Mindfulness Meditation Lesson 4

Silent Meditation Discussion

When you first start meditating, the guided audio is a valuable teaching tool, offering real-time  instruction on how to practice the meditations. It also helps you keep your mind focused and makes it easier to redirect your  attention back to where you want it when your mind does wander.

The longer you’ve been practicing mindfulness mediations, the less important these elements of the guided audio are. At this point in the program you may find the guided audio has served its purpose and prefer to meditate in silence.  And even when you meditate in silence, by now you’ve probably internalized the guided instructions to some extent and notice that you say them to yourself in your head while meditating.

A disadvantage with using the guided audio is that your experience usually won’t match what the audio is describing.  For example, the guided audio might be referring to how to manage mind wandering at a time when your mind is focused on your breathing and not wandering in that moment.

When meditating in silence or with a bell track, you might notice your mind is more prone to wander, but you may also find you’re able to focus more on your moment-to-moment experience and deepen your concentration without the audio “interrupting” or distracting you.