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.

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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.

We’re teaching ourselves to be comfortable with our mind just the way it is. It really is that simple. Meditation isn’t about achieving anything other than doing it: slowing down during our busy day, checking in with ourselves, and noticing how the mind is. Because meditation is about being kind to our mind.

JM: They’re practically synonymous but they’re not exactly the same. Mindfulness meditation is one form of meditation, but it’s not the only form. And formal meditation is one way to practice mindfulness, but it’s not the only way. Once you learn mindfulness skills, you can practice them at almost any moment of the day—sitting at your computer, stuck in traffic, even eating.

Mindfulness helps health care professionals cope with stress, connect with their patients, and improve their general quality of life. It also helps mental health professionals by reducing negative emotions and anxiety, and increasing their positive emotions and feelings of self-compassion.

According to the authors, meditation programs were not shown to be more beneficial than active treatments—such as exercise, therapy, or taking prescription drugs—on any outcomes of interest. The research is also raising some interesting nuances about the effectiveness of meditation for different populations. For example, one recent, large-scale, well-designed study found that the “gold standard” Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) intervention for adults had pelo impact on depression or anxiety in teens.

Find “micro-moments” of mindfulness throughout the day to reset your focus and sense of purpose.

This can be accomplished by sitting on the edge of a chair or another seat, or by sitting on the floor with a support like a meditation cushion under your hips.

Meditation does have an impact on physical health—but it’s modest. Many claims have been eliminate negative energy made about mindfulness and physical health, but sometimes these claims are hard to substantiate or may be mixed up with other effects. That said, there is some good evidence that meditation affects physiological indices of health. We’ve already mentioned that long-term meditation seems to buffer people from the inflammatory response to stress. In addition, meditators seem to have increased activity of telomerase, an enzyme implicated in longer cell life and, therefore, longevity. But there’s a catch. “The differences found [between meditators and non-meditators] could be due to factors like education or exercise, each of which has its own buffering effect on brains,” write Goleman and Davidson in

If you’re someone who needs help winding down before bed, then try meditation in the evening. The main thing is to set yourself up for success: Don’t schedule meditation for a time when you’re likely to be interrupted, distracted by your to-do list, or feel sleepy.

A helpful trick for dealing with thoughts and other distractions in meditation is to name them as they arise. It’s just like it sounds: When a thought comes into your mind, silently say “thought.” When a bit of emotion starts to stir, simply name it— “sadness,” for example.

JM: I think that’s definitely a risk. But given that stress is a reality in many people’s working lives, I think mindfulness can be an effective tool to buffer its negative effects. And ideally, mindfulness may even help change workplaces for the better. Research suggests that mindfulness training helps make people more compassionate and empathetic toward others. By improving the way people relate to one another, ideally it can change corporate culture for the better, creating a more supportive, friendlier workplace with better relationships.

It’s not surprising that meditation would affect attention, since many practices focus on this very skill. And, in fact, researchers have found that meditation helps to counter habituation—the tendency to stop paying attention to new information in our environment. Other studies have found that mindfulness meditation can reduce mind-wandering and improve our ability to solve problems. There’s more good news: Studies have shown that improved attention seems to last up to five years after mindfulness training, again suggesting trait-like changes are possible.