Reliance on guided meditations

[SteveE]

I've been a regular meditator for ten months, and use meditation as stress reduction for MS.

I've found it hugely helpful but one question I have is do you rely on guided meditations or do you go solo with silence? I rely on the guided meditations of Mark Williams and wonder whether I should leave them behind or stick with them if I find them helpful?

Steve

[Gareth]

Welcome Steve, it's great to have you here. I am a fellow MSer, and let me tell you: mindfulness makes living with a chronic illness so much easier.

My advice re guided meditations is: no pressure. Do whatever is right for you but don't stop[ experimenting. I was using guided meditations for a long time, but I started to experiment without and then slowly over time, I began to phase it out.

But the most important thing here is to know that you can not do this wrong. Just keep the faith and keep practicing, practice makes perfect.

Gareth

[One Aware]

I totally agree with Gareth. I am still using guided meditations from Jon Kabat-Zinn. I like to be reminded of the words as they are helpful to me in my mindfulness journey. I have done silent meditation and I may go back to it... however in this moment, I am using the guidance.

[rara]

Try experimenting if you will...in your mind, step out of your body and guide yourself. Talk to yourself and do what that person on the recording does. This is the next step to being mindful of your own conscience and exploring yourself...

[SteveE]

Thanks for the replies. Been trying the occasional meditation without my ipod, so making progress.

[rara]

Brill. Easy does it...keep going :)

[FeeHutch]

I found moving away from guided meditations a challenge to start with and floundered a bit. I played around with various ones trying to find ones I liked but in the end have moved almost entirely into silent meditation now.

Sometimes it feels like much harder work to stay focused but then challenge keeps life interesting/

[rara]

This is it...you choose where you want meditation to take you. If you want the challenge, by all means, take the challenge. Good discovery FeeHutch!

[SteveE]

I still tend to use guided meditations, especially for 40 min mindful med sessions - which just fly by. I used to find 15 min meditation sessions seemed to last quite some time. But now my mind seems a bit addled if I don't meditate. You really notice if you haven't meditated.

[rara]

@SteveE I came to that realisaion a short while ago...funny isn't it? Say for example, you decide to count 10 deep breaths at the beginning of your session, and for each of these, you notice it takes around 5 seconds to breathe in, and five seconds to breathe out, already, that's nearly two whole minutes on breathing alone! So then to carry on and monitor the heart rate as it drops as you continue to breathe...boom! Another 5 minutes gone!

I treat this as my "warm up" as I'm naturally on a rampage every day with my business...without this, my meditation would be me sat on the floor panicking hehe. If I'm on a heavy schedule for the day, then at least I know that five minutes is better than nothing! But you're right, when concentrating on something, you forget the seconds are ticking away. Like a good game of football, seems to fly by, more than a dull one!