Self-healing

[Bianca Green]

I only ever listen to guided meditations – I occasionally when I feel out of my body, do a scan and deep breathing but NOT enough.

Do we need to move on from guided meditations at a point and learn silent meditation practice?

I am still quite reactive still. At the moment I am doing a lot of loving kindness meditations.

[Wendy Andrews]

Hi Bianca, I’ve read a couple of your other posts and am responding to this one first. I have also found it helpful to group my main issues under the CPTSD heading for now. And, this year, I’ve attended two Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction courses.
If you are like me and dissociation has been a lifelong coping strategy, I don’t see myself stopping the body scans any time soon! When some big feelings are up, I find Kristin Neff’s loving kindness meditations useful and I also listen to Genevieve’s recordings. I am in no hurry whatsoever to stop listening to the recordings, although the courses did advocate for that but it was just so that, in moments where we don’t have access to them, we are still able to breathe and centre. This is what Genevieve suggests too, this centring, as a cornerstone of peaceful parenting practice, so, yes, it’s useful to be able to practice that skill, train that ‘muscle’….but, really, there is nothing wrong, to me, in always listening to recordings, as long as that is an easy enough thing to factor into your day.

[Genevieve Simperingham]

Yes I was going to say the same as Wendy. Developing a silent meditation practice is very useful in that you can drop into that place of peace inside without having to organize listening to a recording. I often, for instance, get back to the house and before I get out of the car and go inside, I turn off the engine, close my eyes and do a short meditation because once I go inside I’m likely to start doing the jobs or interacting. When travelling on a plane or train etc, I will drop into meditation. Sometimes when I’m watching a movie, I close my eyes for a few minutes and do a little meditation. A silent meditation does have a different quality to it, I enjoy both guided meditations and my silent meditation. Some meditation teachers say that guided meditations are a bit like cheating, but I don’t agree. If it takes you into a meditative state, which they do, and you experience some relief of tension and even a little bit of quietening and slowing down of your thinking, then that’s just great.

So, yes I think it would be a benefit and I teach a simple meditation technique on my recording (village map, then teleseminars) on developing a meditation practice if you want to learn one – but only if you have the capacity to take on something new and it feels right for you. The fact that you’re doing guided meditations really is so beneficial in the meantime!

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