Free mindfulness courses

A quick answer

• “I want a free course, with time each day for eight weeks.” Palouse Mindfulness.
• “I want a structured app.” The free Healthy Minds Program.
• “I want to try a few practices first.” A library, such as UCLA Mindful, Greater Good in Action, or our Begin here playlist.
• “I’d like a teacher who knows I’m there.” A live MBSR or MBCT course.
• “I’m dealing with depression, or a hard time.” Talk to your doctor first. MBCT with a trained teacher may be worth asking about.

What a course asks, and gives

The best-known course is MBSR, Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, developed by Jon Kabat-Zinn. Taught live, it usually runs as eight weekly sessions of two to two and a half hours, plus an orientation and an all-day session. You practise at home between sessions, with recordings.

Its relative, MBCT (Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy), adds ideas from cognitive therapy. The UK’s NICE guidance recommends it as an option for preventing relapse in some adults with depression.

A course gives you:

• Order. Each week builds on the last.
• A rhythm. Eight weeks of daily practice can become a habit.
• Understanding. Lessons explain why you’re practising, not just how.
• With a live teacher, people. Someone to ask, and a group to practise with.

The free course: Palouse Mindfulness

Palouse Mindfulness is a complete eight-week MBSR course, free and online, with “no fees, no spam, no cookies, no passwords”. It’s about 50 hours over eight or more weeks, with 30 to 35 minutes of formal practice a day, weekly videos, readings and practice sheets. Volunteers host a weekly Zoom session.

When you finish, you can request a certificate of completion by sending your practice sheets and a written reflection, which are reviewed. It isn’t a teaching qualification.

Palouse says it’s “designed for people who are not able to take a live MBSR course”. For those who can, it says a live course “may be a better option”. It’s not a substitute for medical treatment.

It suits you if you want a full course for free, and have time each day for eight weeks.

Live courses with a teacher

A live course adds a trained teacher. You can ask questions, and practise with a group. In a large class, you may get less individual attention than you’d hope, so ask how a course works before you join.

Teacher-led courses are run by, for example, Brown University’s Mindfulness Center and the Oxford Mindfulness Foundation. Many run online. For eight weeks, Brown listed $650 in person and $599 online, and Oxford £300. Some health services offer MBCT too.

Live courses can also tell you if a course isn’t right for you now. Oxford’s MBCT course, for instance, says it isn’t suitable for people with severe depression, suicidal thoughts, or a recent major upheaval. It also asks that you live in the UK and have a GP.

The libraries

A library lets you choose a practice for the moment, and come back to the ones that help.

UCLA Mindful. Short guided meditations, 3 to 19 minutes, free to download, in many languages, from a university mindfulness centre. It also runs free short online sessions, and paid classes.

Greater Good in Action. From UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center: practices for gratitude, kindness, connection and more. Each comes with a summary of why it might work, and the studies behind it. You need an account only to save practices or follow its free programme.

Mindful.org. A magazine about mindfulness, with free articles and guided audio, and paid online courses from a range of teachers.

Sat-chit-ananda. 51 guided meditations, free, with nothing to sign up for. Start with the Begin here playlist and our guide to meditation for beginners.

How to choose

Compare	A course	A library
What it gives	A planned sequence, at a set pace	Choice, and practices to repeat
Time	Daily, for weeks	Whenever you choose
What comes next	The course decides	You decide
Free options	Palouse (MBSR), Healthy Minds Program	UCLA Mindful, Greater Good in Action, Free Mindfulness Project, Sat-chit-ananda, and more

A few things to weigh:

• A course asks more of your time. Eight weeks is a real commitment, and a set pace helps some people keep going.
• A library fits around a busy life. On a hard day, ten minutes of the right practice may be all you can do.
• They work well together. Many people take a course once, then use a library for years.

What the research says

Mindfulness courses taught in groups have been found to reduce distress compared with doing nothing. Compared with other active programmes, they generally haven’t been shown to do better, and the researchers say other programmes “may be equally effective”. Meditation apps show small benefits for anxiety and depression in trials. These are averages across many people.

The US National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health has a careful summary of the evidence and safety.

Try one this week

Pick one line from the quick answer and start today. For a course, read Palouse’s first week. For a library, try one short practice each day this week, such as Breathing Space, five minutes long.