Which Guided Meditations I Use

October 8, 2020

I’m often asked about which meditations I use, or why type of meditation I use. There are hundreds, if not tens of thousands and more types of meditation and guided meditations. So which to choose. Well, let’s keep it simple to begin with.

I won’t go into what meditation is, or whether there’s a right or wrong way of doing it here. All I will say, is that when I started ‘meditating’ in 2012, I didn’t use any apps, guides or teachers. I simply sat on my pillow before going to bed, closed my eyes and breathed in and out while counting to ten in my head.

Inhale – 1

Exhale -2

Inhale – 3

Exhale – 4

Inhale – 5

Exhale – 6

Inhale – 7

Exhale – 8

Inhale – 9

Exhale -10

And that was it. Five breaths in total. I did that then went to bed. I continued to do that for 3-4 weeks, and then went to 20. I then did that for 3-4 weeks, before setting a timer for one minute, then two minutes and so on until after about 6 months I got to about 15 minutes. And I would just say to myself “inhale, exhale” over and over. Or one (in), two (out), three (in), four (out) over and over until the timer went off.

And I just did it once per day. Before bed. After a couple of years, I started doing a 15 minute session at the beginning of the day too.

Around 2014/15 I decided to start with guided meditations. Perhaps because I was getting bored, or needed variation. I don’t remember. Now about 80% of my meditations are guided, and 20% are not. Of the 20% I normally just say some variation of the mantra style. Repeating a phrase over and over. Normally this is re-lease (in/out), or re/lax, I’m/safe, all/good, let/go and so on. A two syllable phrase that makes me feel good.

In terms of which guided ones I use, here they are.

1 – The Great Soul Sync Meditation

This one is by O&O Academy founders Sri Preethaji & Sri Krishnaji. It’s available for free here: https://www.pkconsciousness.com/soul-sync It’s a lovely 15 minute 5-stage guided meditation. I normally do it in the mornings but sometimes in the evening slot instead. It takes you through 5 stages of just breathing and tapping your fingers and thumb, then various other processes.

2 – Getting Into The Vortex

I bought the Getting Into The Vortex book and meditation years ago, by Jerry and Esther Hicks. It has four meditations each about 15 minutes long. The first 12 minutes have Esther Hicks speaking and the last three minutes you meditate along to the music. The music throughout has a lovely 4-count beat that you inhale (for 4) and exhale (for 4) to.

Whenever I do this, I find that my HRV (Heart Rate Variability) scores are highest. You can learn more about HRV here, but essentially it’s about the beat-to-beat changes in your heartbeat. And a nice even pattern with high peaks and troughs are best according the the decades of research from the Heartmath Institute. I really recommend looking into HRV and Heartmath in more detail.

3 – 21-Day Meditations with Deepak & Oprah

I also like using the audios I bought after doing the free 21-day meditation challenge hosted by Deepak Chopra and Oprah Winfrey. They have done about a dozen together. You sign up online, or on the app, and when they launch you know about it. You normally have 24-48 hours to do the meditation of the day. I ended up buying the CD’s (about 6 years ago – which turned out to be very expensive after import taxes), and then putting the audio’s on my dedicated (old) meditation smartphone.

You can sign up for the next challenge here: https://chopracentermeditation.com/login (I think Deepak has partnered with others too, so the challenges might have different co-hosts now).

The ones I use are the Abundance, Perfect Health, and Relationships ones. I normally decide to do a 21 day cycle so listen to all in order over 21 days or so.

Normally this will be in the morning meditation.

4 – Lifeflow Brainwave Meditations

A number of years ago I bought a series of meditations from Lifeflow. These are 10 meditations tracks of 1 hour in which each of the 10 tracks goes to deeper and deeper frequencies. They work a bit like binaural beats (where different frequencies go into each each to allow brain entrainment and get into meditation states quicker. Holosync was the original binaural beats meditation I heard about). Lifeflow is similar, but apparently you also can do without the use of headphones.

You’re supposed to meditate for 1 hour though and for about 30 days with each frequency before moving on to the next in the series.

I tend not to do it like that. I listen for about 15-20 minutes, just before bed, sitting on my pillow. And I tend to use the deeper frequencies only.

It probably is worth doing it correctly though, even if you don’t do an hour, but at least do a month at each frequency first.

Check it out here: https://www.project-meditation.org/pm/ It’s not cheap, so you might want to do some further research before committing.

Note that they seem to have changed things a little since I bought and now maybe you have to buy the different frequency states in bundles, and might be only 40 minutes long instead.

5 – Ong Namo Kundalini Chant

If I’m short on time, then I often like doing this 7-minute Kundalini (yoga) chant. There are different versions of it, but I like this one best: https://youtu.be/cGkS78fZl94

It’s by Mirabei Ceiba, in case the link doesn’t work by the time you read this.

You sing along to it (my 6 year old niece loves it!). You repeat the mantra: “Ong Namo Guru Dev Namo”. Essentially this means “I bow to the Devine wisdom within myself”, or “I am look to the wisdom within” or “I am my own teacher”. Words to that effect.

Interesting, if I do this while using my Heartmath Inner Balance device, which tracks my HRV and heart coherence I get terrible scores. As opposed to using it with the Vortex meditation above. I guess it’s because I’m singing.

They are the main ones I would use on a consistent (daily) basis. At the moment I’m doing the Deepak & Oprah ones in the morning (or the One Namo chant if short on time, or a Wim Hof breath work session if I am in the mood for that instead). And in the evening the Lifeflow sessions. I’ve dabbled with other guided meditations too, but stick to these mostly.

Hope that’s been useful to you. It seems like everyone is looking to try out meditation now. Which is great. You don’t need anything to guid you really though. Just your breath is a great place to start.