By Tyler Greenberg of Meditate Life, meditatelife.org

As we meditate, we build up our meditation skills.  I have been meditating for years.  In fact, I have been practicing meditation for most of my life.  I consider my meditation skills to be pretty solid.  Even with all that, the guided meditation pack that I am working my way through is a pack of guided meditations for beginners and I am still learning new skills.  

Yes, even after all of this time meditating I am learning new meditation skills from a course for beginners.  They aren’t skills that I am completely unfamiliar with, but they are skills that I haven’t focused on in my practice before.  One big thing that I am working on is resting focus.  I always like to focus my attention on a particular sensation when I meditate, but now I am working on placing my focus on every sensation.  Instead of focusing on my breath, for example, I am focusing on everything my body is feeling, hearing, and doing. 

Along with building new skills, returning to a beginner guided meditation course has helped me to further solidify the skills I already have.  I notice that it is easier for me to meditate without losing focus and I feel better after meditating.  I am able to find new enjoyment in practices that I have been doing for years. 

This isn’t the first time I have returned to some guided meditations for beginners, and I would suggest that everyone does it every once and awhile.  I try to do them at least every year.  I will also go back if I have something particular I want to work on or if I feel like I am getting “bored.” 

I do not stay too long with these meditations, but I do practice them exclusively for a while.  I will use them for about a week every time I do this, but I only use them for that week.  If you decide to go back to beginner meditations for a while, I suggest you do them for a good amount of time like I do.  Doing them for a week lets me focus on whatever I am trying to develop.  If I don’t, I find that I just do it once and don’t actually build the skill.  I like to do a 7-10 lesson course of meditations over the week because it is the perfect amount to do a meditation a day.  After the course is finished, I take the skills I developed and learned and apply them in my normal meditations. 

I have found great enjoyment and growth in returning to some beginner guided meditations, and I hope you can too.  If you are looking for good guided meditations, check out those from Ease Meditation!