We’re admittedly biased, but the primary goal at Mindfulness.com is to help people develop a daily practice of meditation. The most common feedback we receive for our app is how useful it is for beginners to start and sustain a meditation practice.

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Mindfulness fosters compassion and altruism: Research suggests mindfulness training makes us more likely to help someone in need and increases activity in neural networks involved in understanding the suffering of others and regulating emotions. Evidence suggests it might boost self-compassion as well.

Mindfulness also involves acceptance, meaning that we pay attention to our thoughts and feelings without judging them—without believing, for instance, that there’s a “right” or “wrong” way to think or feel in a given moment.

The good news is you can train your brain to focus better by incorporating mindfulness exercises throughout your day. Based on our experience with thousands of leaders in over 250 organizations, here are some guidelines for becoming a more focused and mindful leader.

Mindfulness is good for parents and parents-to-be: Studies suggest it may reduce pregnancy-related anxiety, stress, and depression in expectant parents, and may even reduce the risk of premature births and developmental issues. Parents who practice mindful parenting report less stress, more positive parenting practices, and better relationships with their kids; their kids, in turn, are less susceptible to depression and anxiety, and have better social skills.

We’ll get started together. Then by the end of this article, we’ll be more familiar with how to meditate and be ready to practice on our own.

Those who learned mindfulness had significantly greater reductions in their systolic and diastolic blood pressure than those who learned progressive muscle relaxation, suggesting that mindfulness could help people at risk for heart disease by bringing blood pressure down.

. “Then there’s self-selection: Perhaps people with the brain changes reported in these studies choose to stick with meditation while others do not.” In other words, we should use caution when championing results.

JM: There are many. Some of the earliest studies, which involved the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction program founded by Jon Kabat-Zinn at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, showed that mindfulness can help ease stress. Mindfulness fosters positive emotions and helps provide resilience against negative experiences. There’s also evidence that the practice of mindfulness promotes empathy and a sense of compassion. Indeed, brain imaging research shows that a half hour of mindfulness meditation a day increases the density of gray matter in parts of the brain associated with memory, stress, and empathy.

Jason Marsh: Mindfulness describes a moment-to-moment awareness of your thoughts, feelings, and bodily sensations. It’s a state of being attuned to what’s going on in your body and in the surrounding environment—being in the present moment without thinking about the future or what happened in the past.

The Headspace app has hundreds of guided exercises to help you build your practice. Start by searching these three meditations to help you start a meditation practice. A happier, healthier you is a few breaths away.

Meditation has proven benefits, but the style that works best depends on a person's habits and preferences. In this episode of The Science of Happiness, we explore walking meditation, a powerful practice for feeling more centered and grounded. Dan Harris, host of the award-winning 10% Happier podcast, shares how walking meditation helps him manage the residual stress and anxiety from years of war reporting and high-pressure TV anchoring.

In fact, there has been a lot of interest in promoting mindful eating as a way to help people be more aware of what they eat, to enjoy each bite more, and even to guided meditation control how much they eat. And there’s also growing interest in using the practice of mindfulness in the workplace to provide a buffer against stress.