I'm not a big fan of guided meditations. Usually they irk more than relax me. I get annoyed with the (usually) New Age'y tone of the person doing the guiding.
Hey, if anybody is going to annoy me while I meditate, I'm perfectly capable of filling that role myself. After about 45 years of daily meditation, that's one thing I've learned from contemplating the workings of my mind.
(Maybe the only thing... but at least that's one thing.)
A few minutes ago, though, I actually enjoyed a ten minute guided meditation. Listening on my laptop while sitting outside on our deck, I made it through the first Headspace lesson with essentially zero annoyance.
Enlightenment Diploma, please!
However, I don't think I'm going to get one so fast, since I've got nine more free guided ten-minute meditations on my enlightenment plate, after which, from what I've learned so far on the Headspace website, I'll have to subscribe to get super-duper-even-more enlightened.
Which I may actually do.
I'm always open to new insights into meditation and my mind's mysterious workings. I've fallen into some ruts after all those years of meditating each morning on my own. It'll be interesting to see how mindfulness expert Andy Puddicombe (great name) approaches things.
I came across Puddicombe via someone's Twitter tweet today. Clicking on the Ted talk link, I watched his "All it takes is 10 mindful minutes" presentation. Pleasingly, it lasts 9:24. Here's the You Tube version.
I wasn't overwhelmed by this talk.
In fact, I planned for tonight's blog post to be mostly a critique of what Puddicombe said. But when I browsed through the comments on the You Tube video, several people mentioned how much they liked his Headspace site -- which isn't mentioned in the talk.
That led me to Headspace, which led me to scan through an easy-to-read "The Science Behind Meditation" piece, which led me to click on the "Sign up for free" link, which led me to my first enjoyable ten minute guided meditation.
Puddicombe is an intriguing guy. So I'm looking forward to trying out some more of what he has to offer. Here's his bio:
Andy Puddicombe is a meditation and mindfulness expert. An accomplished presenter and writer, Andy is the voice of all things Headspace.
In his early twenties, midway through a university degree in Sports Science, Andy made the unexpected decision to travel to the Himalayas to study meditation instead. It was the beginning of a ten year journey which took him around the world, culminating with ordination as a Tibetan Buddhist monk in Northern India.
His transition back to lay life in 2004 was no less extraordinary. Training briefly at Moscow State Circus, he returned to London where he completed a degree in Circus Arts with the Conservatoire of Dance and Drama, whilst drawing up the early plans for what was later to become Headspace.
Haha, I know what you mean about being perfectly capable of annoying oneself during a meditation or trying to find time to quiet the mind in any way.
I also found that guided meditations mostly didn't work for me, then again, sometimes there's just something about the "guiders" voice that we unconsciously associate with relaxation, so that can happen occasionally.
Good read, thanks for sharing
Posted by: Nick | August 17, 2016 at 08:28 PM