Should You Ditch Guided Meditation?

We know that mindfulness is an essential tool for balance, success, and emotionally intelligent leadership. And we know deep down the best tool known to man for improving your mindfulness muscle is… meditation! Even just 5 – 10 minutes a day makes me more focused, creative, productive, and patient with my family, clients, and team. Vast research backs up these findings!

New meditators often ask (amongst many other things) whether guided meditations are ‘good’. Better than self-guided? Life-threatening?!

Bottom line: when meditation is new and you are working to build it as a habit, any way that gets you sitting your butt (and mind) in meditation is beneficial. So if guided does that while you are starting off – great! More than great.

Guided meditations can be helpful when you are starting off because:

🗣️ They expose you to different styles of meditation
🗣️ You get gentle reminders to come back to your anchor, whether that’s your breath, a mantra or something else
🗣️  It can feel less daunting having to sit in silence without knowing what to do 

HOWEVER, as my personal daily practice has evolved, I’ve backed away from guided meditation for 2 main reasons that by no means should be your determining factor in quitting guided meditation cold turkey or not trying it at all:

☝️ I find other people’s words/instructions to interrupt my flow
✌️ I don’t want to be dependent on an external factor in order to meditate
✌️☝️ Bonus #3. It’s a great break from the thing that makes our brains buzz (quite possibly) the most – our phones

🌎 I want to be able to meditate anytime, anywhere as needed. 

If you are being intuitively guided to the structure of guided meditation right now, trust yourself! In a month or two, you could start experimenting with meditating by yourself a couple times a week, and explore what works best for you. Perhaps replace the guide with some background sounds like ocean waves or calm music. Maybe even a mantra to repeat! One of my favorites is “Om Ram Ramaya” from the Hindu tradition. It means “I radiate confidence and strength. I balance all aspects of my life.”

Seat yourself, close your eyes, set a timer, and begin. 

Here are a couple of apps to try if you’re just getting started:

☮️ BetterSleep (background music)
☮️ Calm
☮️ Headspace
☮️ Insight Timer 

Remember: You never fail at meditation. The goal is not the absence of thinking. It’s giving yourself the space to think and not react. It’s letting stimulating thoughts come up and gifting your body and brain a moment to process them without the typical fight-or-flight reaction that’s innately built into us.

Most of us do not experience the dangers this quick reaction used to actually protect us from – wildlife, let’s say. But our bodies react to today’s “dangers”, or stressors, – notifications, presentations, deadlines – the same way. Crazy, huh? Increased heart rate, sweating, blasts of cortisol… sound familiar?

Meditation helps us realize the difference. 

It’s time to level out those cortisol levels. Time to give yourself permission to invest in your well-being, today’s success, AND long-term success… guided or not. It’s amazing, believe me!

Lots of love,
💜 Your coach,
Sara