Being Present

It isn’t.

Guided meditations are recommended for anyone new to meditation. Using guided meditations can also be useful for learning a new type of practice or to have a different experience.

Whenever I teach, I guide meditation so students can learn the basic outline of how to practice. We often repeat guided meditation so students can learn to practice independently.

We might find that there are guided meditations that meet some need we have. For instance, many people struggle with getting to sleep and using a guided sleep meditation can help us ease into sleep by requiring less concentration.

I used guided meditation while learning how to do loving kindness meditations. It was hard to remember all the steps initially, and using other teachers to guide me was very helpful.

While there is nothing wrong with using guided meditation, the purpose of practicing mindfulness meditation is to become present in the moment. This means we want to train ourselves and rely on ourselves to use mindfulness as much as possible as we go through our days. If we rely only on a teacher to guide us, we never learn to apply the principles and practices ourselves.

Guided meditations are recommended to help you learn a basic outline when starting a meditation practice. Choose guided meditations that teach some basic practices like mindfulness of breath and mindfulness of body. As you become familiar with the practices, begin doing them independently, guiding yourself through the meditation. Once in a while, it is helpful to return to a guided meditation to refresh your practice.

So, it is not bad or wrong to use guided meditations. It can be very useful to beginners or to learn something new. However, just like no one else can exercise for you, no one can do meditation for you either.