Meditation isn’t a single practice. It’s an umbrella term covering dozens of techniques that train attention, awareness, or emotional regulation in different ways. Some ask you to sit still and focus on your breath. Others involve repeating a phrase, scanning your body for sensations, or even moving through slow physical postures. The best type depends on what you’re looking for, whether that’s stress relief, sharper focus, better emotional balance, or pain management.
Mindfulness Meditation
Mindfulness meditation is the most widely practiced and researched form in Western countries. The core technique is straightforward: you pay attention to whatever is happening in the present moment, usually starting with the breath, and notice when your mind wanders without judging yourself for it. The goal isn’t to empty your mind but to observe your thoughts and sensations as they come and go.
Mindfulness comes in two main flavors. Focused attention meditation narrows your awareness to a single object like your breathing. Open monitoring meditation takes the opposite approach, broadening your awareness to notice whatever arises, including sounds, physical sensations, and passing thoughts, without latching onto any of them. Both reduce blood pressure, but they affect the body in slightly different ways. Focused attention practices tend to lower cortisol (the primary stress hormone), while open monitoring practices are more associated with reduced heart rate.
Across all forms of mindfulness, a systematic review of physiological studies found reductions in cortisol, blood pressure, heart rate, triglycerides, and markers of inflammation. These changes reflect a shift away from the body’s chronic stress response, where the nervous system stays stuck in fight-or-flight mode, and toward a calmer baseline.
Transcendental Meditation
Transcendental Meditation, or TM, involves silently repeating a specific mantra, a word or short phrase assigned by a certified teacher. You sit comfortably with your eyes closed and let the mantra settle into the background of your awareness. There’s no specific breathing pattern or concentration effort involved, which distinguishes it from many other techniques.
TM has an unusually strong evidence base for cardiovascular health. In a study of 127 older adults with high blood pressure, three months of TM practice lowered systolic pressure by 10 to 13 points and diastolic pressure by 6 to 8 points. Even in healthy college students, a randomized trial of 298 participants found blood pressure dropped modestly in the TM group while it slightly increased in the control group. The American Heart Association has acknowledged TM as a potentially beneficial practice for blood pressure management.
Beyond cardiovascular effects, brain imaging research shows TM decreases perceived anxiety and stress while changing how regions involved in self-awareness communicate with each other. Studies among school teachers found it significantly reduced psychological distress and burnout compared to controls.
Vipassana (Insight Meditation)
Vipassana is one of the oldest Buddhist meditation techniques, though today it’s often taught in a secular context at non-sectarian retreat centers worldwide. The method involves systematically scanning your body from head to toe, paying close attention to every sensation you encounter, warmth, tingling, pressure, pain, without trying to change or avoid any of it.
The purpose is insight into the nature of your own experience. By observing sensations without reacting, you train yourself to break the automatic cycle of craving pleasant feelings and pushing away unpleasant ones. Vipassana retreats are typically intensive, often 10 days of silent practice, which makes them a bigger commitment than most other starting points. But the structured, systematic approach appeals to people who want a clear framework rather than open-ended sitting.
Zen Meditation (Zazen)
Zen meditation shares roots with Vipassana in the Buddhist tradition but has a distinctly different feel. Posture is central: practitioners sit on a round cushion called a zafu, typically in a cross-legged position, with the spine straight and the eyes slightly open and cast downward. The emphasis on precise physical form is much stronger than in most other styles.
The technique itself varies. Some Zen practice focuses on the breath, similar to mindfulness. A unique element is the use of koans, paradoxical questions or riddles (like “What is the sound of one hand clapping?”) that a teacher assigns to provoke insight beyond logical thinking. Zen tends to involve more ritual and formality than other meditation types, including specific gestures and ceremonies, and traditionally relies on a close relationship with a teacher.
Loving-Kindness Meditation (Metta)
Loving-kindness meditation, known as metta in the Pali language, focuses on generating feelings of warmth and goodwill. You typically begin by directing kind wishes toward yourself (“May I be happy, may I be healthy”), then gradually extend those wishes outward to loved ones, acquaintances, strangers, and eventually people you find difficult.
This practice produces measurable shifts in how you relate to other people. In one study, even a single brief session of loving-kindness meditation increased positive feelings toward neutral strangers compared to a control group that simply practiced guided imagery. That effect extended beyond the specific person participants were told to focus on, spilling over to unrelated strangers as well. Brain imaging research shows the practice increases activity in regions involved in emotional processing and empathy, particularly areas responsible for detecting emotions in others and mapping physical sensations to emotional states.
Loving-kindness meditation is often recommended for people dealing with self-criticism, social anxiety, or difficulty with empathy. It’s also used as a complement to other meditation styles rather than a standalone practice.
Body Scan Meditation
Body scan meditation asks you to move your attention slowly through different parts of your body, noticing whatever sensations are present without trying to relax or change them. It’s a core component of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) programs and often one of the first techniques taught to beginners because it gives your attention a concrete anchor.
The practice sharpens your ability to accurately perceive what’s happening in your body. Research found that people who completed a body scan intervention became more accurate at detecting physical sensations and less likely to misperceive touch that wasn’t there. This has practical implications: the researchers suggested body scan meditation could help people who experience medically unexplained physical symptoms by improving the accuracy of their body awareness rather than amplifying false signals.
Movement-Based Meditation
Not all meditation happens while sitting still. Tai chi and qigong combine slow, flowing physical movements with focused breathing and mental attention. Both originated in Chinese traditions and are sometimes called “moving meditation.”
The research on tai chi is particularly strong for mood and mental health. A 16-week study of sedentary adults practicing tai chi for 45 minutes three times a week found greater improvements in mood than both exercise and relaxation control groups. Twelve-week trials in people with rheumatoid arthritis, fibromyalgia, and knee osteoarthritis all showed tai chi outperformed control conditions for reducing depression and anxiety. For anxiety specifically, tai chi and general exercise appear roughly comparable, making tai chi a good option if conventional exercise doesn’t appeal to you.
Walking meditation is another movement option. You walk slowly and deliberately, paying attention to the sensation of each footstep, the shifting of your weight, and the movement of your legs. It’s particularly useful for people who find sitting meditation physically uncomfortable or who struggle with restlessness.
MBSR: A Structured Clinical Program
Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction isn’t a separate type of meditation so much as a structured program that combines several types, including mindfulness, body scanning, and gentle yoga. Developed for clinical settings, MBSR runs for eight consecutive weeks. Participants attend a weekly two-hour group class, complete 45 minutes of daily meditation and yoga homework six days a week, and practice 15-minute awareness exercises daily using a workbook. During the sixth week, there’s an intensive eight-hour retreat day.
That’s a significant time commitment, but the structured format makes it one of the most studied meditation interventions in clinical research. MBSR programs are offered through hospitals, community health centers, and certified instructors.
What Happens in Your Brain
Different meditation types produce distinct patterns of electrical activity in the brain, but a few consistent themes emerge. As meditation deepens, alpha waves (associated with relaxed alertness, in the 7 to 13 Hz range) increase steadily. Theta waves (4 to 6 Hz), which are linked to drowsiness and mind-wandering, decrease with depth. This means deeper meditation isn’t a drift toward sleep. It’s the opposite: a state of calm, highly focused wakefulness.
Gamma waves, the fastest brain oscillations at 30 to 50 Hz, show an interesting pattern. They decrease in brain regions associated with mind-wandering during effortless concentration, a finding observed in both experienced and novice meditators. At the deepest levels of practice, gamma activity increases in connection with what researchers describe as transpersonal qualities of experience.
Getting Started
If you’re new to meditation, start with 5 minutes a day and work up to at least 10. Research suggests 10 minutes daily is enough to produce meaningful stress reduction, and consistency matters more than session length. Meditating for 10 minutes every day will do more for you than 45 minutes once a week. Some people prefer a single daily session, while others split practice into a short morning sit and another in the evening.
Mindfulness and body scan meditation are the most common starting points because they require no special training, equipment, or teacher. Transcendental Meditation requires learning from a certified instructor, which involves a fee. Vipassana is typically learned at retreat centers, many of which operate on a donation basis. For movement-based practices like tai chi, community classes are widely available and particularly well-suited to older adults or anyone who finds sitting still for extended periods difficult.