Walking meditation, where you focus on the movement of your body as you take step after step, your feet touching and leaving the ground—an everyday activity we usually take for granted.

Even if we’ve missed several planned sessions and start to think, “I’m not cut out for this.” Or we try it and think, “I’m not good at meditating.” Those are just thoughts. We can notice them, let them go, and get back to being kind to our mind.

Ideally, you should meditate when you feel calm but alert, and when you won’t be distracted. If you’re a morning person, then meditating in the morning might be perfect for you.

Fascinating though it is, we shouldn’t overplay meditation’s effects on physical health at the expense of its importance to emotional health. In fact, it may be difficult to separate out the two, as a key impact of mindfulness is stress reduction, and psychological stress has been tied to heart health, immune response, and telomere length.

JM: They’re practically synonymous but they’re not exactly the same. Mindfulness meditation is one form of meditation, but it’s not the only form. And formal meditation is one way to practice mindfulness, but it’s not the only way. Once you learn mindfulness skills, you can practice them at almost any moment of the day—sitting at your computer, stuck in traffic, even eating.

Overall, these findings suggest that mindfulness meditation can have disease-fighting powers through our immune response. Mindfulness may reduce cell aging

’s former book review editor and now serves as a staff writer and contributing editor for the magazine. She received her doctorate of psychology from the University of San Francisco in 1998 and was a psychologist in private practice before coming to Greater Good

Tune into your body’s physical sensations, from the water hitting your skin in the shower to the way your body rests in your office chair.

Rasmus Hougaard is an internationally acknowledged expert in training the mind to be focused and clear at work. He is the founder of The Potential Project – a leading global provider of corporate based mindfulness solutions operating in 20 countries.

Mindfulness changes our brains: Research has found that it increases density of gray matter in brain regions linked to learning, memory, emotion regulation, and empathy.

(It’s hard, we know.) In the past, research has sometimes led to conflicting findings on whether mindfulness benefits our positive and negative emotions. This study sheds some light on a possible reason why, by illustrating how specific

Pelo one begins a meditation practice and can sit like a monk for hours right away. And even if they could, that’s not the goal. The entire reason for meditation is learning to work with your mind in your normal life. And practice is how we do it.

It might be helpful to schedule meditation sessions like an exercise class or appointment. Or we could tack it onto an existing routine, like every time we shower or brush our teeth.

And for what? Meditation is about befriending yourself. Treat thoughts and other distractions with a friendly curiosity, as you might a passerby in the 852 Hz chakras neighborhood. Maybe give ‘em a wave as they walk by, and then get back to your practice.