Listen:

Watch:

Read:

Welcome to Part 2 in the Guided vs Silent Series. Last week, I addressed the question, Is silent meditation better than guided meditation? This week, I’m going to discuss strategies you can use to transition to silent meditation.

Last week, I encouraged you to use guided meditations as needed to ensure that you’re practicing regularly. But, I also encouraged you to try silent meditation when you’re ready.

If you missed Part 1 of this Series, you can find it here.

There are a couple of ways you could transition from guided to silent meditation.

1. Jump right in

You can simply begin to do silent meditation in place of guided meditation. If you’re doing 15 minute guided meditations right now, for example, you could switch them out for 15 minute silent sittings. Alternately, you could start with shorter silent periods, say 5 minutes, and slowly work back up to longer sessions. You’ll find a full range of silent meditation times here. 

2. Alternate guided and silent meditation

You can slowly move from guided to silent by doing guided meditations five times a week, interspersed with silent meditations two times per week. Then move to slowly replace more guided meditations with silent meditations until the guided meditations are eliminated. Take your time with this process. There’s no need to rush it.

3. Add silent periods to your guided meditations

You can add silent sitting to the end of each guided meditation. Start with adding just two minutes of silence, then five, then more. At the same time, shorten the guided portion of the meditation. Continue until you eliminate the guided portion altogether. Below, you’ll find a series of guided meditations, with increasing amounts of silence at the end. You can make this transition slowly over a number of weeks, if you like.

What to expect

When you first do silent meditation, you may experience a resurgence of difficulties that you successfully dealt with when you began guided meditation (or perhaps never experienced at all). The most common of these is a busy mind that interrupts your focus on the breath.

Next week, I’ll address some of these difficulties, but the bottom line is to remember to apply patience and kindness toward yourself. The practice of meditation can be described as the practice of returning to the breath. When you experience a distraction, simply notice it and return to the breath. As many times as you need to, just patiently, kindly, return to the breath. This is the practice of meditation.

Meditations to help you transition

This collection of meditations will help you transition from guided to silent meditation. I have also posted them on the Free Meditations page so you can return to them later - and as always, you can download them.

The following is a 10-minute guided meditation on including 2 minutes of silence 

The following is a 10-minute guided meditation on including 5 minutes of silence 

The following is a 10-minute guided meditation on including 7 minutes of silence 

 

When you’re ready, move on to fully silent meditations. You’ll find a range of silent meditation timers (with bells at beginning and end), click here.

Next week:

Next week we wrap up the Guided vs Silent Series with a discussion of some of the difficulties that can come up when transitioning to silent sitting.