Recommended Guided Meditations

Expanding your meditation repertoire:

A 14 minute meditation by Joseph Goldstein, a revered teacher here in the US, that covers the basics but also guides a bit more of an inner exploration.

Simple and beautiful 20-minute meditation guided by Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat Hanh, an iconic figure in the Buddhist meditation world.

RAIN Meditation: Acronym for Recognize, Allow, Investigate, and Nurture – is a useful tool for dealing with difficult emotions that repeatedly arise in meditation. Invented in the 80s by Michelle McDonald, but recently popularized by Tara Brach, this is a really useful practice for confronting difficult memories, stories, and worries.

Meditation for stress and worry specifically by Hugh Byrne on Insight Timer. Insight Timer is a good app/resource with a huge library for all types of specifically catered meditation.

A selection of guided meditations in the area of self-compassion from Kristin Neff, a pioneering researcher in the field. This has exercises and lots of information on the topic on her site. The3-step self-compassion break is something I use in my own life (1) Mindful that this is suffering 2) Recognize common humanity 3) Be kind to yourself)

A simple loving-kindness (metta) meditation and explanation by Sharon Salzberg, considered to be the U.S. expert in the area of Buddhist metta practice. You can find similar meditations by almost any teacher on any app because it is such a useful and impactful complement to our mindfulness practice.

A body scan meditation by Jon-Kabat Zinn, creator of Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction, probably the most scientifically studied and validated mindfulness program in the world.

This Mind Like a Sky meditation by Jack Kornfield can be helpful as an open awareness practice. Typically, we use a specific anchor in meditation like our breath, but other times we can open the awareness up to anything that arises in our consciousness, and the anchor becomes awareness itself.