Mindfulness is sometimes used to treat anxiety, depression, and other mental illness. It’s the act of taking a quiet moment to take stock of your emotions in the present. It helps break free from anxious thoughts and allows emotions to be acknowledged. If you’re curious about how mindfulness works, or are looking for more information, these mindfulness blogs are a great place to start.
1. Tasting Mindfulness
Mindfulness isn’t just about yoga and meditating. Cultivating a healthy, mindful relationship with food can be just as healing. That’s what Lynn Rossy, Ph.D., believes. She’s a health psychologist specializing in mindful eating, moving, and living. Her lessons are built to cultivate love and life in your food and your body.
Learning to live mindfully can be challenging, but Rossy’s blog is full of tips, including recognizing when we’re trying to avoid our emotions. “When things are going well in our lives, mindfulness helps us deeply experience the pleasure of being alive,” she says. “However, it is when the going gets rough that the true grit of mindfulness is brought to bear.”
2. The Mindfulness Project
Based out of London’s Centre for Mindfulness, The Mindfulness Project offers a secular and evidence-based approach to bring mindfulness to as many people as possible. This non-profit was founded in 2013 by Alexandra Frey and Autumn Totton. Frey is an experienced mindfulness teacher with a background in business, psychology, and journalism, and Totton brings business experience.
In addition to offering mindfulness courses and resources, The Mindfulness Project’s blog features posts on using mindfulness to deal with race, chronic pain, and more.
3. The Center for Mindfulness Studies
This social enterprise based in Canada provides affordable mindfulness therapy and programs to those with social and economic barriers and is committed to making mental health services available to everyone.
Topics include dealing with COVID-induced stress (a popular topic), what to expect after taking a mindfulness lesson, and even mindfulness challenges for the year. We especially appreciate the COVID mental health toolkit, which offers meditations, articles, and resources for anyone struggling with pandemic-specific stress.
4. The Oxford Mindfulness Center
Based at the University of Oxford in England, OMC’s mission is to reduce suffering, promote resilience and realize human potential across the lifespan through mindfulness. They’ve been leading mindfulness training and research since 2008. Many Oxford students take advantage of their mindfulness courses, like graduate student Gediminas Jurgis Pažėra.
He joined the course after finding it difficult to pursue his research during a pandemic. “The solution that finally helped me untangle every overwhelming day still feels too simple to be true—I accept the fact that at the moment I am struggling and that my feelings are normal. Such acceptance helps me shift my mindset and to look for ways that I can enrich my life instead of letting self-doubt control me.”
5. Tiny Buddha
Tiny Buddha isn’t a religious blog, but it is about taking simple wisdom and applying it to our hectic lives. What makes this blog special isn’t so much about the blog – Tiny Buddha is home to an active community forum and Facebook page as well. At six million readers strong, it’s clear that this peaceful and compassionate blog resonates with readers.
Topics range from love and relationships to finding purpose in your life. Contributor Christie Leigh Babirad writes about her experience trying to find meaning in her work, and how letting go of what she thought she wanted led her to a more peaceful life. “What we want isn’t always what is best for us. If we were able to be so open, I don’t believe we would be propelled into action through having to sit in those feelings and figure out how we’re personally going to step up and out of a situation to create our own unique story.”
6. Headspace
If you’ve been looking for mindfulness and meditation content, you’ve likely found the popular app Headspace listed on your phone or tablet. But they also have a blog to answer common questions like “why do I wake up tired?” and meditations for financial stress.
In their post about waking up tired, you can find morning sounds to help you feel more alert, ten-minute meditations to start your day, and more. If you like what you see, you can download the app for full-length meditations and more.
7. Calm
Calm is another meditation app with a blog. Here you can meet the writers behind the sleep stories, how music can make you feel better, and first-hand accounts of those who were reluctant to start mindfulness or meditation. If you use the app or want more information before you download it, this blog gives a good idea about what to expect.
Our favorite: this simple exercise to calm a racing mind.
8. Elephant Journal
Elephant Journal started as a print magazine in 2002. They’ve now gone completely digital, and describe themselves as the guide to “the mindful life: yoga, organics, sustainability, genuine spirituality, conscious consumerism, fair fashion, the contemplative arts…anything that helps us to live a good life that also happens to be good for others, and our planet.”
They cover a wide variety of topics, from love and relationships to yoga to green living. Recent articles include how to handle conflict in relationships gracefully and the difference between cancel culture and accountability. Like many digital magazines, Elephant Journal relies on subscriptions to keep the lights on, so if you enjoy their content, you can become a member with unlimited access to all their articles.
9. The Blissful Mind
Catherine is a mindset coach and, in her own words, a perfectionist, overthinker, and serial over-committer. If you struggle with work-life balance or find yourself constantly burned out, The Blissful Mind can help you build a self-care routine or manage your time.
Self-care isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution, however. Catherine would know: her own burnout in 2019 made her rethink her ideas on self-care. “Even though I was practicing self-care on a regular basis, I burned myself to the ground because I wasn’t being honest with myself. What I thought was self-care wasn’t working for me.”
10. My Morning Routine
Starting your morning right can set the tone for the entire day. Social media is full of morning routine videos, from waking up at 5 am to starting every day with a sunrise yoga session, but it’s not all matcha lattes and marble countertops. At least, not for everyone.
My Morning Routine is full of hundreds of real-life examples of real-life people. From writers to business owners to parents, each post shares what works for them and what doesn’t. While most wake up decently early, a few are late risers, and routines vary wildly. Most do take a moment for mindfulness, whether that means meditation or simply enjoying coffee near a window. This is a good place for those looking to build their own routine and to see how they can incorporate mindfulness in their own day.
11. Raw Mindfulness
This blog is run by Annie Mahon, whose studies include traditional mindfulness, religious studies, and Buddhism under Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh. “This is the place for empowering yourself to wake up, slow down, connect with others, and create the space you need to live a happy and meaningful life,” she writes. Her blog blends mindfulness, self-care, and social justice with compassion and sincerity. She also occasionally writes for Elephant Journal.
Mahon recently underwent cancer treatment and shared how mindfulness kept her steady during a stressful time.
12. Zen Habits
“Zen Habits is about finding simplicity and mindfulness in the daily chaos of our lives,” writes blogger Leo Babauta. It’s made to help give you practical and applicable advice to get a little more zen in your everyday life.
Babauta has multiple books and lessons available for anyone looking for mindfulness. His blog deals with facing the death of loved ones, or uncertainty in our lives. “All of us do this in most areas of our lives. Sometimes, we are able to voluntarily stay in uncertainty, but those times are relatively rare, and usually, we don’t like it so much,” he writes. “Here’s the thing: the edge of uncertainty and chaos is where we learn, grow, create, lead, make incredible art and new inventions.”
13. Rebel Zen
If you’re a creative or someone who works in creative fields, then you know the struggle of trying to find inspiration and balancing your mental health when it feels like things aren’t working out the way you want them to. “You may struggle to work out exactly what your place in this world is,” Rebel Zen writes. “You may struggle to follow through and finish things. Sometimes, you may struggle to even function in this world.”
This blog is about finding mindfulness in your creative practice, whether you paint, write, or focus on some other kind of medium. Blog writer Séamus Anthony has been through every phase of the “struggling artist,” and he started this blog to document his journey and let other artists know they are not alone.
14. Lena Franklin
Franklin was taught Buddhism tradition by her Vietnamese mother, something she leaned heavily on after waking up one morning and realizing her carefully-crafted life was more of a prison. She’s trained in mindfulness stress reduction, earned a bachelor’s in psychology, and has a Master’s in social work.
Franklin’s blog is dedicated to documenting her journey. Posts include gratitude practices to impact your life and how to embrace the intersection between science and spirituality.
15. Mindfulbalance
Mindfulbalance’s author Karl Duffy has been working in mindfulness for more than 30 years. He’s attended dozens of retreats and courses with mindful experts like Jon Kabat Zinn, Ph.D., and Saki Santorelli. His blog, based in Kildare, Ireland, uses spiritual quotes and words of wisdom from many mindful practices.
Whatever the daily theme for the blog may be, Duffy follows this advice from Rilke: “Write about what your everyday life offers you; describe your sorrows and desires, the thoughts that pass through your mind and your belief in some kind of beauty”
When to See a Therapist
Mindfulness can be a useful tool on its own or in accompaniment with therapy. If you’re ready to see a therapist about your anxiety, depression, or other mental illness, check out our directory to find a therapist near you. Not sure what to expect? Here’s how to prepare for your first session.
