Guided Meditation or Solo Practice: Which is Best for YOU?

Meditation doesn’t have to be complicated, but there are an insane amount of techniques, styles, and teachers to choose from nowadays. It’s not always easy to know which ones are the best use of your time. Rather than attempting to tackle specific techniques and styles, this post will be looking at the main differences between guided meditation and solo practice, aka self-guided meditation. By the end of this post, you’ll have a better understanding of which one will be most effective for you at different points in your journey.

There are many details we could consider but I’ve chosen to select the top 3 pros and cons for each. First, we’ll look at guided meditation.

Guided Meditation - Main Benefits

1) Great for developing skills and creating a habit

When someone is guiding you, you can focus purely on the experience. There’s nothing to remember, you just listen and practice. Since you won’t be bogged down by details, you get to really focus on developing your skills.

Also, since the recording is a fixed length of time, ex: 12 minutes, it is very easy to schedule this into your routine. This really goes a long way towards building your consistency and establishing a daily habit.

2) Strongly encourages an attitude of receptivity

Meditation is often described as a state of being receptive. It’s really about opening up and allowing ever-deeper levels of being to reveal themselves. By listening intently to the teacher or recording, we move into the state of receptivity automatically. This really helps us foster the attitude of receiving that helps us go deep.

3) Contains helpful reminders to stay focused

The benefits we gain from meditation all stem from our ability to apply our concentration to the techniques. It’s normal to get lost in thought and that’s why it’s so helpful to have the guidance of the recording to get you back on track. With the constant audio input, you will rarely get lost for more than a few moments at a time.

Guided Meditation - Main Drawbacks

1) Not always convenient or practical

Guided meditations always require equipment and a specific time commitment. There are many times throughout the day where it would be great to meditate, but we can’t always pull out our headphones and sit for 15 minutes. It is really wonderful to start plugging several 1-5 minute meditations into your day and guided sessions are not well-suited for this.

2) Guided meditations won’t stop and wait for you

Despite our best efforts, we won’t always be able to follow along effectively. There will be sessions when you need to spend more time on a certain section of the practice, but the recording keeps moving on without you. If you’re not able to really establish the feeling of a specific section, it can make the later sections more difficult to feel as well. Basically, we just get left behind.

The other side of this is that a recording can disturb you when you actually go deep. It’s very disappointing to be deeply absorbed in the practice and then have a sudden sound from the recording snap you back before you are ready. This can really hinder your progress at times.

3) Can result in “meditation autopilot”

Now, this will not happen to everyone, but guided sessions can make us mentally lazy over time. When people develop the attitude of letting the recording do the work, their practice will begin to deteriorate. If you expect the results to come from the recording, rather than your personal application of the techniques, then you are on the path to laziness and a loss of personal power. This may sound silly, but if you’ve gotten decent results repeatedly in the past, you may expect to continue getting those results, even when you are applying less concentration.

This is most likely to happen when working with the exact same recording over a long period of time. You may begin to go on “meditation autopilot.” This can be corrected by strengthening your determination to concentrate and/or choosing a new meditation.

Now, let’s take a look at solo practice or self-guided meditation.

Solo Practice - Main Benefits

1) Portable and practical in all situations

When you learn how to guide yourself, you can meditate anytime, any place. This is incredibly powerful because when you are faced with a stressful situation, you will have the tools you need to quickly counteract any negative thoughts/feelings that arise, and prevent them from having a lasting effect on you. Learning to plug these mini-meditations into your life can be extremely beneficial and transformative.

2) Adapts perfectly to you every time

Self-guided meditations can easily be altered to fit your schedule, mood, energy level, etc. Certain sections can be lengthened, shortened, or omitted entirely. You can try out a new technique at the end, beginning, or anywhere you’d like.

The best example of this if if you are working with a 4-part meditation, and during the first few minutes you feel yourself really going deep; you simply allow yourself to go! There’s no reason to continue powering through the specific steps; sometimes we just go straight in!

There will also be times when you need to spend longer in the beginning phases of tuning in, relaxing, etc. Starting each session properly is very important and it’s wonderful to have the freedom to take as long as you need on any given step.

3) Can go super deep with no distractions from the recording

This is a big one. When you do go deep and you really feel like “something is happening!”, there will be no sounds or reminders from the recording to snap you back prematurely. Ultimately, this is probably the biggest reason that people begin to explore self-guided sessions: the freedom to get somewhere and stay as long as you like.

Solo Practice - Main Drawbacks

1) Requires more effort

Solo practice is more difficult. You alone are responsible for remembering all of the details in their proper order, and for carrying them out in a meaningful way. The remembering and doing part of your mind is much more active because there is no one there walking you through the steps. This can lead to excessive thinking during practice and also feelings of doubt and insecurity, as you wonder whether or not you are practicing correctly.

When you have gained sufficient experience with the given techniques, this will dissipate significantly, but it will always be much more present than it would be during a guided session.

2) There are no reminders

With no reminders to stay on task, it is easy to get distracted for longer periods of time. When you’re really lost in thought, you don’t KNOW that you’re lost in thought, and so it may take 10-15 minutes before you realize you haven’t been focusing at all. Obviously this improves with practice, but it still happens, and when you do get lost, you tend to get REALLY lost. With solo practices you are completely on your own.

3) Especially difficult when tired or distracted

If you’re having one of those days where life is trying to toughen you up, it can be really hard to summon the mental strength and focus needed to take yourself through a meaningful practice. Some days we are in pretty rough shape before the practice begins and this makes it much more difficult to get anything out of it. We simply don’t always have the fuel we need to practice effectively. In times like these, guided practices are your best friend.

Two takeaways for everyone to remember:

I hope this has helped paint a clearer picture of how both styles can benefit you in different ways. I want to leave you with the following takeaways to really help guide you towards choosing what is best on a given day.

“The most important thing for everyone is establishing a daily habit”

Consistency above all else. Practicing every day is the surest way to get the results you seek. Once you have built a habit of meditation, you will find that you start really LOOKING FORWARD to your practice. This is when the fun begins.

Start with guided meditations and continue building your skills and strengthening your habits. Keep going until your favorite practices start to feel too short. When your daily sessions leave you wanting more, try doing a guided session and then see how long you can keep that feeling going after the recording ends. Whatever you’re feeling at the end of the session - try to keep that feeling alive as long as possible. This is a great way to venture into self-guided practices.

”Being experienced does not mean you have graduated from guided practices.”

Viewing guided meditations as training wheels is a mistake. Even highly practiced and dedicated yogis can hit a rough patch now and then. If you feel yourself struggling, or you notice your practice degrading for more than a few days at a time, guided meditation could be the perfect tool to get you back on track.

Sometimes you may go through a period of low energy or emotional turbulence. Maybe your practice will save you, but maybe it will just feel like a struggle. Don’t be stubborn! Put on a recording and take the win. The fact that you’re not able to guide yourself on a certain day does not make you a failure; the only REAL failure is in refusing to use these wonderful tools that are available to us.

I recently rediscovered guided meditation after several years of guiding myself. I found myself nodding off frequently during my after-work practices and guided meditations really saved my butt! Remember to honor yourself and do whatever you need.

I sincerely hope that this is helpful to all of you and I wish you the biggest of blessings on your journey. Now get out there and go meditate!