What To Expect From a Guided Meditation

Guided meditation can be a fantastic introduction to the benefits of meditation. Here’s what you can expect from a session.
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What To Expect From a Guided Meditation

Have you ever felt stressed or anxious during the day? Perhaps work is giving you a lot to think about or maybe you have a troubled relationship with a close friend. Stress can work its way into our lives without us even knowing, but understanding how to overcome it can be fairly straightforward with the right knowledge.

One of the most effective tools to combat stress is meditation. Whether it’s simply closing your eyes for five minutes or going for an ice bath in the evening, there are many different ways for you to shut off unnecessary thoughts and focus on your inner self. Meditation itself is just a general term for many different types of relaxation techniques. Each of them shares the same purpose of helping you achieve inner peace, but they can reach that goal in different ways.

Guided meditation is one of the more beginner-friendly forms of meditation because it’s simple to understand and doesn’t require intense training or practice in order to achieve a state of inner peace. So in this post, we’re going to offer some advice for people who want to try guided meditation.

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What is guided meditation?

Guided meditation is a form of meditation that is typically led by someone such as a teacher. Alternatively, it can also be led by a video or audio. The idea is that someone helps to guide your meditation by encouraging different kinds of imagery. They might suggest that you picture an idyllic scene from your memory, but they might also give more vague terms to help encourage your imagination.

Why use guided meditation over other alternatives?

The benefit of guided meditation over other techniques is that it helps us stay focused on one entity. Many people find traditional meditation difficult because they need to stay still and have complete silence in order to achieve a state of inner peace.

This can be extremely hard, especially if you’re in a noisy environment such as a city apartment. So instead, guided meditation seeks to make things easier by relying on audio to help guide the person who is meditating.

How does guided meditation work?

Guided meditation can occur as long as there is a voice to focus on. It’s often led by teachers in the same room guiding a large group of people, but it can also be something more personal such as an audio podcast that is freely available online. Guided meditation also has different forms. Some forms focus on helping you reduce stress, others are designed to increase mindfulness, and some encourage a state of relaxation.

Since everyone’s needs are different when they start meditating, it’s important to consider what you’re personally looking to get out of a session of meditation.

Why is guided meditation popular?

Guided meditation is one of the more popular forms of meditation because it’s a much easier way to enter a state of inner peace. It’s often one of the first types of meditation that someone will try. In fact, many meditation courses introduce people to the idea of meditation with guided instructions. This helps people develop an idea of what they should be focusing on when they’re meditating by themselves.

There are also a number of apps and online resources that can help with guided meditation. Many of these resources are also available for free, meaning it doesn’t cost much to start using guided meditation to help relieve stress and relax. You’ll find that many people use these resources after a hard day at work because it helps them sleep better and remove negative emotions from their minds.

The benefits of guided meditation

So what are the benefits of meditation and what advantages does a guided technique offer?

  • Meditation helps people manage their stress levels.

  • It can also improve self-awareness and reduce negative emotions.

  • Some people find it can also promote creativity and patience.

  • Guided meditation is much easier to try out since you don’t need experience first.

  • You simply follow someone else’s voice and use it to help guide your own thoughts.

  • There’s also no need to invest in equipment or services. There are many forms of guided meditation available for free on the internet.

Some people also report that guided meditation offers health benefits. Research suggests that guided meditation can help people manage symptoms of conditions such as anxiety, asthma, sleep issues, depression, and even cancer in some cases.

What is a guided meditation session like?

To help you better understand guided meditation, here’s a brief explanation of what you can expect during a session or if you’re listening to an audio recording.

Before you start, you’ll likely need to choose a guided meditation session that suits you. Remember that every guided meditation session has a different purpose. Some are focused on helping you relieve stress while others are for achieving inner peace to remove negative thoughts.

Once you’ve found a suitable recording or group to join, you can begin the guided meditation. Your instructor may ask you to lay down on a provided mat or sit in a chair. If you’re listening to a recording, then you can do so in a position that is most comfortable for you. This could be laying down on your bed, on your couch, or even in a reclined seat.

Next, you’ll be focusing on the voice in the recording or the voice of your instructor. Typically, guided meditation starts with breathing exercises to help slow their thoughts while also releasing tension. Afterwards, you’ll be encouraged to picture certain scenes or images, or you might be expected to imagine things based on loose concepts and ideas from words.

Once the session is over, you’ll feel much more relaxed and free from stress and worries.

Conclusion

Guided meditation can be an excellent way to start learning more about how to meditate. It’s also a brilliant option for group meditation and some people find that having audio recordings available makes it very convenient no matter where they are.

Ryan Abbott

Ryan Abbott

Founder of Urban Ice Tribe

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