Free Guided Meditations From UCLA: Boost Your Awareness & Ease Your Stress

Pre­vi­ous­ly, we’ve writ­ten about a grow­ing num­ber of cul­tur­al fig­ures who prac­tice tran­scen­den­tal med­i­ta­tion, with Paul McCart­ney, David Lynch, Leonard Cohen, Ellen Degeneres, and Sheryl Crow being ardent sup­port­ers. Mind­ful­ness med­i­ta­tion, while less known, has also steadi­ly increased in pop­u­lar­i­ty over the past half-decade. In part, there’s its inher­ent appeal: mind­ful­ness cul­ti­vates an all-accept­ing aware­ness of the present moment, there­by dis­solv­ing anx­i­eties about the future or pre­oc­cu­pa­tions with thoughts of the past. There’s also the grow­ing momen­tum of mind­ful­ness research in the sci­en­tif­ic com­mu­ni­ty, with stud­ies sug­gest­ing that mind­ful­ness-based ther­a­peu­tic approach­es may ben­e­fit a host of psy­cho­log­i­cal issues. Its use to alle­vi­ate anx­i­ety, depres­sion, and stress is par­tic­u­lar­ly promis­ing.

“Sounds tempt­ing,” you say, “but where does one try this mind­ful­ness med­i­ta­tion busi­ness, any­way? Can I try it with­out going any­where?” You’re in luck, my friend! UCLA’s Mind­ful Aware­ness Research Cen­ter (MARC) has uploaded a set of mind­ful­ness med­i­ta­tions to iTune­sU, where the series is present­ly the #1 down­load. “I’m too busy,” you say, open­ing a Face­book tab. Not so fast! Most of the med­i­ta­tions are under 10 min­utes long, with the com­plete series clock­ing in at two hours.

We’ve had trou­ble lis­ten­ing to the lec­tures on the UCLA site, so if you’re inter­est­ed, head over to iTune­sU to down­load Mind­ful Med­i­ta­tions. Oth­er­wise, if you live with­in a rea­son­able dis­tance of UCLA’s Ham­mer Muse­um, drop in for free week­ly med­i­ta­tion ses­sions (record­ings for most of these are avail­able here).

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman, or read more of his writ­ing at the Huff­in­g­ton Post.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Alan Watts Intro­duces Amer­i­ca to Med­i­ta­tion & East­ern Phi­los­o­phy (1960)

David Lynch Talks Med­i­ta­tion with Paul McCart­ney

Mihaly Czik­szent­mi­ha­lyi Explains Why the Source of Hap­pi­ness Lies in Cre­ativ­i­ty and Flow, Not Mon­ey

David Lynch Explains How Med­i­ta­tion Enhances Our Cre­ativ­i­ty