How to Structure an Unguided Meditation?

Most of my clients are beginners and they are systematically learning about meditation for the first time when they’re working with me. Most beginners that I have ever met prefer to use guided meditations. And of course, for every technique they learn, I provide one or more of those, because guided meditations are useful, no question about it. But there comes a point where students become ready to take the next step and learn more advanced meditations. I have a year-long program for that too, but for someone to get into that program (or benefit from it), it is useful to learn how to meditate without guidance.

There are some additional benefits to meditation without guidance. For one, your focus becomes much stronger because you no longer rely on a voice to tell you what to do and how to do it, you don’t get anymore reminders to ever so gently go back to your breath. Instead, you now do that on your own. In addition, when your focus gets stronger and more stable, there’s more equanimity and more awareness. You are even more present in the moment than you are when, in the back of your head, you know that my disembodied voice will remind you to be present when you stop being so.

To put it simply, meditation without guidance means meditating alone with greater responsibility and more benefits.

Here’s how to do it. For once in my life, I will try to be concise. Yes, freely gasp. Miracles do happen.

Before you being structuring your meditation, you have to know what you want to achieve, what your intention is. And even though this comes first, I won’t address it first. We will come back to it, but remember that before you apply anything written here, you need to decide what is it that you want to do.

I won’t start with how to set an intention because I first want to explain how I structure meditations so that you know what you can expect and how to direct your intention.

Parts of a meditation session

I like simplicity, and in my desire to be simple, I don’t like to jump through too many unnecessary hoops. If you ever begin exploring more complex, esoteric meditation practices you will see that simplicity has left the building, but as long as you are working with me, we’ll aim to find simplicity in everything. Not everything will be easy, but to proceed with clarity and to stick with the chosen path, we have to have simple steps.

For a beginner, it’s useful to think of every meditation session as containing three parts:

1.      Preparation

2.      Main practice

3.      Conclusion

Think of it as a three-act play.

Preparation. In this step, you set the mood for your meditation session, you prepare yourself for what is to come. Even though meditation is about observing and attending to your ongoing experience without judgement or interference, you want to begin your practice by minimizing distractions, and not just those that come from the outside, but those from the inside as well. This is the time to clear your mind, relax your body.

Some ways to begin your meditation practice involve:

·        Taking a few deep breaths

·        Doing a formalized breathing exercise (box breathing or any other)

·        Stretching

·        Doing a quick body scan

·        Tone-setting self-talk (pausing for a few seconds and explaining what you’re about to do, why and how)

·        Focusing on your breath or doing another supportive practice like counting, labeling or visualizing the breath; you can use the supportive techniques even if your main meditation practice is focusing on the breath, the difference being that you stop using labeling, etc. once you begin the second part.

You can combine these or add something else. The best way to figure out what works for you is to try out different combinations. In my own practice, I keep it simple. I sit down, take a deep couple of breaths: I inhale, hold my breath as long as it feels comfortable, and then allow my lungs to expel the air at whatever pace they need, and I repeat this a few times.

Main practice. Every session has its main focus. This is what you do: breathing, body scanning, different visualization practices, equanimity, loving-kindness, etc. Whatever technique you are working on, that’s what you do here. There’s not much else to add here.

Conclusion. Everything comes to an end and so does a meditation session. When your time is up and the bell rings, you don’t want to simply jump off the cushion and start working. What you want to do is slowly blend the end of your meditation session with the rest of the day, so that you keep as much of that wonderful mindful awareness as you go about your day. In my own practice, I simply open my eyes and continue with the main practice for a few more minutes but becoming slowly more aware of my environment. You can also restate your intention of formulate one sentence that will direct your behavior that day. For example: may I treat myself and others with kindness and patience. Or: may I distinguish what’s truly important. Whatever you think may need that day. End the meditation slowly.

Time

It’s important to be mindful of the time. You may use a timer and set three alarms. For example, if your meditation session is 15 minutes long, make the first bell sound after 3 minutes, to tell you that it’s time to finish up with preparation and begin your main practice, and then add another bell to tell you that it’s time to start concluding your practice.

In my own practice, I more frequently use mala beads to be mindful of the time, especially if I’m practicing meditations that involve phrase repetition.

Intention

I will confess something. I meditate twice a day and very often my practice is simple and always the same. Well, the technique is the same, but the experience (obviously) isn’t. I find comfort in using a simple technique like focusing on my breath. I suppose the most accurate way to call what I practice is vipassana.

On weekends, however, I explore new techniques and try out new ways of meditating, sometimes I make day-long home retreats and play around quite a bit. But during the week, I meditate at the same time and usually use the same technique.

But you don’t have to, and many of my students don’t. Especially in the beginning of their practice, many of my students feel like they need to mix things up. Part of that is that it’s still very difficult for them to sit with some aspects of their experience that may emerge and changing up practices gives the illusion of control. At the same time, our needs legitimately differ from day to day, mixing up your meditation practice isn’t a bad idea.

This is where intention comes in. Before you sit, ask yourself: what do I need from my practice today? Your practice may be a part of an ongoing personal growth project like cultivating more compassion or introducing more clarity in your life, in which case these projects usually dictate your main practice.

Intention can be more spontaneous than that. Take a moment or two to reflect on you’re the day ahead of you and your emotional needs and simply do what feels right and then build that into the three-part structure I presented here.

Practice, practice, practice

Of course, practice remains the key. Reading about mindfulness isn’t going to make you more mindful, practicing mindfulness will. You won’t get anything right the first time, so don’t even expect it. Experiment and have fun with it. That’s the key to building a good daily practice.