Mindfulness journal prompts

A mindfulness prompt should point at what is here, not at what you should be feeling about it. The useful ones are almost boring: where you are, what your body is doing, what the room sounds like, and what the mind keeps returning to.

24 prompts, free to read and free to copy. No account needed.

Begin your journal

How to use these

One breath, then one prompt. Two or three lines is plenty. If the answer is "restless and slightly annoyed", that is a complete and correct entry.

Right now, in the room

Write these in the present tense. They work best answered in under two minutes.

  1. What can you hear that you were not listening to a minute ago?
  2. Where is your body tight, and what happens if you let it go?
  3. What is the temperature, the light, and the noise of where you are sitting?
  4. What is your breath doing without your help?
  5. What does the surface under your hands feel like?
  6. What is the mind reaching for right now instead of this?
  7. What is the smallest pleasant thing within reach?
  8. If you stopped for sixty seconds, what would you notice first?

The noisy days

For when sitting still is not available. These name the noise rather than trying to quiet it.

  1. What is loud in you today, and where do you feel it?
  2. What thought has come back the most times today?
  3. What are you rushing towards, and what happens if it takes an hour longer?
  4. What did you do today entirely on autopilot?
  5. Where did you brace today, and did you need to?
  6. What would the next hour look like if it were half as fast?
  7. What are you carrying that is not yours?
  8. What is one thing you can set down until tomorrow?

Attention, over time

Slower questions, for a weekend or the end of a month.

  1. What has your attention gone to this week, whether you chose it or not?
  2. What did you actually enjoy this week, while it was happening?
  3. What do you do that puts you fully in your body?
  4. What has become background that used to be foreground?
  5. When were you last unhurried, and what made that possible?
  6. What have you been setting aside, and how does the setting aside feel?
  7. What would you like more of, in hours rather than in words?
  8. What is the quietest part of your ordinary week?

Where to keep them

These belong in whatever you already use. If you want them somewhere searchable with no audience, a mindfulness journal opens on today's date with a prompt already waiting. There are more prompts for every other kind of journal on the journal prompts page.

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By email

Have them in your inbox.

Twelve of the prompts above, sent as a letter you can keep. Then two short notes to help you begin, and the one note saying Innerholm is open. After that, about one letter a month. One click stops all of it.

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