Help me find meditation clip, please.
September 4, 2013 11:27 AM   Subscribe

What are your favourite guided meditation recordings? I am looking at around twenty minutes and a fair amount of variety as I'd like to do this daily. Unless, of course, you've found that keeping to the same tape every time has a positive effect.

Hi all,
I'm fairly new to meditation and am looking to try out a 15-20 minutes mediation session daily for the rest of the month. The only recording I have so far is a 10 minute clip by Jon Kabat-Zinn entitled "Mindfulness of the Breath" which I enjoy. I appreciate his straighforward and rather calming approach and am looking for more recordings by him but also other, similar ones. I'd like to concentrate on my breathing - or anything that keeps my mind from wandering during my time of meditation. That really seems to be my biggest obstacle so far.
So which are your favourite tapes, meditation 'gurus', and tips & tricks to up my concentration levels?
Many thanks!
posted by mrsh to Sports, Hobbies, & Recreation (11 answers total) 68 users marked this as a favorite
 
Jon Kabat-Zinn is top of my list and you'll have lots of options if you're exploring his work. I also like the Simply Being app. It offers quite straightforward meditations with a pleasant voice, you can choose the length of the meditation and have the option to add gentle music or a range of relaxing sound effects to the background.

But mostly I just sit and count my breaths up to 10 again and again, bringing my attention back every time it wanders, without using a recording. I'm relatively new to meditation too, and feel that I could do that for years without exhausting what I have to learn from it.
posted by penguin pie at 11:43 AM on September 4, 2013 [2 favorites]


Realizing that your mind is wandering and bringing it back to the breath is all of meditation. If you do that, you're right on target.

Dharmaseed.org has an enormous library of dharma talks and guided meditations. I'm a big fan of specific teachers:

Carol Wilson

Joseph Goldstein

Kamala Masters

Steve Armstrong
posted by janey47 at 11:51 AM on September 4, 2013 [2 favorites]


I feel like I recommend calm.com so often here that I might as well work for them, but - I really like calm.com. They have 20-25 minute guided meditations, but start as short as two minutes.
posted by sweetkid at 11:56 AM on September 4, 2013 [1 favorite]


Good recommendations above! I also like the Free Range Meditation podcast as well. It's a little more on the teaching side of things then a straight guided meditation, but I really appreciate his thoughts on how to live more in the moment and authentically in Western culture. I often listen to it before bed. Todd doesn't update it anymore, but there are plenty of old episodes to last awhile, especially if you mixed it up with other stuff.
posted by amileighs at 12:06 PM on September 4, 2013


An acquaintance of mine has released a CD. The phrase "for Chronic Conditions" is in the title, but the content is not specific to any health issue or lack thereof.
posted by matildaben at 12:52 PM on September 4, 2013


Headspace.com has 365 different meditations that you work through consecutively. The first ten are free and then you pay either a monthly fee or a yearly fee to access the others. It's very secular and, though it is obviously kind of similar from day to day, it is always a different recording -- which I find helps me overcome resistance.
posted by feets at 1:03 PM on September 4, 2013 [3 favorites]


I really like the guided imagery recordings by Bellaruth Napurstek (available on Amazon, iTunes etc.) but they might be more "hypnotic" and less meditative than you are looking for.
posted by rpfields at 1:11 PM on September 4, 2013 [1 favorite]


I second Headspace.com. They have a great app too.
posted by bearwife at 1:33 PM on September 4, 2013






I second Kelly Howell's stuff - go to Brainsync.com. They offer both 'submiminal' and guided meditation material.

I think Headspace is great, although it's not for me. To clarify, I think it's great if you're new to meditation and want to learn how to sit quietly. I recommended it a few friends who have never successfully been able to sit and they love it. However, I found that for me, because I can already sit, the instruction was distracting. He has a fantastic voice though.

I don't really like Bellaruth Napurstek's voice, but I used one of her guided meditation CDs to prepare myself for an upcoming surgery, and the day off, the anesthesiologist and med staff told me I was the calmest patient they'd ever had. It was highly effective.

In the past I've also used Caroline Myss's Chakra Meditation, which is not amazing, but it's fine.

There's also a great app called Insight Timer. If you get the paid version, it includes some nice guided meditations from Tara Branch and others, but you can also use it to time your own self-guided meditations.

Stuff that hasn't worked for me: Deepak Chopra's solo material and Deepak Chopra/Oprah. A friend convinced me to sign up for 21-day meditation challenge, and I dropped out after Day 3. Unlike Headspace, which I can endorse even though I don't use it, I felt like the challenge was just a marketing scheme.
posted by lolo341 at 7:42 AM on October 2, 2013


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