Guided Meditation - Should You Try It?

Guided meditation has become extremely popular in self-help circles, with seemingly every website dedicated to meditation trying to sell us CDs or even expensive one-on-one sessions with a personal meditation guide. I have never been drawn to this activity, and in this article I will explain the reasons for my reservations. If you are serious about attaining altered states of consciousness through meditation, you won't fall for the hype either.

Is Guided Meditation Really Meditation?

Meditation is - or should be - the ultimate individual pursuit, in which the practitioner explores the deepest regions of the self. This is not a team sport, and it is not a social activity. If you want to meditate in the presence of other friends or like-minded people, perhaps in the hope of experiencing a deeper connection with them, or with a view to discussing your experiences afterward, that's fine. But the actual activity itself is one you must undertake alone. The journey is uniquely yours.

Guided meditation, by its very nature, converts this personal activity into an interpersonal activity, and gives unacceptable control and direction to the meditation guide. The voice of the guide may ask you questions to encourage analysis of troubling emotional issues, as in a psychotherapy session. It may attempt to lead you to certain inner states by suggesting imagery, as if you can't relax by yourself. Or, in its worst possible form, it may actually seek to reprogram your belief system with selected affirmations, in a manner akin to hypnotherapy. These may all be interesting activities, and may even be worth pursuing for some people who can't seem to gain traction working alone. But to the extent that they transfer control and direction to someone else, they cannot be considered proper meditation.

An Impediment to Real Progress

Beyond definitional issues, there is a fundamental practical problem with guided meditation. If your goal is to explore genuinely altered states, such as the fascinating Alpha-Theta boundary, you have little chance of getting there with a "guided" meditation. The voice of the guide - especially if you don't like that voice or what it says - is a constant interruption of and distraction from your descent to deeper levels. I certainly think it is possible, if you listen with your eyes closed, to attain an Alpha state while using these products. And that might be enough for you - especially if your main goal is simply to relax at the end of a tough day and ward off the manifold evils associated with stress and an excess of Beta waves. But I doubt very much that you'll be able to go any deeper than that, unless you are fortunate enough to find a recording that includes excellent brainwave entrainment audio and a voice that - by chance - doesn't grate on your nerves.