There are dozens of ways to meditate, and the generic ones rarely fit. Answer twelve short questions and find the practice that suits how your mind actually works. Free, no account, about two minutes.
A 2 minute practice quiz
Twelve short questions. No right answers, no account. At the end you get your match, a few things worth knowing, and where to start.
The full range
Here are the eighteen main types of meditation: what each one is, and who it suits. The quiz draws from all of them, so you can browse any time, whether or not you take it.
Open, present-moment awareness. You notice thoughts, feelings and sensations as they arise, without judging them or chasing them, and gently come back when the mind wanders.
Best if you want a quieter mind and a steadier relationship with your thoughts.
Learn more about mindfulness →Working directly with the breath to shift how you feel. Paced patterns like box breathing, 4-7-8 and coherent breathing can settle the nervous system or sharpen focus, depending on the rhythm.
Best if you want a fast, physical way to change your state.
Learn more about breathing techniques →Moving attention slowly through the body, head to toe, noticing sensation and releasing tension you did not know you were holding.
Best if you carry stress physically or struggle to switch off.
Learn more about body scan →A guided "non-sleep deep rest" (NSDR). You lie down and follow the voice into the threshold between waking and sleep, where the body restores deeply.
Best if you are exhausted, sleep poorly, or want deep rest without napping.
Learn more about yoga nidra →Also called metta. You extend warmth and goodwill, first to yourself, then outward to others, often through quiet repeated phrases.
Best if you are hard on yourself or want to feel more connected.
Learn more about loving-kindness →Using guided mental imagery, a calm place, a scene, a feeling, to focus and shift state. The mind builds the picture; the body responds to it.
Best if you think in pictures and want a vivid inner escape or focus.
Learn more about visualisation →Guided visualisation pointed at something you actually want. Not wishful thinking, but mental rehearsal of the outcome and the steps it will take to get there.
Best if you are working toward something and want to rehearse it clearly.
Learn more about manifestation →Starting your day, week or session by setting a guiding intention. Not a goal to grind toward, but a sense of how you want to show up.
Best if you feel scattered and want direction and clarity.
Learn more about intention setting →Affirming phrases woven into guided practice. Not just repeating words, but feeling them, to steady confidence, self-belief and inner calm.
Best if you battle self-doubt or a harsh inner critic.
Learn more about affirmations →Guided attention to what is already good. A simple, repeatable practice of noticing, which research links to greater wellbeing and resilience.
Best if you want to feel more content and notice the good more often.
Learn more about gratitude →Meditating on a specific theme, topic or moment rather than a generic category. The practice is shaped around what is actually going on for you.
Best if generic meditations never quite fit what you are facing.
Learn more about themed and personalised →Reflective and expressive writing as a contemplative practice. Putting what you notice into words, which research links to clearer thinking and emotional processing.
Best if you have a busy mind and process things by getting them out.
Learn more about reflective journaling →Silently or quietly repeating a sound, word or phrase to settle the mind. The gentle repetition gives attention a simple home to return to.
Best if a single repeated anchor helps you settle more than watching the breath.
Learn more about mantra meditation →A specific, trademarked mantra technique practised about twenty minutes twice a day. TM is taught one-to-one by certified teachers for a fee, with a personally assigned mantra.
Best if you want a formal, structured mantra practice taught in person.
Learn more about transcendental meditation (tm) →Traditional seated practices. Zen (zazen) emphasises upright "just sitting" and the breath; Vipassana cultivates insight by closely observing changing sensations. Both reward patience and silence.
Best if you want depth, discipline and a traditional path, often in silence.
Learn more about zen and insight (vipassana) →Meditation in motion. Mindful walking ties attention to each step; movement forms like tai chi and qigong join slow movement with breath and awareness.
Best if sitting still is hard or you think more clearly while moving.
Learn more about walking and movement →A branded method combining rounds of fast, deep breathing and breath holds with cold exposure and focused commitment. It is energising and intense rather than calming.
Best if you want energy and aliveness more than winding down.
Learn more about wim hof method →Resting while immersed in sound from singing bowls, gongs or chimes. You simply lie back and let the tones and vibrations wash over you.
Best if sound and vibration settle you more than silence.
Learn more about sound bath →Every type, in depth
A fuller picture of each practice: what it is, where it comes from, and the kind of mind it tends to fit. Take the quiz for your personal match, or read your way to it here.
Mindfulness is the practice of paying attention to what's actually happening, right now, without trying to fix it or argue with it. Thoughts arrive, feelings arrive, the sound of a car outside arrives, and you notice them and let them pass. It's the most studied form of meditation in the modern world: Jon Kabat-Zinn's Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction programme, founded at UMass Medical in 1979, has been tested in hundreds of clinical trials, which is part of why it's the default starting point for most people.
See your full mindfulness match and how to start →Breathwork is the most direct lever you have on your nervous system. Paced patterns like box breathing, 4-7-8, and coherent breathing (roughly six breaths a minute) change your physiology in under five minutes, no belief required. Slow the exhale and the vagus nerve quiets the stress response. Speed the breath up and you energise. People sceptical of meditation often land here first because the effect is felt, not theorised.
See your full breathing techniques match and how to start →The body scan moves attention slowly through the body, head to toe or toe to head, noticing whatever's there. Tightness in the jaw. The warm patch where your hand is resting. Nothing. It's the central practice of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, where Kabat-Zinn put it at the front of the programme because it teaches you to feel what's actually happening in the body, which most of us have quietly stopped doing.
See your full body scan match and how to start →Yoga nidra is a guided lying-down practice from the tantric yoga tradition, often called non-sleep deep rest. You lie flat, follow a voice, and drift into the threshold between waking and sleep. The body settles into the kind of restoration it normally only gets in deep sleep, which is why twenty minutes of yoga nidra often feels like a long nap without the grogginess of one.
See your full yoga nidra match and how to start →Loving-kindness, or metta, is a practice from the Buddhist tradition where you quietly extend goodwill: first to yourself, then to people you love, then outward, sometimes even to people you're struggling with. It's usually built around short repeated phrases ("may you be well, may you be at ease"), and the warmth grows the more you sit with it. Over time it softens the inner critic, and the warmth tends to spill into how you treat everyone else, including yourself when no one's watching.
See your full loving-kindness match and how to start →Visualisation is guided mental imagery. A calm beach, a forest path, a scene you're rehearsing, a feeling you're trying to remember. You build the picture with the guide's help, and the body responds as if it's happening. A vividly imagined scene activates many of the same brain regions the real thing would, which is why athletes, surgeons, and musicians use it to rehearse performance.
See your full visualisation match and how to start →Manifestation, in the grounded sense, is visualisation pointed at something you actually want. Not magical thinking. Mental rehearsal. You picture the outcome and the steps it takes to get there, vividly enough that the brain starts to treat it as familiar territory. This is the same mechanism Olympic athletes and elite performers use before competition, and it's why mental rehearsal shows up consistently in sports psychology research.
See your full manifestation match and how to start →Intention setting is the quiet practice of asking, before a day or a week or a sit, how you want to show up. Not what you'll achieve. How you'll move. "Patient with my kids today." "Honest in this meeting." "Kinder to myself when I get tired around 3pm." It draws on the Buddhist concept of sankalpa, and it works because an intention is a thread you can come back to when the day starts pulling you in twelve directions.
See your full intention setting match and how to start →Affirmations are short, believable phrases woven into guided practice, designed to steady self-belief and quiet the harsh inner voice. The key word is believable. "I am a confident, magnetic genius" doesn't land if you don't currently believe it. "I'm allowed to take up space" might. The practice is less about repeating words and more about letting yourself feel them, which is why it works better guided than read off a list.
See your full affirmations match and how to start →Gratitude practice is guided attention to what's already good. Small things, mostly. The coffee. The text from a friend. The fact that your knees still work. It's deceptively simple and one of the most consistently replicated findings in positive psychology: Robert Emmons at UC Davis has spent more than two decades showing that regular gratitude practice tracks with greater wellbeing, better sleep, and stronger relationships.
See your full gratitude match and how to start →Themed and personalised practice means the meditation is shaped around what's actually going on for you, rather than a generic category. Instead of "anxiety meditation", it's a meditation for the specific anxiety you're sitting with right now: the pitch tomorrow, the parent in hospital, the conversation you're avoiding. The technique underneath might be mindfulness or body scan or visualisation, but the framing fits your life.
See your full themed and personalised match and how to start →Reflective journaling is a contemplative practice in its own right. You write or speak what's on your mind, not to perform or polish it, but to get it out where you can look at it. James Pennebaker at the University of Texas spent thirty years showing that expressive writing improves mood, reduces rumination, and even shows up in physical health markers like immune function. It works because the act of putting feeling into words changes how the brain processes it.
See your full reflective journaling match and how to start →Mantra meditation is the practice of silently or quietly repeating a sound, word, or short phrase as your anchor. It comes from the Vedic and Buddhist traditions and is one of the oldest documented forms of meditation. The mantra can carry meaning ("peace", "let go") or be a pure sound that means nothing at all. Either works. The point isn't the word, it's the gentle return to it whenever the mind wanders off.
See your full mantra meditation match and how to start →Transcendental Meditation, or TM, is a specific mantra technique popularised by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in the 1950s and 60s. It's practised for around twenty minutes twice a day, sitting comfortably, using a personally assigned mantra. TM is taught only by certified teachers, one-to-one, over a structured four-day course, and there's a course fee. That structure is part of what people who choose TM are choosing: a formal, defined path, taught in person.
See your full transcendental meditation (tm) match and how to start →Zen and Vipassana are the two great traditional sitting practices. Zen (zazen) comes from the Japanese Mahayana lineage and emphasises upright, silent "just sitting" with the breath. Vipassana, from the Theravada tradition, cultivates insight by closely observing the changing nature of sensation, thought, and feeling. Both are typically taught through longer sits and silent retreats, sometimes ten days or more, and both reward patience over novelty.
See your full zen and insight (vipassana) match and how to start →Walking and movement meditation are meditation in motion. Mindful walking, taught extensively in the Thich Nhat Hanh and Theravada traditions, ties attention to each step and each breath. Tai chi and qigong, from the Chinese contemplative tradition, weave slow, deliberate movement with breath and awareness. All of them treat the body as the anchor rather than fighting against it.
See your full walking and movement match and how to start →The Wim Hof Method is a branded protocol developed by Wim Hof that pairs cyclic power-breathing (rounds of around thirty fast, deep breaths followed by a breath hold) with gradual cold exposure and focused commitment. It's energising rather than calming. People describe feeling buzzy, alert, and a bit altered, which is the point. It has a real following and a growing research base, with studies from Radboud University looking at the autonomic and immune effects.
See your full wim hof method match and how to start →A sound bath is exactly what it sounds like. You lie back, close your eyes, and let waves of sound from singing bowls, gongs, chimes, or tuned instruments wash over you. It draws on traditions that have used sound contemplatively for centuries, from Tibetan bowl practice to Vedic chant. There's no technique to learn and nothing you have to do. The instruction is, essentially, listen.
See your full sound bath match and how to start →You answer twelve short questions about how your mind works, what you are after, and how you like to practise. The quiz matches your answers to a meditation type (or a balance of two), with a few things worth knowing and where to start. It takes about two minutes, needs no account, and works in your browser.
A wide range: mindfulness, breathing techniques, body scan, yoga nidra, loving-kindness, visualisation, manifestation, intention setting, affirmations, gratitude, reflective journaling, mantra, Transcendental Meditation, Zen and Vipassana, walking and movement, the Wim Hof Method, and sound baths.
Not really. Most people benefit from a blend, and what fits changes with your mood and your day. The quiz gives you a strong starting point and your next two closest matches, so you can explore rather than lock in.
No. The quiz is free and needs no account. If your result is something StillMind personalises, you will see where the app can help, but the quiz itself asks nothing of you.
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