Many people new to meditation find it easier to start with a guided meditation.
A guided meditation is a meditation in which somebody (an experienced meditator) guides the beginner with his voice.
The person conducting the meditation indicates at every moment what the listener has to do in order to meditate. Many guided meditations also contain music in the background that helps introduce the mood for the meditation (that is, a mood of tranquillity and calmness).
Some guided meditations have a specific purpose: either to relief stress, or to perform a body scan, or to generate compassion. Others are just meant to observe your thoughts, how they appear and how they vanish, and how they try to take control of you.
In any case, starting to meditate can be overwhelming at the beginning. Even if provided with instructions from a master or a book, even if you may have practised a couple of times with an instructor, the first times you do it on your own can be frustrating. Guided meditations try to reduce the frustration, providing a guidance during your first sessions on your own.
The final goal is, of course, that you achieve to meditate without any guidance or external help (that includes music). Is in the cold space of your inner mind where the real battle exists. You, alone with your thoughts. That is the war that you must win. But at the beginning meditating is too tough and boring. We need, hence, to do some baby steps towards that final goal.
For this purpose, I have collected a list of guided meditations, with different durations and different purposes. The idea is that you progressively increase the meditation time while being guided, and, at the same time, practise meditations with different purposes.
Then, once you have reached at least 20 minutes meditation with guidance, it will be time for you to move forward and start meditating on your own.
The following workouts provides you with the steps to reach that goal.
The Workout
The workout included in this post aims to introduce meditation in your daily life by using guided meditations. If you follow this workout, you will be easily guided through the meditations along 20 days. Then on day 21, you will start your first non-guided meditation for one minute, and keep increasing your meditation time on your own.
Workout 1: guided phase
- Start on day one of your training with the meditation of 1 minute from the list below.
- Each day increase your meditation time by doing the next meditation on the list (do not skip meditation on the weekends).
- There are meditations up to 20 minutes long. Once you reach the 20th meditation and feel comfortable with it, start meditating on your own following the workout n.2.
Workout 2: non-guided phase
- Use a timer to control your meditation time with an alarm.
- Decide which type of meditation are you going to do on your own. You can just remember what you did during your guided phase and do the same without guidance. Also, you can just apply a meditation technique and keep mastering it. You can learn one technique in this post.
- The first day, set 1 minute and meditate that time on your own.
- Next day, set 2 minutes of meditation on your own.
- Continue increasing 1 minute per day (including weekends) until you reach 20 minutes.
- Keep meditating for 20 minutes as many days as possible.
- Every 10 days, perform one of the extra guided meditations listed below. They will help you to progressively increase your meditation time and test new meditation techniques.
The 20 Guided Meditations
- About 1 minute long: 1 minute calming meditation
- About 2 minutes long: 2 minutes inner peace meditation
- About 3 minutes long: body scan meditation
- About 4 minutes long: loving kindness on the go meditation
- About 5 minutes long: breathing meditation
- About 6 minute long: healing light guided meditation
- About 7 minutes long: meditation for working with difficulties
- About 8 minutes long: grounding and raising your energy meditation
- About 9 minutes long: loving kindness meditation
- About 10 minutes long: basic breath and body scan meditation
- About 11 minute long: guided awareness for obsessive thoughts
- About 12 minutes long: body scan for sleep
- About 13 minutes long: basic guided meditation
- About 14 minutes long: guided meditation on the breath
- About 15 minutes long: deep relaxation and healing
- About 16 minute long: coming home to aliveness and presence
- About 17 minutes long: transformative smile guided meditation
- About 18 minutes long: deep relaxation meditation
- About 19 minutes long: dance of aliveness
- About 20 minutes long: presence, aliveness, space
- 22 minutes long: Image streaming guided meditation
- About 25 minutes long: Hyperphantasia meditation
A Few Extra Meditations
If you feel like need longer sessions of meditation but think that they would be too much without a guidance, try one of the longer meditations include here, once every ten days. They will help you to increase even more your meditation time.
- Mindfulness of the breath (27 minutes)
- Direct experience (35 minutes)
- Body scanning (43 minutes)
Conclusion
You can train with this guided meditations and others (just search Google for Guided Meditations) for as long as you want. However, keep in mind that the real exercise is when you meditate on your own, facing your thoughts alone.
Remember that:
The only war worth fighting is the war in your mind
Your path to win that war starts now.
