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Have you ever wondered whether silent meditation is better than guided meditation? This is the first question I’ll address, today, in our new Guided vs Silent Series.

Is it better to meditate silently or is it okay to use guided meditations? There are two answers to this question.

The first answer: The best meditation is the one you actually do. The more regular your meditation, the more beneficial it is. If you find it difficult to sit silently, then you might choose to use guided meditations to make sure you’re sitting regularly.

Silent meditation is often more difficult, because you need to manage it yourself, and because, in the silence distractions like emotions and thoughts arise more often. This leads us to…

The second answer: Silent meditation is better. The very things that make silent meditation more difficult are the things that make it more beneficial. You undertake formal meditation practice to learn how to focus your attention on the present moment without judgement, and to learn how to deal with distractions by coming back to the present moment again and again. If there are fewer opportunities to practice these things, then the learning won’t be as deep.

I encourage all mindfulness practitioners to pursue silent meditation at some point. If you need to rely on guided meditations right now, though, that’s okay. There is still plenty of benefit to be gained from guided meditations. Go ahead and use them if they’re what you need, but at some point, give silent meditation a try.

Next week, I’ll give you some practical strategies for transitioning to silence.

Don’t fall into this trap

There is one caveat to my advice, though. Some guided meditations are highly relaxing, so it’s very easy to use them as a method for zoning out and taking a break. While there’s nothing wrong with doing a relaxation exercise, it’s not the same as meditating. Don’t fool yourself into thinking you’re meditating when you’re simply sitting blissing out.

If you’re using guided meditations to relax, you don’t necessarily need to stop. Just realize that you are not really meditating, and perhaps add a silent meditation practice that is separate from your guided relaxation practice.

My practice

I enjoy guided meditations, too, but they are not my core practice. I sit in silent meditation for at least 20 minutes per day, and I strive to sit at roughly the same time every day. This helps me maintain my habit. I add guided meditations on top of this routine whenever I want to. And sometimes I do a second silent meditation. I also like to relax with full body scans at least once per week (if you sign up for my newsletter, I’ll send you one of these).

Join me now for a meditation

For a 10-minute guided meditation including 2 minutes of silent meditation, forward the podcast or the video above to 3:00. Next week, I’ll provide meditations with longer silent periods to help you transition to silence.

Next week:

Next week, in Part 2 of the Guided vs Silent Series, I’ll give you some strategies for undertaking silent meditation. The lesson will include a collection of guided meditations to help you transition. If you’d like to be notified when the lesson goes online, subscribe to our newsletter. As a thank you, I’ll send you a free deep relaxation.

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Because our brains are attuned to potential threats, we are primed to focus on negative experiences and the emotions they arouse. It’s good, then, to know how to focus on positive events that generate positive emotions.

Too often we’re so focused on the difficulties and problems in our lives that we forget to even notice the positive things. Making a conscious effort to notice things that are beautiful, helpful, pleasant, and fun helps us generate happiness.

This practice isn’t about generating fake feelings of joy or happiness. It’s about fully noticing the positive things that are actually there and allowing ourselves to fully feel the positive emotions they generate.

It’s not about ignoring or denying your problems, either. It’s about establishing a more balanced view of life by allowing the positive in, too.

This, like any other meditation, is about training yourself to notice what’s there. Only this time, we’re going to focus on the positive aspects of what’s there.

And, like any other practice, it might be difficult for you at first. If you have a strong habit of focusing on the negative, you might at first find it tough to attend to the positive. Just do your best and be confident your skills will grow with practice.

(By the way… Another exercise that helps generate happiness is gratitude practice. Read more, here.)

Invitation to meditate

For a 12-minute guided meditation on positive emotions, forward the podcast or the video above to 1:41

 

Next week:

Have you ever wondered whether guided meditation is as helpful as silent meditation? Next week’s blog/podcast kicks off a new series on Guided vs Silent Meditation. I hope you’ll join me. To get a reminder, please subscribe to the newsletter. When you sign up, I’ll send you a free guided deep relaxation.

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Several weeks ago, I taught you how to wash your hands mindfully. Today, I’ll introduce you to another daily mindfulness activity: tea meditation.

You undertake sitting meditation to learn to be aware of the present moment. Formal sitting practice is essential, but ultimately, you want to bring your mindfulness out of your formal meditation practice and into every moment of your life. You don’t have to wait until you’ve become an expert meditator to do this. You can start right away.

Any activity of daily life can be undertaken mindfully, and today I’m going to explain how to bring mindfulness to the practice of drinking tea (or other beverage).

How to practice tea meditation

Brew a cup of tea (or other beverage.)

Sit in a relatively quiet, comfortable place to slowly enjoy your tea.

Notice all there is to notice about the tea and the process of drinking it.

Start by noticing how the cup feels in your hand. Notice the temperature of the cup. Notice how the handle, the bottom, the lip all have different temperatures. Notice the texture of the cup against your fingers and palm. Notice the weight of the cup.

Now, look at the tea. Notice the contrast in texture and colour between the tea and the cup and your hand. Notice how the tea moves in the cup.

Next, smell the tea. Perhaps even get close to the tea and take a long breath in. Does the tea smell different with a short breath as compared to a long breath? Enjoy the smell. As you smell the tea, can you feel the heat of it on your face?

Finally, take a sip of the tea. Notice the movement of your mouth, lips, tongue, and hand as you sip. Then, notice the taste and temperature of the liquid in your mouth. As you swallow, notice the muscles you use to swallow. Can you feel the warmth of the tea in your throat?

If you find your mind wandering at any point, don’t be concerned. The mind may wander, but you don’t have to follow the thoughts. Just gently come back to the physical sensations of drinking tea.

Continue slowly drinking your tea, focusing all your attention on body and the tea. Relax and enjoy the process. No effort is needed to be mindful of drinking tea.

When you are finished, you might like to set the intention of bringing your mindfulness with you to your next activity. Move slowly from tea drinking to whatever you choose to do next.

It’s more than a relaxation exercise

I know a number of people who use tea meditation as a relaxation practice. I too find it relaxing, but I encourage you to practice mindfulness whenever you eat or drink. It’s a simple way to bring mindfulness out of formal meditation practice and into daily life.

Invitation to practice

I haven’t prepared a guided meditation for drinking tea, because I think it would actually detract from the experience, but I do recommend you try tea meditation right now using the instructions, above.

If you’d rather listen to a guided meditation right now, there’s a whole collection of them on the Free Meditations page. Enjoy.

Next week:

Next week, we’re going to meditate on positive emotions. Happiness is a skill that we can all learn to cultivate. To be sure you don’t miss it, sign up for our newsletter. When you do, I’ll send you a free deep relaxation.

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And now, Part 4 of the Follow-Through Series where you’ve already learned:

* Why it can be difficult to follow through on plans to reach your meditation goals  

* How to use mental contrasting to boost your commitment 

* How to create implementation intentions to make obstacle-management automatic  

Today, let me show you how visualization can help boost your chances of successfully reaching your meditation goal.

Visualization is a powerful technique for guiding you toward success. Studies show, however, that imagining success is not as helpful as imagining the process you undertake to reach success. Visualizing the steps you’ll take is similar to what elite athletes do to prepare for an event: They visualize themselves performing at the event, making all the correct moves they need to reach the finish line.

You’re going to visualize two things:

First, you’ll imagine yourself practicing meditation

Second, you’ll imagine yourself taking action to overcome any obstacles to your planned practice

The second visualization requires you to have planned strategies for overcoming obstacles. I provided an exercise for creating these strategies, called implementation intentions, in last week’s post. If you haven’t completed the worksheet, click here and do that exercise, first. 

The key to a successful visualization is to bring all your senses to bear. Imagine what you see, hear, and feel. If it’s relevant, you can also imagine what you smell and touch.

And, the more often you practice this visualization, the more helpful it will become. I recommend doing this exercise once or more per day for the first week or two, then you can taper down to three or four times per week until you reach your goal.

Join me for a guided visualization exercise

Forward to 2:41 in the podcast or video, above. Before you complete this exercise, be sure to have planned some implementation intentions. Have your list of intentions handy so you can refer to them during this exercise.

Next Week:

Next week, tea meditation, an activity for bringing mindfulness to daily life. Subscribe to our newsletter for a reminder email. I’ll also send you a free deep relaxation as a thank you.

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Last week, in Part 2 of our Follow-Through Series, you used mental contrasting to help boost your commitment to your meditation goal. There’s a good body of evidence to show this technique helps people succeed in reaching goals. This week, you’re going to create plans to help you overcome obstacles that stand in your way.

If you missed the beginning of the Follow-Through Series

Click here for Part 1: Why is Follow-Through Difficult?

Click here for Part 2: Use Mental Contrasting

Our second Follow-Through strategy is called implementation intentions. They’re if-then statements that help you plan strategies for getting past any difficulties that stand in the way of reaching your meditation goals.

Here’s an example:

If I feel too tired to do sitting meditation, then I’ll do walking meditation, instead.

The if part of the statement describes an obstacle. The then part describes how you’ll get past the obstacle.

You create these strategies in anticipation of potential obstacles, and they work because they make your obstacle-management strategy automatic. When you don’t have to think about how to handle an obstacle, over even whether you should handle it, there’s a better chance that you will deal with it instead of skipping your meditation. Psychologist, Peter Gollwitzer introduced the concept of implementation intentions and his research demonstrates that they help boost the probability of reaching your goal.

The technique

The technique is simple:

List the obstacles that stand in the way of reaching your goal. If you completed the exercise last week in Part 2 of the Follow-Through Series, you’ve already created this list. 

Create an if-then statement for each obstacle, specifying how you’ll handle it if it comes up. You can find lots of strategies for dealing with obstacles in the blog post about practicing diligence. 

Review this list regularly to remind yourself of your plans. You might even post it where you’ll see it often. And, you can add to it whenever you need to.

Take your time. Be thorough in creating your list of obstacles and be realistic when creating your strategies for managing them. The worksheet below can help.

When it comes to the goal of creating a meditation habit, choose strategies that will allow you to do some kind of meditation or mindfulness practice, even if it’s much shorter than the one you planned to do. When establishing the habit, the most important thing is to practice daily. The practice might be very different than your scheduled practice, but the act of practicing strengthens the habit.

Today’s practice: Complete the intentions exercise worksheet

The following worksheet walks you through the exercise. I recommend that you write or type out your if-then statements so you can refer to them often.

Worksheet in MS-Word format 

Worksheet in PDF format 

Worksheet for Google Docs

Up Next Week

Next week, I’ll reveal the final strategy for following-through...

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Welcome to Part 2 of the Follow-Through Series. Last week, you learned that a strong motivation to achieve a result in the future doesn’t necessarily help you take daily actions to achieve that result. In the moment when you have to exert effort or do something unpleasant, you are likely to feel a strong drive to turn away from that effort in favour of an activity that gives you immediate gratification. This drive is innate and powerful, so you may not even consciously notice that a struggle is going on or that you’ve turned away from the action you intended to take. Today, you’ll learn to do mental contrasting, the first of three techniques to help you follow through on your plans to meditate.

If you missed Part 1 of the Follow-Through Series, you’ll find it here.

Mental contrasting is a technique developed by psychologist Gabriele Oettinger. You can visit her website for more in-depth information and a long list of research papers that provide evidence for the effectiveness of this technique. 

The technique works because it helps your brain make connections between the future goal you want, which can be motivating, and the obstacles you need to overcome to reach the goal. Mental contrasting helps you make the decision that the goal is worth the effort, and that helps you commit.

Of course, here we’re talking specifically about the goal of creating a strong meditation habit, but this technique works with other goals, too.

You’re free to create your own goal, but I have one word of advice: Focus on a habit-creation goal instead of focusing on doing a specific number of minutes of meditation. As I noted in my habit building post, establishing a habit is the hardest part of committing to meditation. It’s best to first create a regular habit using very tiny meditations (such as three mindful breaths or one minute of meditation), then slowly work up to meditating for longer periods of time. Starting slow like this is complementary to the techniques you’re learning in the Follow-Through Series.

Here are some example goals you might like to use:

My goal is to create a regular meditation habit

My goal is to meditate daily

My goal is to do some meditation every day

The technique

The technique involves three steps, which must be completed in the order listed here.

Identifying situations in the past where you’ve succeeded in reaching a goal. This helps boost confidence in your ability to reach the current goal. It’s a crucial step in mental contrasting. It’s important that you believe in your ability to succeed. And you should. I do. As a mindfulness coach, I know that every person is capable of meditating.

Envisioning a positive future, where you’ve successfully reached your goal. You’ll imagine, in as much detail as possible, all the positive things that will happen.

Thinking about the obstacles in the way of reaching your goal. This grounds your vision of the future in the reality of the present, acknowledging that the positive aspects of reaching your goal come only if you commit to applying effort and dealing with hindrances.

Take your time, and be thorough and detailed as you envision each step. The worksheet, below, will help.

Today’s practice: Complete the mental contrasting exercise worksheet

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On the first day of class, I noticed Cindy sitting in the back row. This was her third time taking the meditation course. I chatted with her on the way out after class.

“You’re back,” I said.

“Yup,” she said, “I thought maybe coming back to class would help motivate me to get meditating again. I feel so much better when I meditate, but for some reason, I just don’t do it very often.”

Cindy isn’t the first student to report this problem, and she certainly won’t be the last. It’s incredibly common for people to have trouble starting a habit, even when they’re highly motivated to do it. Other people manage to get started, but can’t sustain the practice.

I, too, have experienced this problem, though not with meditation. I battled weight issues most of my life. I desperately wanted to eat better and lose weight, and I even knew exactly how to go about doing it in a healthy, effective way. Sometimes, I even managed to follow through on my plans, but the effort never lasted more than a few weeks. I know how incredibly frustrating it is to want something with all your heart, but not be able to take action.

How is it possible to be highly motivated to change, yet to fail to carry out that change? When you’re making plans, you’re focused on the future. You’re imaging all the incredibly positive outcomes you’ll reach once you’ve followed through on the plan. Motivation is strong, because everything looks wonderful. You’re not yet faced with all the hard work you’ll have to do.

When it comes time to act, however, that motivation seems to dissolve. The action happens in the present and in the present we tend to focus on what will bring us not just pleasure, but the most immediate pleasure. We’re driven to seek out immediate gratification.

Faced with something difficult or unpleasant, we will likely choose to run away from it in favor of turning toward something we perceive to be more pleasant or less difficult. So, there I am. For an entire week, I’ve eaten well, but everyone at the meeting is eating donuts. I don’t want to eat a donut. I want to be slim. But, the draw of that donut is so strong that it almost feels like the donut is actually grasping my hand and pulling me in. I resist for half an hour, but the next time someone offers me a donut, I give in. In that moment, the drive to get that sugar high is strong and the motivation to wait for the weight loss that will come weeks from now is weak.

The same thing can happen with your meditation plans. You know meditation is healthy. It’s helped you before and you want to do it, but sitting takes effort, and there’s a possibility that your meditation might be unsatisfying today. It might even make you aware of some aspects of yourself that you don’t like all that much. Before you know it, you might be pulled to do something else, something that has the potential to feel more pleasant, or at least less unpleasant.

You don’t need to be conscious of this whole struggle, either. You may simply decide that you don’t feel like meditating today, and choose to do something else, instead. Or, you might rationalize your decision by generating an excuse. “I’m too tired, today. I’ll just fall asleep,” or “I’ll do it later.”

Fortunately, there are things you can to do get past that need for immediate gratification. The next three parts of this series present practical strategies to help you follow through on your meditation plans:

* Part 2 - Using mental contrasting

* Part 3 -

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Over the past three weeks, you’ve added three tools to your meditation toolkit: diligence, patience, and kindness. Today, tool number four: curiosity. A perfect companion to the other three tools, curiosity is what keeps you open to learning from your meditation experience.

There’s a commonly-held misconception that meditation is the practice of clearing thoughts from your mind. It’s not. Meditation is the practice of accepting whatever comes up in the present moment, thoughts included, without judgement. There’s a lot to be learned by observing how thoughts come and go and how we habitually react to them, but you have to be willing to sit with all the things that come up, pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral and notice them for what they are.

This is where curiosity comes in. Curiosity is about being open to the experiences that arise during meditation. Like patience and kindness, curiosity is particularly useful when negative experiences creep up. Why? Because most of us have a deeply ingrained habit of avoiding all things negative. We don’t want to sit with them, accept them, and learn from them. We prefer to avoid them. Curiosity allows us to learn even when the experience isn’t as pleasant as we want it to be.

Even on days when you can’t get motivated to sit, or when meditation seems boring, it is valuable to sit and practice. Try turning toward your boredom or your lack of motivation with curiosity. Be open to learning from it. 

Curiosity can also help us learn during pleasant experiences. In the first toolkit episode about diligence, I pointed out how important it is to apply diligence when meditation feels like it is going well. When you feel relaxed and calm in meditation, you might start to become complacent. You might sit and bask in the pleasantness, engaging with in and letting it lead you away from your focus instead of simply observing it. If you become curious about the way you react to pleasant situations, you can learn more about yourself.

I’ve been defining curiosity as openness to experience. It’s important to note that being curious doesn’t mean engaging with or following thoughts during meditation. And, it doesn’t mean analyzing your experiences, either. Meditation provides insight through simple observation of what is happening in the present moment. Curiosity is just a willingness to sit with those present moment experiences to allow the observations to take place.

That doesn’t mean, however, that meditation has to be a somber, serious practice. You can play a little while making observations.

Why don’t you take a comfortable meditation posture, and I’ll show you how to play

For a 12-minute guided meditation where you’ll practice getting curious about your breath, forward the podcast or the video above to 3:29

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It’s time for part three in the toolkit series. In previous episodes, we explored the value of diligence and patience as meditation tools. Today, we’ll look at how kindness facilitates your practice. I’m talking primarily about practicing kindness toward yourself, but kindness toward others comes into play here, too.

To begin with, let’s note that practicing meditation is being kind to yourself. Sitting regularly teaches you to focus on the present moment and to transform your habitual reactions. The practice brings you a wealth of cognitive, physical health, and emotional health benefits.

But your meditation practice also benefits others. For those who worry that taking time out to meditate is selfish, it’s important to be aware of the ways your mindfulness benefits those around you.

Mindfulness teaches you to be more present for others, so you listen more deeply to them, understand them better, and demonstrate more compassion for them. You become calmer and are, therefore, better able to negotiate conflict and help others. You may even be better at avoiding conflict to begin with, because you’ll be able to gain a broader perspective on the actions of others. This small sample of benefits demonstrates that your mindfulness practice is not selfish at all.

Kindness is also valuable because it is a partner to patience when you come up against obstacles or distractions in meditation. I use the term obstacles a lot in my blogs, but the things that seem to get in your way when you meditate are only obstacles because you react to them as if they are obstacles. 

Thoughts, for example, cause a lot of concern for some meditators, especially beginners. You might worry that having a thought is problematic, because it takes your attention away from the breath where you think it is supposed to be.

But, a thought is just a thought. It isn’t a problem or an obstacle. It is simply something to notice and then let go of so you can get back to focusing on the breath. But if you react toward that thought with frustration, impatience, concern, etc. or, if you start thinking of yourself as a poor meditator because you had a thought, you create a problem that wasn’t there to begin with.

Learning to sit with thoughts typically happens in stages. The first stage is to notice your thoughts - because prior to learning to mediate, many of us don’t even realize how active our mind is. We don’t notice that our thoughts are separate from us and that we can observe ourselves having thoughts.

Stage two involves noticing how you react to your thoughts. Most people start off having negative reactions to their thoughts, because they judge thoughts to be obstacles to their meditation.

The third stage is accepting then letting go of both the thoughts and your reactions to them. To get to this phase, you need kindness. You need to realize that it was your reactions to the thoughts that created the distraction, not the thoughts themselves.

And you need to be kind to yourself when you make this discovery. Realize that being upset or judgemental was your way of trying to get the meditation right. You were reacting in the best way you knew how, but now you’ve discovered a better way, to avoid reacting automatically as if thoughts were problems.

Kindness allows you to forgive yourself for making mistakes during the learning process. And you certainly should be kind about this. Any good teacher will tell you that making mistakes is an essential and integra...

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Last week’s episode was about how to practice diligence, the first of four tools for enhancing your mindfulness practice. This week, we explore patience, the partner of diligence. It is simply impossible to be mindful without being patient. Let’s take a closer look.

When you first sit down to learn meditation, a whole bunch of things typically pop up. You may encounter discomfort, pain, or numbness when you try to sit for even a few minutes. You could discover an active mind that hops from one thought to next seemingly ceaselessly. You might bring up buried emotions you were trying to suppress. You may feel boredom or restlessness. All of these things can lead to frustration and disappointment. And, they might even lead you to abandon meditation.

In the last episode, I suggested you deal with these perceived obstacles using diligence.  It takes time and practice to learn how to deal with all these things, so you need to persevere in your meditation. Being diligent in the practice, however, requires patience. To convince yourself to practice when the previous meditation was unsatisfying requires a patient acceptance of the time and effort it will take to make progress. It also takes a little faith. You need to believe us meditation teachers when we tell you will get better at handling distractions!

Patience is also an integral part of the practice. Mindfulness is being aware of the present moment without judging it. But your emotional reactions are typically habitual. They are automatic and can arise very quickly. It takes patience to stop and step back from your initial reactions.

Patience is what allows you to pause and accept the situation for what it is. And, patience is what lets you accept your habitual reactions without judging yourself for them. If you can apply patience this way, you give yourself time to see more deeply, to get a broader perspective on what is happening and to find more helpful and deliberate ways to react.

When it comes to mindfulness, patience is both required to practice and strengthened by practice. It takes time to develop patience, so you have to be patient with yourself when you’re not being patient enough! Next week, we’ll discuss kindness and how it helps you to foster patience toward yourself and your habitual reactions.

As you progress in your mindfulness practice, you’ll begin to observe ways in which you resist the lessons meditation is trying to teach you. Perhaps you’ll notice a habitual reaction that you’re not ready to let go of. I’ll talk more about resistance in future podcasts, but it is entirely normal. It is your mind attempting to protect your sense of self by insisting that it’s not you who needs to change, but the world around you. It can be frightening to let go of resistance, because it sometimes feels like letting go of your sense of who you are.

Patience lets you acknowledge the truth of the situation and lets you accept your own resistance with kindness and ease. When you can be patient with your own reactions, you can recognize them, explore them, and if you choose to, change them. Ultimately, patience allows you to see that your own sense of self isn’t necessarily an accurate picture of who your really are.

It may sound as if strengthening patience takes a lot of self-analysis or involves enduring painful situations to uncover the truth about them. This is not true. Patience is simply the absence of automatic reactions and it is built by gently sitting and noticing your habitual reactions.