A wide variety of meditation techniques share the common aim of training attention, but each offers a slightly different entry point. Mindfulness meditation involves focusing on the breath and observing thoughts and sensations without judgment as they arise; the goal is to return attention to the present moment each time the mind wanders, building concentration and awareness. Body scan meditation involves systematically focusing attention on different parts of the body, from head to toe or vice versa, increasing body awareness, releasing tension, and developing a deeper mind-body connection.
Some traditions use sound or visualization as their anchor. Transcendental Meditation, introduced by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in the 1950s, involves silently repeating a personal mantra for fifteen to twenty minutes twice daily to promote a state of relaxed awareness. Mantra meditation similarly uses the repetition of a word, phrase, or sound—such as "Om"—to focus the mind and enter a deeper state of awareness, with the vibration and rhythm calming mental chatter. Guided meditation, by contrast, involves a teacher or recording leading you through a series of instructions, visualizations, or prompts, and is especially helpful for beginners who struggle with silence.
Other approaches center on emotion, insight, or movement. Loving-kindness meditation, also called Metta, involves directing feelings of warmth and goodwill toward yourself and others through repeated phrases like "May you be happy, may you be healthy," cultivating compassion and reducing negative emotions. Compassion meditation (Karuna) similarly generates concern for those who are suffering and a wish to alleviate that suffering, but focuses specifically on pain and difficulty. Zen meditation, or Zazen, emphasizes seated practice with specific postures and breathing, sometimes focused on a koan—a paradoxical question—designed to transcend ordinary thinking. Vipassana, meaning "insight" in Pali, is one of the oldest Buddhist techniques and involves observing bodily sensations and mental phenomena to gain deep insight into the impermanent nature of reality.
Walking meditation brings mindful awareness to the act of walking itself, focusing on the sensations of lifting, moving, and placing each foot during slow, deliberate movement. Movement-based meditation includes practices like yoga, tai chi, and qigong that combine physical movement with meditative awareness, developing both physical flexibility and mental stillness. Yoga nidra, or "yogic sleep," is a guided meditation practiced lying down that leads through stages of deep relaxation while maintaining awareness; it is said that thirty minutes of yoga nidra can be as restorative as two hours of sleep.