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Meditations for Beginners
Training the Mind for Resilience and Happiness
You are invited to listen to the following mindfulness meditation audio.
The aim is to train our mind to reduce stress, ease struggles, manage difficult emotions, and increase resilience, well-being, peace, and happiness. The following mindfulness meditation practices have been known to facilitate sleep and reduce anxiety, depression, pain and other health issues as well as promote better relationships with ourselves and others.
The meditations are inspired by the work of Kristin Neff, Chris Germer, Paul Gilbert, Jon Kabat-Zinn, Tara Brach, Sharon Salzberg and others.
All of the following meditations are presented by Marie Bloomfield, Clinical Psychologist.
Disclaimer: These meditations are psycho-educational and are not intended to replace therapy. Always seek the advice of a doctor or psychologist for any questions you may have regarding your own specific medical or mental health condition. If emotional difficulties arise while listening to these meditations, please stop listening to the meditations and consult urgently a psychologist or other qualified health care professionals.
Warning: please do not listen to the following audio while you are driving or operating machinery.
Meditations for Beginners
All of the following meditations are presented by Marie Bloomfield , Clinical Psychologist.
1. Complete claming belly breathing (17 min)
In this guided relaxation meditation, we practice abdominal/diaphragm breathing to promote a relaxation response and ease stress.
2. Calming belly breathing (9 min)
In this short calming belly breathing practice we are introducing the abdominal/diaphragm breathing as a way of reducing the stress response to promote calm.
3. A quick mindful pause (3min)
This quick informal mindfulness exercise helps us to become more aware and opt out of being on auto-pilot.
4. Three steps mindful breathing space (6 min)
This is a short three steps mindfulness breathing practice to be more present and aware to let go of ruminations and unhelpful ways of thinking.
5. The Mini Mindfulness Practice (5min)
This is a mini mindfulness practice, where we take the time to be aware in a friendly way of our breath, body sensations, feelings and thoughts.
6.Soft Landing Meditation (7min)
In this short meditation we pause, to be present, to be aware of what is here now and to bring kindness to care for ourselves.
7. Mindful STOP Meditation (11min)
In this meditation we present the STOP practice in 3 ways: first to step out of auto-pilot to gain perceptive, second to explore in hindsight skilful ways of responding and thirdly as a way to take in the good and be grateful.
8. Progressive Muscular Relaxation Exercise (16min)
The Progressive Muscular Relaxation Meditation is a powerful relaxation exercise, well-known for reducing overall muscular tension and stress level.
Complete Mindfulness Meditation (32min)
This is a complete mindfulness meditation which includes breath awareness and body scan.
10. Body Scan (19 min)
The body scan is a classic mindfulness meditation, where we are inviting you to simply notice with kindness and curiosity different parts of your body to promote awareness and calm.
11. Breath awareness (12min)
Breath awareness is a simple, yet a profound practice to restore balance of body and mind as well as increase our ability to concentrate and focus.
12. Labelling thoughts, emotions and physical sensations (12 min)
The labelling mindfulness meditation enables you to observe your thoughts, emotions and physical sensations as a way to step back from them, to create a space as the observer, to gain detachment and perspectives.
13. Mindful Walking (14 min)
This guided mindful walking meditation promotes awareness and calm. The aim is to use the movement of walking to cultivate mindfulness and wakeful presence.
14. Mindful walking and labelling (13 min)
In this guided meditation we combine mindful walking with labelling. Here our wandering mind is welcome and is used to promote more mindfulness.
15. Mindfulness of Sounds (14 min)
This guided mindfulness meditation is another way to be present and to observe our surrounding in an accepting and non-judgmental way.
16. RAIN for difficult emotions (15 min)
This guided meditation aims to assist us in dealing with difficult emotions by using 4 steps: recognizing, allowing, investigating and non-attachment while caring for ourselves.
17. Just like me (17 min)
This guided meditation aims to promote feelings of connection, understanding and tolerance with one another by reminding ourselves of our similarities rather than our differences.
18. Befriending ourselves and others (22 min)
In this guided meditation you are invited to cultivate friendship towards yourself and others. Your most important relationship is with yourself!
19. Loving kindness for others and ourselves (20 min)
This guided meditation invites you to cultivate positive intentions by expressing good wishes for yourselves and a variety of people involved in your life such as a loved one, a neutral person, a difficult person and everyone else.
20. Loving kindness for other and ourselves-q (13 min)
This is an abbreviated loving-kindness meditation for those who are familiar with the classic loving-kindness meditation.
21. Bubble Meditation (12 min)
In this “bubble” meditation, the thoughts become the focus of our attention. But rather than engaging with them as we usually do, we practice noticing them and then letting them go, stepping out of thoughts!
22. Visualisation of mind like sky (14min)
In this guided visualisation, we imagine our mind expanding to become as large as the sky, where clouds come and go and we are not defined by them.
23. Friendly compassionate colour meditation (16 min)
In this visualisation, we are inviting you to imagine a colour that you associate with compassion that would bring a sense of care and comfort.
24. Easing Difficulties with friendly help (18 min)
This guided meditation presents two ways of easing difficult emotions: labelling and the visualisation of a good wise friend to support us.
25. The mountain meditation (16 min)
In this meditation we imagine being strong like a mountain, and despite the storms, we can steady our mind, knowing that all things will pass.
26. Meeting your Future Best Compassionate Self (23min)
In this guided visualisation, you are invited to open to possible future options, to reach out to your future self for support, comfort and wisdom.
27. Compassionate couch in the media room (19 min)
In this visualisation, we invite you to explore a compassionate perspective as you recall a difficulty, that you project onto a screen as you sit on a compassionate couch.