:19 | Breathing in. | 3 s |
| 1:23 | And breathing out. | 10 s |
| 1:35 | Your mind will wander. | 21 s |
Show all 12 rowsShow fewer
| 2:08 | Stay with a few more breaths, one at a time. | 21 s |
| 2:34 | In a moment, the bell. | 20 s |
Read every word of the scriptThe script
Hello. This is a short practice for arriving where you are.
There's nothing to get right here, and nothing you're supposed to feel.
Let yourself be comfortable, and still awake.
If it feels okay, let your eyes close. Or rest them on a spot in front of you.
Notice where your body is held up. Your feet on the floor. Your weight in the chair.
Now notice that you're breathing. You don't need to change it.
Find the place where it's easiest to feel. The nose, the chest, or the belly.
Breathing in.
And breathing out.
Your mind will wander. That's normal. When you notice, come back to the next breath, without any fuss.
Stay with a few more breaths, one at a time.
In a moment, the bell. Open your eyes when you're ready.
What meditation is, and what it isn’t
The kind of meditation on this page is attention training. You choose something to pay attention to, usually the breath, and each time your mind wanders off you notice and bring it back. That is the whole method. Nobody’s mind stays still, and you are not trying to empty it.
It isn’t about feeling calm on demand, though you might. Some sits are restless and some are quiet, and both count. It also isn’t a cure for anything: across 47 trials with 3,515 people, meditation programmes eased anxiety, depression and pain by small to moderate amounts, and did no better than other active treatments such as exercise.
A first two weeks
Days 1 to 4: the 3-minute Arrive session, once a day, at the same time if you can. Days 5 to 10: the 5-minute version. After that, try level 2, Steady, which is 10 minutes of counting breaths from one to ten. Counting gives you a clear way to see when you have wandered, and researchers use the same task to measure mindful attention.
The levels go up to six, and you can skip ahead or go back whenever you like. Nothing is locked, and there are no streaks to lose. The page keeps a quiet count of your minutes in the past week, in your browser only, if you want to look.
Common worries
“I can’t stop thinking.” Nobody can. Thinking is what minds do; the practice is noticing that you are thinking. If you noticed fifty times in three minutes, you practised fifty times.
“I keep falling asleep.” Sit upright, open your eyes a little, or meditate earlier in the day. “My back hurts.” Sit on a chair, lean back, or lie down; any position that lets you stay awake is fine.
Is it safe for everyone?
For most people, yes, but not for everyone. A review of 83 studies found that about 8% of people who meditated reported an unwanted effect, most often anxiety or depression. After an 8-week mindfulness course, 6 to 14% of people in one careful study reported effects that lasted. If you live with trauma or PTSD, practise with a professional. In any session you can open your eyes, move, or stop.
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
- Goyal et al., Meditation programs for psychological stress and well-being: a systematic review and meta-analysis, JAMA Internal Medicine, 2014
- Levinson et al., A mind you can count on: validating breath counting as a behavioral measure of mindfulness, Frontiers in Psychology, 2014
- 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
- NCCIH, Meditation and Mindfulness: Effectiveness and Safety
- Kokoro-82M, an open speech model (Apache-2.0)
Frequently Asked Questions
How long should a beginner meditate?
Three to five minutes a day is a good start. Work up to 10 to 15 minutes once that feels easy. There is no need to push for more.
Do I need to sit cross-legged?
No. A chair is fine, and so is lying down or standing. Pick a position that lets you be comfortable and still awake.
Should I close my eyes?
Only if it feels okay. You can keep them half open, resting on a spot on the floor in front of you. Many people prefer that.
Is this religious?
No. The sessions are secular. They follow the order used in mindfulness courses such as MBSR and MBCT, written in plain words.