Mindfulness and meditation are related but not the same thing. Meditation is a practice, something you sit down and do. Mindfulness is a quality of awareness, a way of paying attention to the present moment without judgment. You can develop mindfulness through meditation, but you can also practice it while washing dishes, walking to work, or eating lunch. Think of meditation as one of the best tools for building mindfulness, while mindfulness itself is something broader that extends into every part of your day.
How They Relate to Each Other
The simplest way to understand the relationship: meditation is something you do, and mindfulness is something you cultivate. As the NIH’s wellness program puts it, “mindfulness is a quality” that describes a specific way of living, while “meditation is a practice” that helps you develop different qualities within yourself, including mindfulness.
This means all mindfulness meditation is meditation, but not all meditation is mindfulness meditation. Meditation is the larger category. It includes dozens of techniques with different goals, different instructions, and different effects on the brain. Mindfulness meditation is one specific type, focused on noticing your thoughts, feelings, and physical sensations as they arise, then gently returning your attention to the present when your mind wanders. Other forms of meditation work very differently.
Types of Meditation That Aren’t Mindfulness
Transcendental Meditation (TM) is a good example of how different meditation can look. Instead of observing your thoughts with curiosity, TM involves silently repeating a specific mantra, a word or phrase given to you by a trained teacher. The goal isn’t to watch your thoughts pass by but to settle the mind into a quieter state through focused repetition. TM also follows a rigid schedule: two sessions per day, each lasting about 20 minutes.
Other forms include loving-kindness meditation, where you direct feelings of warmth and compassion toward yourself and others, and visualization practices, where you imagine specific scenes or outcomes. Concentration meditation narrows your focus to a single object, like a candle flame or a repeated phrase, training the mind to hold steady rather than observe freely. Each of these uses a different mechanism than mindfulness, even though they all fall under the meditation umbrella.
What Mindfulness Looks Like in Practice
Mindfulness emphasizes present-moment awareness and acceptance. Standard techniques include focusing on your breath, scanning through body sensations, or simply observing the flow of your thoughts without getting caught up in them. The attitude is one of openness and curiosity: you notice what’s happening in your mind and body without labeling it as good or bad.
What makes mindfulness especially flexible is that it works both on and off the cushion. The Mayo Clinic describes several structured exercises you can do in a quiet space, like sitting with your eyes closed and breathing deeply while tracking each inhale and exhale, or lying down and slowly moving your attention from your head through each part of your body down to your toes. These are formal practices that typically take 10 to 20 minutes.
But mindfulness also includes informal, everyday practices that don’t require setting aside any special time at all. You can eat a meal slowly, noticing the smell, flavor, and texture of each bite. You can walk and pay attention to how your feet feel against the ground, how your body shifts weight with each step. You can pause mid-afternoon, turn off your phone, and simply notice what your body feels like right now. These micro-practices are still mindfulness. They’re just not meditation.
What Happens in the Brain
Meditation changes the brain in measurable ways, and the specific type of practice matters. Research using brain imaging has identified four distinct mental states that cycle during focused meditation: maintaining attention, losing focus (mind wandering), becoming aware that you’ve drifted, and shifting attention back. Different brain regions activate during each of these phases.
Experienced meditators show stronger activity in areas responsible for attention control and self-monitoring. They also develop stronger connections between brain networks involved in executive function and those that detect what’s important in the moment. These aren’t temporary effects. Long-term practice appears to reshape brain structure and function through neuroplasticity, meaning the brain physically adapts to repeated meditation the same way muscles adapt to repeated exercise.
This is one reason the type of meditation you choose matters. A practice built around silently repeating a mantra trains different mental “muscles” than one built around open, nonjudgmental awareness. Both are valuable, but they develop different cognitive skills.
Health Benefits They Share
Both mindfulness and broader meditation practices are linked to reduced stress, improved mood, and better psychological well-being. The American Heart Association reviewed the evidence on meditation and cardiovascular health and found a possible benefit for reducing heart disease risk factors like high blood pressure. The association noted that given the low cost and low risk, meditation can be a reasonable addition to standard heart-healthy habits for people who are interested.
Most studies report improvements in psychological and psychosocial measures, things like anxiety, emotional regulation, and sense of well-being. These benefits appear across meditation types, though mindfulness-based programs have the largest body of research behind them, partly because they’ve been standardized into clinical protocols studied in hundreds of trials.
Getting Started With Either One
If you’re new to both, mindfulness meditation is often the easiest entry point because it requires no special training, no mantra, and no equipment. You sit, breathe, and pay attention. When your mind wanders (and it will, constantly), you notice that it wandered and bring your focus back. That’s the entire practice.
The NHS recommends about 20 minutes as a good session length, ideally built into a daily routine. Practicing in the morning can set a calmer tone for your day, while an evening session helps release accumulated tension. But there’s no strict rule. Even five minutes of focused breathing counts, especially when you’re building the habit.
If formal sitting feels difficult, start with informal mindfulness instead. Pick one daily activity, brushing your teeth, making coffee, walking to the car, and do it with full attention. Notice the sensations, the sounds, the feeling of your body moving. This alone begins training the same quality of awareness that meditation develops, just in smaller, more accessible doses. Over time, you can layer in longer formal sessions as the habit becomes natural.