The advent of the internet has significantly changed the way we learn, live, teach, and grow. One of the great benefits of having global access to countless resources online is the increased availability of many different types of training programs and short courses.
Traditionally, training and education has required costly commitments and was dependent upon one’s location. While these types of programs still exist, we are now able to access high quality, affordable programs from anywhere.
Free mindfulness courses are just one of the many types of offerings now delivered via the internet. Since mindfulness is about being present wherever we are, at-home, online teachings can suit this type of learning well.
Why Study Mindfulness Online?
Mindfulness courses can shape how we know ourselves and how we live in this world. Once we broaden our understanding of mindfulness, it’s hard to unlearn what we’ve picked up. Studying mindfulness online has several benefits. In contrast to traditional in-person teachings, online mindfulness courses are:
Affordable
Not all online mindfulness courses are free, but many of them are. It is possible to find good training at low or no cost.
Convenient
Study whenever you want, wherever you want. Online mindfulness programs allow you to learn when it suits your daily schedule.
Flexible
Unlike with more traditional programs (and even many other online learnings), online mindfulness programs often come with no deadlines. You can finish your short course in a day or stretch it out over a period of months.
Personalized
Online institutes offer access to different applications of and approaches to mindfulness. Depending on your interests and personal goals, various programs can be considered. From mindful eating to mindfulness for kids, online resources are widespread.
Intimate and Highly Personal
Exploring mindfulness is, above all, an inward practice. To understand the world around us, mindfulness draws us into our direct experience of the present moment. It’s an intimate and personal practice supported by online teachings that allow us to study when we feel safe and comfortable in our own environment.
Even if online mindfulness courses are low or no cost, our time is valuable; so, what is the benefit of studying this topic in general? Well, mindfulness courses have benefits that extend beyond those linked to the method of delivery. Mindfulness training and practice may help to:
- Increase our attention and capacity for focus
- Balance our mood and emotions
- Reduce feelings of depression, stress, and anxiety
- Heighten clarity, intuition, and creativity
- Improve sleep and reduce insomnia
- Improve relationships, with self and with others
- Manage chronic pain
- Improve certain physical conditions related to stress
- Support heart health
- Improve overall health and wellbeing
Mindfulness complements, and does not replace, care from a licensed health professional.
For many people, studying mindfulness online reaches many parts of life, building knowledge and understanding over time. It can change how we view ourselves and the world around us. Our actions can become more mindful, and as they do, we may feel more able to shape the life we want.
Types of Free Mindfulness Courses
Amongst the low-cost options for teachings, there are a wide range of offerings to consider. Beginners can look to the Mindfulness Made Easy course to help build a foundation for their mindfulness practice and for continued studies.
This course avoids spiritual jargon and focuses on basic mindfulness meditation. Mindfulness Made Easy offers practical, applicable teachings rather than a purely conceptual understanding.
Other free courses offered through Mindfulness Exercises include:
Living with Gratitude
Taught by former Buddhist monk and founder of Mindfulness Exercises, Sean Fargo, this online course offers teachings on gratitude to help deepen your understanding of it as a way of relating to the world, inner and outer. You will learn why gratitude matters and develop a personal practice to strengthen it. Other topics covered in this course include health and relationships, forgiveness, and our connection with the earth.
The 28-Day Mindfulness Challenge
If you have a beginner’s understanding of mindfulness and would like to take your practice a step further, developing consistency and widening your scope of practice, the 28-Day Mindfulness Challenge is a good course for building a consistent practice. Requiring only fifteen minutes daily, for 28 consecutive days, this challenge is designed to strengthen your personal practice. The daily meditations were written by the Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute (SIYLI) as part of a mindfulness program created at Google.
Mindfulness of Eating
As a collective, our relationship to food is complex. Over the years we have become disconnected from the food that nourishes us and from our bodies. Mindfulness of eating is a way of re-establishing those lost connections, and it may support our overall health and wellness. This course helps us to better understand hunger (head hunger included) and to tune into the hunger within.
Mindfulness Meditations for Kids
Mindfulness courses for children are practical, hands-on experiences. Rather than focusing on conceptual information, teachings created for children are experiential. Guiding children through mindfulness exercises designed with them in mind is one way to plant seeds that, when nourished, may grow into a lasting mindfulness practice.
Additional free courses exist alongside these ones. When choosing a course for yourself, trust your intuition. Start where you are and let your practice and studies expand outwards naturally.
Premium Courses and Teachers
Premium teachings are also available. Mindfulness Exercises offers three premium courses with expert teachers to help deepen your learning of various techniques and applications.
Giselle Withers, a Clinical Psychologist with over 20 years of experience, offers a course on Mindfulness for Better Sleep, helping students to understand how mindset impacts ease and quality of sleep. Another premium course, The Foundations of Well-Being, is offered by Dr. Rick Hanson. The yearlong program is designed to support happiness, confidence, and peace of mind.
For those who have spent some time developing their own personal practice and are interested in guiding others, online mindfulness teacher training programs exist as well. Through Mindfulness Exercises, Sean Fargo leads the Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Certification, a program designed to help aspiring mindfulness teachers build on their natural abilities.
We all come to mindfulness from our own personal experience, whether that be from a history of anxiety, stress, depression, fatigue, insomnia, illness, trauma, or some other aspect of human experience. This training is designed to help students understand where they’ve come from and what they have to offer as teachers. Many people are struggling, which is one reason skilled mindfulness teachers are needed.
Tools for Staying Committed to Your Course
Finding the continued motivation to maintain mindfulness practice or study can be challenging. Like most things in life, motivation comes and it goes, often leaving us confused about what it is we really want. Mindfulness can help us notice these comings and goings and act in ways that are aligned with what matters to us. This makes mindfulness a way of being worth exploring. To help stay committed to your course, consider the following principles:
1. Surface commitment will likely waver in the beginning; stay the course.
Motivation rises and falls, especially at the start. Expect your commitment to waver, and when it does, return to your course without judgment.
2. Note where perfectionism rises within.
Most of us like to do things that we’re really good at. As adults (and often as children, too), trying and ‘failing’ is not typically something we are actively encouraged to do. By releasing any ideas of how we “should” or “shouldn’t” be, or how our practice “should” or “shouldn’t” look, we make room for our experience to be totally complete and acceptable as it is. When the perfectionist arises, criticizing your best attempts to learn a new way of being, witness this voice as if you were an outside observer. Watch the transient nature of this voice, and meet it with compassion and without judgment.
3. Set goals.
Goal setting is a clear way to make our intentions known. When we keep our ideas of what we’d like to accomplish in the unstable entanglements of the mind alone, our goals tend to be unclear. Putting it down on paper or stating it out loud to a friend or family member helps to solidify what it is we are looking to achieve. Set goals about how often you’d like to practice or study, or when you’d like to have completed a course by.
4. Make space.
Each day, set time aside for your personal mindfulness studies. Whether you can dedicate 15 minutes or two hours to study each day is not as important as continuation. Choose an amount of time that is reasonable given your personal schedule and needs, and create a comfortable space for your study. Cozy up with herbal tea, blankets, and whatever other personal items will help to reaffirm your commitment. Steady intention and focus go a long way.
9 Free Mindfulness Courses
The 28-Day Mindfulness Challenge
Every day for the next 28 days, you’ll practice a short, guided mindfulness exercise to build your mindfulness habit.
Mindfulness Made Easy – An Introduction To Mindfulness
This course provides an in-depth introduction to the foundations of mindfulness meditation practice, in an easy-to-follow, 14-day training guide.
Living with Gratitude
Teachings in gratitude to deepen your understanding of this important life perspective, and meditations to easily integrate into your routine.
An Introduction to the ‘Search Inside Yourself’ Program, Developed at Google
The program teaches practical tools for mindful leadership and emotional intelligence.
The 4 Foundations of Mindfulness
Seven video lessons on the four foundations of mindfulness: body, feeling tones, mind, and dhammas.
Mindfulness of Eating
Participants will explore the concept of mindful eating and learn the tools of the practice through experiential activities.
Mindfulness Meditations for Kids
Six guided meditations for children, built around imagery such as a garden, a butterfly and an oak tree, for bedtime or winding down.
UCLA’s Guided Meditations (English and Spanish)
For an introduction to mindfulness meditation that you can practice on your own, stream these guided meditations.
Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Certification
The Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Certification is designed to help you teach mindfulness with confidence.