You can think about almost anything during meditation, and the “right” answer depends on the type of meditation you’re practicing. But if you’re just getting started, the simplest and most common anchor is your breath. Most meditation traditions begin there because it’s always available, requires no special training, and naturally slows your nervous system. From that starting point, you can branch into body sensations, mental images, phrases, or simply open awareness of whatever arises.
Your Breath as a Starting Point
Breath is the most universal meditation focus for good reason. When you breathe using your diaphragm (the muscle below your lungs), it activates your vagus nerve, which triggers your body’s relaxation response and lowers its stress response. You don’t need to breathe in any special pattern. Just let your breath move at its own pace and pay attention to it.
There are two distinct ways to pay attention to breathing, and they lead to very different experiences. The first is concentration-style practice: you focus on the simple fact that you’re breathing, sometimes counting each breath. The goal is single-pointed attention. The second is awareness-style practice: instead of the idea of breathing, you notice the physical sensations the breath creates. The slight warmth or coolness at your nostrils. The rise and fall of your belly. The way your ribs expand. You observe these sensations without judging them, watching how they come and go. Both approaches are legitimate. Counting breaths builds focus. Feeling the breath builds body awareness.
What to Do When Your Mind Wanders
Your mind will wander. This isn’t a failure. It’s the entire exercise. The moment you notice you’ve drifted away from your focus, you’re already back. That noticing is the mental muscle you’re building.
A useful image: picture your thoughts as boats floating down a river. Your job is to watch them pass without climbing into any of them. When you realize you’ve hopped aboard one (replaying a conversation, planning dinner, worrying about tomorrow), simply step back onto the riverbank. Take three or four deep, conscious breaths. You can silently say “breathing in” and “breathing out” to re-anchor yourself. Do your best to notice thoughts without getting swept away by them or adding more thoughts on top. Then return to whatever your anchor is, whether that’s the breath, a body sensation, or something else.
This cycle of drifting and returning isn’t an interruption to meditation. It is meditation. Even experienced practitioners spend most of their sessions noticing the mind has wandered and gently coming back. As little as four days of practice can measurably improve your ability to sustain attention, and long-term meditators show significant improvements in working memory and the ability to catch details their brain would normally skip over.
Body Sensations and the Body Scan
Instead of focusing on breath alone, you can direct your attention systematically through your entire body. This is called a body scan, and it’s especially good for releasing physical tension you didn’t know you were holding.
The standard sequence starts at your feet and moves upward: feet, ankles, calves, knees, thighs, lower back and pelvis, mid and upper back, stomach and internal organs, chest and heart, hands and fingertips, arms, neck and shoulders and throat, then scalp, head, and face. At each stop, you simply notice what’s there. You might feel the temperature of your skin, the pressure of clothing, points of contact with the chair or floor, tightness, pulsing, tingling, or nothing at all. You might notice your heartbeat when you reach your chest, or the process of digestion when you reach your belly.
The key instruction is to observe without judging. If you find pain or stiffness somewhere, you don’t need to fix it. Just notice it. Watch how sensations rise and fall, shift and change moment to moment. With each exhale, you can let go of whatever tension you’re carrying in that area. Once you’ve moved through each region, expand your awareness to include the entire body from the top of your head to the bottom of your toes.
A Phrase or Intention
In loving-kindness meditation, your focus is a set of short phrases directed at yourself and then gradually outward to others. You silently repeat wishes like “May I be safe, may I be happy, may I be peaceful.” The traditional sequence starts with yourself, then moves to someone who has helped you, then to a neutral person, then to someone you find difficult, and finally to all beings everywhere.
The phrases can be adapted to whatever you’re experiencing. During periods of physical or emotional pain, for example, you might use “May I accept this pain without thinking it makes me bad or wrong” or “May I accept my anger, fear, and worry, knowing that my heart is not limited by them.” The point isn’t to force a feeling. It’s to offer the intention of kindness and see what happens. Some days it feels genuine, other days mechanical. Both are fine.
Mantras work similarly but are simpler. A mantra can be a single word or a short phrase you repeat to give the mind something steady to hold onto. It functions like counting breaths but with a different texture.
A Mental Image
Visualization asks you to build and hold a picture in your mind. This could be something simple, like a lotus flower, a candle flame, or a ball of warm light. Or it could be a detailed scene.
One well-studied visualization exercise, used in clinical settings for stress and PTSD, involves imagining yourself walking down a path into a forest. You take in the sights, sounds, and smells: trees and mossy ground cover, birds chirping, the rich dampness of the forest floor. Sunlight filters through the canopy, creating patterns of light and shadow. You come to a clearing with flat rocks and a small stream, sit down, put your feet in the cool water, feel the warm sun on your skin. The more senses you involve, the more immersive and calming the experience becomes. Taste the cool water. Feel the breeze through your hair. Hear the stream trickling around stones.
Visualization requires more active mental effort than breath-focused meditation, which makes it a good option if you find that simply watching your breath leaves too much room for your mind to wander. The imagery gives your brain something vivid to hold onto.
Open Awareness: Thinking About Nothing Specific
Not all meditation requires a fixed focus. In open awareness practice, you don’t choose a single anchor. Instead, you let your attention rest on whatever is most prominent in your experience right now. That might be a sound, a sensation, an emotion, or a thought. You notice it, let it pass, and see what comes next.
This is harder than it sounds, and generally works better once you’ve built some concentration through breath or body-focused practice first. Without that foundation, open awareness tends to become just regular mind-wandering. The difference is the quality of attention: you’re watching your experience unfold rather than getting pulled along by it.
Choosing What Works for You
If you’re brand new, start with breath. It’s the simplest, most forgiving focus, and it activates a measurable relaxation response in your body. If you carry a lot of physical tension or feel disconnected from your body, try a body scan. If you’re dealing with difficult emotions or relationship stress, loving-kindness phrases give you something constructive to direct your attention toward. If you have an active, restless mind, visualization can be more engaging than breath alone.
You don’t have to pick one method permanently. Many experienced meditators use different anchors on different days depending on what they need. The common thread across all of them is the same simple skill: noticing where your attention is, and gently bringing it back when it drifts. That’s what you’re actually practicing, regardless of what you’re thinking about.