Mindfulness for Anxiety

Which mindfulness exercise to use when

Pick a short, concrete exercise when anxiety is high, and a longer, quieter one when it is low and constant. If it is thoughts that loop rather than a racing body, try mindfulness for overthinking.

This table is our own advice; it does not come from studies. Pick one in the timer above and press Start. If sitting with your thoughts has made you feel worse before, start with why that happens and what to change.

6 mindfulness exercises for anxiety, step by step

The timer walks you through each one. Here they are in full, so you can also do them without a screen.

1. STOP (1 minute)

Psychologist Elisha Goldstein's four-letter pause ^[3]. Stop what you are doing. Take a few breaths. Observe your thoughts, feelings and body, and name the feeling in a word. Proceed with something that helps right now.

2. Breath anchor (3 minutes)

Pick one place where the breath is easy to feel: the nose, chest or belly. Follow each breath in and out without changing it. When a worry pulls you away, notice "thinking" and come back to the next breath. Each return to the breath is the practice. Expect your attention to drift many times.

3. 3-minute breathing space (3 minutes)

A short practice from Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy, described by one of its developers, Zindel Segal ^[4]. It has three parts of about a minute: notice what is here (thoughts, feelings, body), gather your attention on the breath, then widen it to the whole body and the room.

4. Listening to sounds (3 minutes)

Based on a meditation from the UCLA Mindful Awareness Research Center ^[5]. After a moment with your body, turn to sounds near and far, and let them come and go. When your mind starts a story about a sound or a judgment ("I hate that drill"), go back to just hearing. Sounds are an option when your own heartbeat feels too loud to focus on.

5. Where is the anxiety? (3 minutes)

Find where anxiety sits in your body right now. Notice its size, shape and temperature as if you were describing it to someone. Breathe as if into that place and out of it, and let it stay. It may shift a little once you stop pushing against it.

6. Leaves on a stream (5 minutes)

A defusion exercise from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, adapted from Russ Harris ^[6]. Picture a slow stream. Place each thought on a leaf and watch it float out of sight, whether it is pleasant or painful. If you get swept into a thought, put that thought on a leaf too. We suggest it for worries that keep circling at night.

Try one exercise a day for a week before you decide which suits you.

Simple mindfulness activities for anxiety, every day

Waiting for the kettle or standing in line is a ready-made one-minute practice. Notice the weight of your feet while you wait, or take three breaths before you open your email.

Short informal moments like these give you practice between longer sessions. When anxiety is so strong that attention keeps sliding off the breath, try a more concrete, sense-based exercise first. 5-4-3-2-1 grounding: name 5 things you see, 4 you can touch, 3 you hear, 2 you smell and 1 you taste. The shorter 3-3-3 rule: name 3 things you see and 3 sounds you hear, then move 3 parts of your body.

Does mindfulness help anxiety?

Hofmann and colleagues pooled 39 studies with 1,140 people and found that mindfulness-based therapy improved anxiety from before to after treatment (Hedges' g = 0.63), and more in people with anxiety and mood disorders (g = 0.97) ^[1]. Those are before-and-after changes within the groups, so they overstate the effect compared with a control.

A larger 2018 meta-analysis of 142 samples and 12,005 people covered many psychiatric conditions, with the most consistent evidence for depression, pain, smoking and addiction. Mindfulness programs beat no treatment (d = 0.55) and non-specific active controls (d = 0.35), and did about as well as established treatments. In the authors' words, "Mindfulness conditions did not differ from evidence-based treatments" ^[7].

Two trials looked directly at anxiety disorders. In 2013, an 8-week mindfulness course for generalized anxiety disorder lowered anxiety about as much as stress-management classes on the main measure, and did better on some secondary ones ^[8]. In 2023, in a trial of 276 adults, the same kind of course was not worse than the antidepressant escitalopram, and study-related side effects were reported by 15.4% of the mindfulness group against 78.6% on the drug ^[9].

Across 65 trials of brief mindfulness training, the effect on negative mood was small (g = 0.21) and close to zero after correcting for unpublished studies (g = 0.04) ^[2]. The exercises on this page let you practice the skill. A course or treatment does more.

Why mindfulness can make anxiety worse at first

Sitting still with your attention turned inward can make some people more anxious, at least at first. A 2020 systematic review of 83 studies found adverse events in 8.3% of meditators overall, 3.7% in experimental studies; anxiety was the most commonly reported one ^[10].

• If focusing on your breath makes you more aware of your heartbeat, switch to sounds or keep your eyes open and look at one object in the room.
• If closing your eyes feels unsafe, keep them open and soften your gaze.
• If thoughts get louder, shorten the exercise to 1 minute, or move: a slow walk where you feel each step is also mindfulness (see mindful walking). If the loud thoughts are mostly harsh things about yourself, a self-compassion meditation is aimed at that.
• If you feel detached, unreal or panicky, stop and use your senses: name what you see around you. Our page on calming your nervous system has a 2-minute longer-exhale breath for this.

How long until mindfulness helps with anxiety?

Some people feel a little calmer after one exercise. The two trials in anxiety disorders both ran for 8 weeks ^{[8] [9]}.

In the 2023 trial, the course was the standard 8-week MBSR program with a weekly class ^[9]. You don't need to start there. Our suggestion, not a tested schedule: try a few minutes on most days over several weeks. If you want to sit longer in silence, a meditation timer keeps time for you.

Frequently asked questions