A Guide To Guiding
This guide is 100% my personal opinion
I wrote this guide for the Student Meditation project. The underlying meditation routine is mostly based on the work of Culadasa and his book "The Mind Illuminated"—which I highly recommend. The guiding structure is inspired by the many guided meditations I enjoyed from Steve Cope—thanks Steve!
Introduction
So, you want to start guiding meditation sessions? Perfect, you have come to the right place. I have the following mentality towards guiding a meditation session; if an audio tape can do it, anyone can learn to do it!
A lot of people have the idea that only monks or advanced meditators can guide a session, but I think this is keeping meditation back. Meditation is a beautiful gift that should be shared with as many people as possible. This guide is here to help you start doing that!
This guide won’t make you a teacher, so don’t start going around being fancy and all.
Requirements for Guiding
You don't have to be an advanced meditator or a monk, but I do think that the following requirements are essential:
Have a daily practice (unguided) of at least 20 minutes a day.
Meditation can be difficult in many ways—building a healthy relationship with your internal experience is though. Because of this, some people might have questions after a guiding session. You're the guide, the natural person to ask because you're in a position of authority. Nobody should hold this authority, no matter how long you meditate, but at least you have a basis for sharing your experience.
During the guided meditation you're sharing your own meditation practice, only verbalized this time. So, only when your own practice is nicely structured, you can start sharing.
You're willing to put in the effort to learn.
When you're guiding a group, you really want it to do it as well as possible. Now, that doesn't mean that you can't fail or practice, but we want your best effort. Why? A lot of people give meditation only one try; this one try might be during your guiding session.
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