BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM In today’s fast-paced world, taking time for stress relief might be overwhelming—especially if you’re already overburdened. The recommendation to “take a vacation” or “try yoga” sounds perfect, but with hectic schedules, finding time for extended getaways can be practically difficult. Fortunately, there’s a simple but powerful approach to achieving calm: micro-meditations.
These tiny mindfulness activities are flexible, lasting only one to five minutes, but they can help reduce stress without taking up too much time in your day. “Micro-meditations are a really great way to begin,” says Susan Chen , founder of Susan Chen Vedic Meditation in New York. These techniques can be a refreshing alternative, delivering many of the advantages of longer meditation sessions in far smaller, more manageable doses.
Here’s how micro-meditations work and some basic techniques to try. What are micro-meditations and how do they work? Micro-meditations are brief mindfulness exercises that make it simple to incorporate moments of calm into your day. They range from short breathwork to basic visualization exercises that take only a few moments to complete.
According to Chen, the goal is to prioritize “quality, not quantity.” Even if you’re new to meditation, a few minutes dedicated to a short meditation can provide tremendous stress alleviation. A 2019 study published in Behavioural Brain Research discovered that even brief, guided mi.
