12 Minute Meditation

We often think of mindfulness and meditation as sustained states—when in reality, it's just a collection of micro-moments of stopping, breathing, really noticing our own bodies and our own lives, getting distracted, and then coming back again. Over and over.

As this week's teacher Shalini Bahl puts it, today's guided practice is about the art of stopping: letting go of our regular habits of the mind—the pushing, pulling, running in circles— and instead just being for a moment.

This is an extended practice, but as a bonus, we're also sharing a micro-practice version of The Art of Stopping that you can take into busy days. And don't miss Shalini's new article on Mindful.org that's all about the power of micro-practices to affect our daily choices.

Shalini Bahl, PhD, is the award-winning author of Return to Mindfulness and founder of Sama Life, where she offers daily live micro-practices for real-world engagement. Through her teaching, writing, and TEDx talks, she focuses on building practical mindfulness skills that disrupt default patterns and restore clarity, integrity, and care.

The transcription of this guided meditation will be online and in our app at Mindful.org next week.

Stay curious, stay inspired. Sign up for our free newsletter mindful.org/signup or download the app for free at mindful.org/app.

Show Notes

Find more from Shalini Bahl here.

Go Deeper

For more resources on the power of the pause, check out these resources on Mindful.org:

• How Micro-Practices Can Be the Bridge Between Your Meditation and Your Choices

• W.A.I.T. a Minute: A Practice to Pause Before You Post on Social Media

• How to Get Good Pause

• Waking Up to Your World: Using the Pause Practice to Break Habitual Patterns

For more practice pausing before making choices by compassionately interrupting patterns, try: A 12-Minute Meditation to Get Curious About Your Cravings

And more from Mindful here:

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Let us know what you thought of this episode of 12 Minute Meditation by leaving a review or by emailing [email protected].

You can find the extended 20-minute version of this meditation here.

Want to explore how micro-practices can help shift your patterns in your real everyday life when you're off the meditation mat? Check out Shalini's article, How Micro-Practices Can Be the Bridge Between Your Meditation and Your Choices.

In our concern for our children, sometimes we respond from a place of fear and worry. From time to time, we can even lose touch with the love that lies beneath that concern.

Reconnecting with the ground of our love and the wish for our children to be happy and well, especially in moments of difficulty, can be incredibly beneficial. This practice from Wendy O'Leary offers a pause of support and encouragement that can help you come back to that core of compassionate wisdom.

Wendy O'Leary, M.Ed., author and health educator, has three children's books and an adult book on self-compassion in families. She is a certified mindfulness teacher, parent educator, and self-compassion advocate with expertise in teaching emotional resilience to children and adults. Her card deck for children titled "Let's Grow Happiness," created in collaboration with her colleague Helen Maffini, is available for purchase at wendyoleary.com.

The transcription of this guided meditation will be online and in our app at Mindful.org next week.

Stay curious, stay inspired. Sign up for our free newsletter mindful.org/signup or download the app for free at mindful.org/app.

Show Notes

Find more from Wendy O'Leary here.

Go Deeper

For more resources to support mindful parenting, check out these resources on Mindful.org:

• Mindful Parenting Toolkit

• Shifting Habits: Three Mindful Parenting Tips You Can Try Today

• Mindful Parenting: Meet Your Inner Critic with Self-Compassion

• Manage Big Parenting Feelings Before They Manage You

For more practice with meditations to meet your worry, anxiety, fear, or other difficult emotions, try: 12-Minute Meditation: A Grounding Practice to Create Space in a Storm of Emotions

And more from Mindful here:

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If you'd like to pre-order lifetime access to The Seven Strengths event recording, go to www.mindfulness.com/the-seven-strengths-hub to take advantage of our early bird pricing plus get a free bonus course from Melli O'Brien.

Let us know what you thought of this episode of 12 Minute Meditation by leaving a review or by emailing [email protected].

Our bodies are so overworked and often ignored. This guided awareness practice offers space to feel a sense of gratitude for our body, in all of its beauty and mystery.

Rashid Hughes (he/him) is a writer, meditation teacher, yoga instructor and a restorative justice facilitator. He is the co-founder of the Heart Refuge Mindfulness Community, a mindfulness community in Washington, DC that is dedicated to inspiring Black, Indigenous, and People of Color to live with love and courage. Rashid is an Affiliate Teacher for the Insight Meditation Community of Washington DC and is also a teacher of the Presence Collective. He holds a Master of Divinity Degree from the Howard University School of Divinity.

The transcription of this guided meditation will be online and in our app at Mindful.org next week.

Stay curious, stay inspired. Sign up for our free newsletter mindful.org/signup or download the app for free at mindful.org/app.

Show Notes

Find more from Rashid Hughes here.

If you are looking for an in-depth resource to help build essential skills to meet a changing and uncertain world with a core of inner strength, join Melli O'Brien and a host of other teachers for The Seven Strengths, a FREE 7-day online course happening this May 13-19. Learn more and register at www.mindfulness.com/the-seven-strengths.

Go Deeper

For more resources to grow compassion and appreciation for the body, check out these articles on Mindful:

• What Green Spaces Can Do For Your Body, Your Mind & Your Practice

• Mindfulness Practices to Get Back in Touch with Your Body

• How to Befriend Your Body

• The Science of Embodiment: Connect to Your Body's Wisdom

For more practice with meditations to help you befriend and feel at home in your body, try A Meditation for Finding Safety in the Body.

And more from Mindful here:

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Let us know what you thought of this episode of 12 Minute Meditation by leaving a review or by emailing [email protected].

Thanks to our autonomic nervous system, life-sustaining processes like our heartbeat, digestion, and breathing all happen without us even having to pay attention. But our environments, stress levels, and other factors can definitely affect the health and efficiency of these processes.

For example, sitting hunched at our desks and staring at screens often means that our breathing gets shallow and irregular—which of course affects things like focus, energy, cognition, and attention.

This week, Shamash Alidina leads a guided breathing exercise called Light, Slow, and Deep (or LSD), designed to re-set the breath in a way that opens the chest, relaxes tension, and calms the nervous system.

Shamash Alidina has been practising mindfulness since 1998 and runs his own successful training organisation. He is the author of Mindfulness For Dummies, The Mindful Way Through Stress, and most recently, Breathing Exercises for Dummies. He frequently pops up in newspapers, magazines and on radio shows. Based in London, he runs online trainings and speaks at conferences all over the world. He's been teaching mindfulness full-time since 2010.

The transcription of this guided meditation will be online and in our app at Mindful.org next week.

Stay curious, stay inspired. Sign up for our free newsletter mindful.org/signup or download the app for free at mindful.org/app.

Show Notes

Find more from Shamash Alidina here.

If you are looking for an in-depth resource to help build essential skills to meet a changing and uncertain world with a core of inner strength, join Melli O'Brien and a host of other teachers for The Seven Strengths, a FREE 7-day online course happening this May 13-19. Learn more and register at www.mindfulness.com/the-seven-strengths.

Go Deeper

Breathing mediations have many mental and physical benefits, and you can find dozens of resources on our site. Start here:

• The Breath is Your Superpower: 3 Ways to Help Kids Reset

• Email Apnea Is Real. Here's How to Breathe Better at Work

• What Science Says About the Power of the Outbreath

• Helping Black Women Take A Breath

• How Your Breath Controls Your Mood and Attention

For more practice with breathing meditation, try 12-Minute Breathing Practice for Awareness: Sit and Know You're Sitting or A Guided Meditation to Encourage Deep Breathing.

And more from Mindful here:

More episodes of 12 Minute Meditation

Let us know what you thought of this episode of 12 Minute Meditation by leaving a review or by emailing [email protected].

City life can often feel frantic, loud, and cut off from natural beauty. It's not often we slow down and take in all there is to experience. But even in urban areas, if you pay attention, you can hear the call of a bird, notice your favorite color in shop windows, and look up at the vast sky above.

In this guided meditation, we slow our roll and take in the beauty of our surroundings, no matter where we find ourselves.

Kazumi Igus is a Los Angeles native, science teacher, and trained meditation facilitator through UCLA's Mindful Awareness Center. She currently serves as a WholeSchool Mindfulness Director at one of the few predominantly Black high schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District. Her mission is to transform education into a system that is inherently responsive to students' social and emotional needs, explicitly fosters focus, and empowers students to develop emotional resilience in an increasingly challenging world.

The transcription of this guided meditation will be online and in our app at Mindful.org next week.

Stay curious, stay inspired. Sign up for our free newsletter mindful.org/signup or download the app for free at mindful.org/app.

Show Notes

Find more from Kazumi Igus here.

If you are looking for an in-depth resource to help build essential skills to meet a changing and uncertain world with a core of inner strength, join Melli O'Brien and a host of other teachers for The Seven Strengths, a FREE 7-day online course happening this May 13-19. Learn more and register at www.mindfulness.com/the-seven-strengths.

Go Deeper

Looking for more reasons to head outside? Here are some additional Mindful.org resources to help you build a stronger relationship with Mama Nature:

• The Nature Remedy: Find Freedom from Tech Overload

• Nature-Based Mindfulness Practices for Families

• We're Hard-Wired to Crave Nature

• Why Is Nature So Good for Your Mental Health?

• What Nature Teaches Us About Well-Being

For more practice being intentionally mindful outside, try A 12-Minute Meditation to Rest in the Movement of Nature.

And more from Mindful here:

More episodes of 12 Minute MeditationLet us know what you thought of this episode of 12 Minute Meditation by leaving a review or by emailing [email protected].

Mindfulness meditation involves a willingness to be with ourselves as we are. It offers a way of learning to work with ourselves, and not on ourselves, especially if we are healing from perfectionism.

Mindfulness reminds us that not everything has to be "fixed"—and very often, our movement back to wellness starts when we stop trying to change ourselves and simply accept where we are with care and attention.

Cheryl Jones is a mindfulness teacher, health and wellness coach, and author of two books, Thriving When Your Cosmic Egg Is Cracked: A Mindful Journey and Mindful Exercise: A Bridge Between Yoga and Exercise. She was the recipient of the Chairman's Leadership Award and the Norman Vincent Peale Award for Positive Thinking for integrating mindfulness into corporate culture at Aetna. You can find her at www.linkedin.com/in/cherylljones/.

The transcription of this guided meditation will be online and in our app at Mindful.org next week.

Stay curious, stay inspired. Sign up for our free newsletter mindful.org/signup or download the app for free at mindful.org/app.

Show Notes

Find more from Cheryl Jones here.

If you are looking for an in-depth resource to help build essential skills to meet a changing and uncertain world with a core of inner strength, join Melli O'Brien and a host of other teachers for The Seven Strengths, a FREE 7-day online course happening this May 13-19. Learn more and register at www.mindfulness.com/the-seven-strengths.

Go Deeper

Healing from perfectionism isn't easy. It takes time and practice. Here are some additional Mindful.org resources to help you build a stronger sense of self-acceptance:

• Awareness in Action: Rethinking ADHD Through Mindfulness

• What Swimming Taught Me About Self-Compassion and Letting Go

• It's Selfish, It's Hokey, and I'll Lose My Edge: 3 Half-Truths About Self-Compassion

• How Self-Compassion Can Improve Teen Mental Health

• This Is What Fierce Self-Compassion Looks Like

Want to try more practices that foster self-compassion? Start here: A 12-Minute Meditation to Embrace All Your Parts

And more from Mindful here:

More episodes of 12 Minute Meditation

Let us know what you thought of this episode of 12 Minute Meditation by leaving a review or by emailing [email protected].

Change of any kind—whether it's small, momentous, expected or unexpected—can make us feel so vulnerable and unsteady.

This week, Susan Bauer-Wu offers a guided meditation to invite and nourish inner strength in the face of change.

Susan Bauer-Wu, PhD, is a registered nurse and nursing educator, as well as a mindfulness teacher and researcher. She is president of the Mind & Life Institute and author of Leaves Falling Gently: Living Fully with Serious & Life-Limiting Illness through Mindfulness, Compassion & Connectedness.

The transcription of this guided meditation will be online and in our app at Mindful.org next week.

Stay curious, stay inspired. Sign up for our free newsletter mindful.org/signup or download the app for free at mindful.org/app.

Show Notes

Find more from Susan Bauer-Wu here.

FREE course! If you are looking for an in-depth resource to help build essential skills to meet a changing and uncertain world with a core of inner strength, join Melli O'Brien and a host of other teachers for The Seven Strengths, a FREE 7-day online course happening this May 13-19. Learn more and register at www.mindfulness.com/the-seven-strengths.

Go Deeper

Want to learn more about how you can train to stay steady, even when everything around you feels uncertain and evolving? Check out these resources from Mindful.org:

• New Life, Who's This? Rediscovering Who You Are When Everything Has Changed

• Embracing Change: What Nanalan' Teaches Us About Saying Goodbye

• The Only Constant Is Change

• Navigating Change is Hard. Here's How it Makes Us Better Leaders

• Rethinking Equanimity: Margaret Cullen on Equanimity and Quiet Strength

To get more practice dealing with the reality of change, try A Meditation to Help You Let Go and Accept Change.

And more from Mindful here:

More episodes of 12 Minute Meditation

Let us know what you thought of this episode of 12 Minute Meditation by leaving a review or by emailing [email protected].

Our culture prizes certainty and tends to regard not-knowing as weakness or failure.

But research has shown that uncertainty is a quality that we're meant to engage, not reject. Not only does it spark curiosity and help us learn, but it also strengthens confidence and resilience.

This week, Dr. Sará King offers a practice to help us build comfort with our "don't-know mind" so that we can stay courageous and open to the world around us.

Dr. Sará King is a mother, a neuroscientist, political and learning scientist, medical anthropologist, social entrepreneur, public speaker, and certified yoga and meditation instructor. Dr. King specializes in researching and teaching about the relationship between mindfulness, community alternative medicine, and social justice with an emphasis on examining the relationship between individual and collective awareness as it relates to well-being.

The transcription of this guided meditation will be online and in our app at Mindful.org next week.

Stay curious, stay inspired. Sign up for our free newsletter mindful.org/signup or download the app for free at mindful.org/app.

Show Notes

Find more from Sará King here.

If you are looking for an in-depth resource to help build these essential skills of resilience, join Melli O'Brien and a host of other teachers for The Seven Strengths, a FREE 7-day online course happening this May 13-19. Learn more and register at www.mindfulness.com/the-seven-strengths.

Go Deeper

Looking for ways to engage your beginner's mind? Check out these resources from Mindful.org:

• Why Uncertainty Is Good for Us

• How Embracing Uncertainty Leads To Fulfillment

• Feeling Like a Fraud in Your Own Mindfulness Practice

• Don't Be So Sure

To get more practice meeting uncertainty, try A Guided Walking Meditation to Meet Uncertainty with Compassion

And more from Mindful here:

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Let us know what you thought of this episode of 12 Minute Meditation by leaving a review or by emailing [email protected].Why do women love reading The Pipeline? It's data with perspective. Get free, thoughtful takes on navigating our messy world. Subscribe today.

When we are going through a difficult season personally, or we are bearing witness to the pain of others, our relationship to genuine joy or happiness can get complicated and confusing. Happiness can feel out of reach, or it can feel like a betrayal, like it's something we don't "deserve" in hard times.

But strengthening our ability to notice and soak in moments of beauty, tenderness, connection, and gratitude can actually have a fortifying effect on us. It can help us build resilience and fill our empty emotional tanks—which can foster our own healing and make it possible for us to show up in healing ways for others.

This week, teacher Wendy O'Leary shares a guided practice to tune our attention to the reality that shimmers right alongside our genuine seasons of struggle.

Wendy O'Leary, M.Ed., author and health educator, has three children's books and an adult book on self-compassion in families. She is a certified mindfulness teacher, parent educator, and self-compassion advocate with expertise in teaching emotional resilience to children and adults. Her next publication is a card deck for children titled "Let's Grow Happiness," created in collaboration with her colleague Helen Maffini. It is scheduled for release on April 21, 2026 and can be preordered at www.wendyoleary.com.

The transcription of this guided meditation will be online and in our app at Mindful.org next week.

Stay curious, stay inspired. Sign up for our free newsletter mindful.org/signup or download the app for free at mindful.org/app.

Show Notes

Find more from Wendy O'Leary here.

If you are looking for an in-depth resource to help build these essential skills of resilience, join Melli O'Brien and a host of other teachers for The Seven Strengths, a FREE 7-day online course happening this May 13-19. Learn more and register at www.mindfulness.com/the-seven-strengths.

Go Deeper

To explore more about how happiness is not just something we get when things are going well, but an essential human experience, check out these resources from Mindful.org:

• What We Know (Or Think We Know) About Happiness

• Three Emerging Pathways to Happiness

• Find Happiness by Embracing All of Your Emotions

• Searching for Happiness and Finding Yard Work

• Why Happiness Isn't Always Comfortable

To get more practice noticing and connecting with happiness, try 3 Guided Meditations to Open Up to Happiness.

And more from Mindful here:

More episodes of 12 Minute MeditationLet us know what you thought of this episode of 12 Minute Meditation by leaving a review or by emailing [email protected].