Learn to meditate,
one breath at a time.

Lv 9Lv 101,200 XP to go

Meditation · Lesson 1 of 26 · 8 min

What Meditation Is

A family of practices for training attention, where they came from, what people mistake them for, and three breaths to start with

Jon Kabat-Zinn started meditating in 1965, when he was a student of molecular biology. By 1979 he was working at the University of Massachusetts medical school. That year, on a meditation retreat in the woods, he had what he calls a ten-second vision. He saw mindfulness clinics spreading to hospitals.

His own Stress Reduction Clinic opened its doors the same year. It taught people with chronic back pain, victims of industrial accidents and cancer patients. He says he bent over backward to keep it from being seen as Buddhist, new age or just plain flakey.

In 1982 he published early results. They covered 51 people with long-lasting pain who had not improved with ordinary medical care. After ten weeks of training, about two thirds of them rated their pain at least a third lower. study details The study had no comparison group, and its own summary says so. It shows what happened to those 51 people, and it cannot show that the training was the cause.

This lesson says what meditation is, where it came from and what it is not, and it ends with the smallest practice in the course: three breaths. A beginner needs the plain definition first, because the commonest picture of meditation, a mind with no thoughts in it, is not what these practices ask for.

A family of practices

The US National Institutes of Health (NIH) uses the word meditation for a variety of practices that are used to calm the mind and improve well-being. Some hold attention on one thing, such as the breath, a sound or a repeated word. Others practice mindfulness, which the NIH describes as keeping attention on the present moment without making judgments.

The American Heart Association sorts the kinds into four: focused attention, mindfulness, loving-kindness and compassion, and repeating a mantra, which is a word or phrase said over and over. It adds that the kinds usually overlap. Researchers who compare them describe meditation as a family of trainings for attention and emotion, developed for different ends.

What the words mean

The English word comes from the Latin verb meditari. A standard Latin dictionary gives it two senses. One is to think something over. The other is to practice a thing, to exercise oneself in it. Meditation in this course is the second kind: practice.

Mindfulness is the usual English for sati, a word from Pali, the language of the old Buddhist discourses. Its first dictionary meaning is memory. One translator, the monk Thanissaro Bhikkhu, explains being mindful of the breath as something very simple: keeping the breath in mind.

Where it came from

Meditation goes back thousands of years, and many of its techniques began in Eastern traditions, the NIH says. The American Heart Association's statement adds that it was first practiced as part of Buddhist and Hindu religions, and that references to it can be found in Christianity, Judaism and Islam too. Only recently has it been introduced in the West as a stand-alone secular activity. In 2022 about one in six adults in the United States said they had meditated, according to the NIH's account of a national survey.

Something was taken out to make that version. A 2025 paper puts it plainly: Western approaches have intentionally removed the spiritual and philosophical foundations of mindfulness to fit therapy.

What it is not

It is not emptying the mind. The Mayo Clinic lists that as a myth: you don't have to clear your mind. The UK's National Health Service (NHS) says that a totally blank mind is not the goal, and that a wandering mind is a natural part of the practice and not a failure.

It is not exactly relaxation. Relaxing often happens, and it is what people come for. In a 2012 US survey, about 92 percent of people who practiced only mindfulness meditation said they did it to relax or reduce stress. But the researchers who compare the kinds of meditation call "a mere relaxation technique" an overly generic description of it. Much of meditation is training attention.

It is not a treatment, and it is not as well tested as its publicity suggests. The NIH says much of the research has been preliminary or not scientifically rigorous. One analysis it describes, of more than 12,000 people with diagnosed conditions such as anxiety or depression, found mindfulness-based approaches better than no treatment and about as good as established therapies. The NIH's instruction is firm: don't use meditation to replace conventional care, or as a reason to put off seeing a health care provider about a medical problem. Lesson 25 goes through what the studies found, including for whom meditation has gone badly.

Three breaths

Where it comes from: Three mindful breaths is the Mayo Clinic's example of a short moment of mindfulness in the middle of a day. The steps below are the opening of a breathing script the VA uses. Why do it: The Mayo Clinic says mindfulness can be as simple as taking a few deep breaths and being present in the moment.

1. Settle into a comfortable position, sitting or standing. Let your eyes close, or keep them open with a softened gaze.
2. Take one long, slow, deep breath, breathing in fully and breathing out fully. Breathe in through your nose and out through your nose or mouth.
3. On the second breath, notice the air as it enters your nostrils, travels down to your lungs and makes your belly expand.
4. On the third, notice how breathing in is different from breathing out. The air may feel cool as it enters your nose and warm as it leaves.
5. Then let your breath find its own natural rhythm, and go on with what you were doing.
6. That is the whole practice, and it takes less than a minute. The steps are from the VA's mindful breathing script, and the count of three is the Mayo Clinic's.

If you want a voice to lead you, the Three-breath reset in the NOTICE app is a guided recording of about two minutes. It leads three slow breaths with a longer breath out, sitting or standing, and reminds you to drop your shoulders and unclench your jaw. NOTICE is OmniPsyche's free meditation app, by the same person who made this course.

What you may notice: Possibly nothing much. Your attention may also leave for a thought before the third breath is over. A VA handout says that minds wander, that is what they do, and that the key is to gently bring your awareness back to your breath.

Kabat-Zinn has defined mindfulness meditation as the awareness that arises from paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment and non-judgmentally. Three breaths is that definition at its smallest size.

Your practice this week

• Do: Take three slow breaths, three times a day. Breathe in fully and out fully, and notice the air come in at your nostrils and your belly expand. Tie it to something you already do, such as sitting down to eat.
• Notice: Notice where your attention goes during your three slow breaths. A plan, a sound, an itch. You are not trying to prevent it, only to catch it leaving.
• Skip: Skip the breath as your anchor if watching it makes you tense. The VA notes that some people become much more anxious when they focus on their breathing. Feel your feet on the floor for three breaths instead.