What’s the Difference Between Mindfulness and Meditation?

A few years back I was invited to speak on a panel about mindfulness. Joining me was a Vedic practitioner, a well-established yoga teacher, and a shamanic meditation guide. Funny enough, I was the only person on the panel who actually practices mindfulness meditation daily.

“What does mindfulness mean to you?” was the first question. As the microphone went around, each individual very humbly explained their personal practice and how it’s not primarily mindfulness. Then they offered approximately the same traditional definition of that word. When it was my turn, I did feel compelled to point out that mindfulness and meditation, while intimately related, are not the same and both do, in fact, have proper definitions.

What is Meditation?

Meditation is a revolutionary practice for transforming your life by becoming familiar with, and ultimately, befriending all aspects of who you are. Running my large programs (the Buddhist Immersion and Mindful Teacher Training), I encounter people who have been led to believe that meditation is just one thing, and that one thing is whatever technique they were exposed to first. There are thousands of meditation techniques out there, but I will speak to some of those that are time-tested, having been around for hundreds, if not thousands, of years.

One form of meditation is bringing your mind fully to the breath, whether that is relaxing with your existent breath as is taught in Buddhist…