Meditation and Mindfulness Glossary: Key Terms in Plain Language

This glossary explains the words you will meet across the Meditation & Mindfulness library. It is general information, not medical advice. Each entry points to a fuller page. Start at the Meditation & Mindfulness hub if you want the whole map.

The basics

• Meditation. The US National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH) says the term covers a variety of practices that focus on mind and body integration and are used to calm the mind. [1] See What Is Meditation? What Is Mindfulness?.
• Mindfulness. The NHS describes it as paying attention to what is going on inside and outside ourselves, moment by moment. [2] NCCIH adds that it means keeping attention or awareness on the present moment without making judgments. [1] Researchers note that defining mindfulness is itself difficult. [3] See Meditation vs Mindfulness.
• Mindfulness meditation. The NHS describes it as sitting silently and paying attention to thoughts, sounds, the sensations of breathing or parts of your body. [2]
• Formal and informal practice. Formal practice means setting aside time for a sitting or guided session. [2] Informal practice means noticing everyday things, such as the food we eat or the air moving past the body as we walk. [2] See informal mindfulness in everyday life.
• Mantra. NCCIH defines a mantra as a repeated word or phrase. [1] Mantras in religious traditions are described on their own page: Mantra and Sacred Sound in Meditation Traditions.

Types of practice

• Focused attention meditation. Researchers describe it as voluntarily focusing attention on a chosen object. [4] NCCIH lists examples of objects: breathing, a sound, a visual image or a mantra. [1] See Focused Attention Meditation.
• Open monitoring meditation. Researchers describe it as nonreactive monitoring of the content of experience from moment to moment. [4] See Open Monitoring and Open Awareness Meditation.
• Kindness-based meditation (loving-kindness, compassion). A 2014 review used this name for techniques developed to elicit kindness in a conscious way, including loving-kindness and compassion meditation. [5] See Loving-Kindness and Compassion Meditation.
• Body scan, walking meditation, yoga nidra, visualization and others. These are explained on the Types of Meditation page, which links to each one.

Programs and courses

• Mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR). NCCIH describes it as a program that teaches mindful meditation and also includes discussion sessions and other strategies for applying what people learn to stressful experiences. [1] See MBSR in Detail.
• Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT). NCCIH says it integrates mindfulness practices with aspects of cognitive behavioral therapy. [1] NICE, the UK guidance body, describes a group MBCT-type course as usually 8 regular sessions. [6] See MBCT for Depression.
• Mindfulness-based relapse prevention (MBRP). NCCIH describes it as an approach used in trials for substance use recovery. [1] See Mindfulness-Based Relapse Prevention.
• Mindfulness-based intervention. A general label for any structured program built on mindfulness practice. Programs differ, so results for one do not automatically apply to another. See MBSR, TM and Other Programs Compared.

Research words

• Systematic review and meta-analysis. A systematic review searches for and screens all the trials on a question; a meta-analysis combines their numbers. A 2014 review of meditation programs is an example: it screened 18,753 citations and included 47 trials. [7]
• Effect size. A number that expresses how big a difference between groups was. The same 2014 review found small to moderate reductions in several negative dimensions of psychological stress. [7]
• Active control. A comparison group that receives some other treatment or activity rather than nothing. That 2014 review limited itself to trials with active controls for placebo effects. [7] See Placebo and Active Controls.
• No-treatment or waitlist comparison. A group that receives nothing during the study. One analysis found mindfulness approaches better than no treatment for anxiety and depression. [1] Beating no treatment is a lower bar than beating another treatment.
• Hype. A group of researchers warned that misinformation and poor methodology may lead people to be harmed, misled and disappointed. [3] See How to Read a Meditation Study.

How this site labels evidence

We use plain labels: established, promising but limited, mixed, insufficient evidence, no good evidence of benefit, evidence of harm, preclinical, traditional use only and marketing claim. Where we searched and found nothing usable, the page says "Proper evidence not found".

Terms from specific traditions

Words such as vipassana, zazen, sangha, dhikr, jhana or samadhi belong to particular traditions and are best explained in those traditions' own terms. They are defined on their own pages, for example Buddhist Meditation Traditions, Zen Meditation and Zazen and Sangha and Meditation Communities. We do not give them one-line health definitions here.