While listening to a soft voice, describing a beautiful garden for us to visualise, can be very comforting and nice, a little like listening to a bedtime story, it’s not true meditation. You can’t be fully present with yourself, while listening to someone else. Then your presence, your attention, is on the other person’s voice. I think, so called guided meditations are a form of hypnosis, that in fact takes us away from their purpose, to become centred through our breath.

At first, experiencing silence can be scary. It’s like opening the door to a vast, dark space, not knowing if we’re going to fall into the depth of nothingness. At least, that’s how it was for me. Meditating to soft instrumental music (to not give our attention and our mind to understanding lyrics) or natural sounds like ocean waves, can be a good start and support in the beginning. Through this, we can find a sense of rhythm that we can follow with our breath. Eventually though, the only thing we should have in mind is our breath. Focusing on the inhale, the exhale, letting our thoughts come and go, our emotions rise and fall, and returning to our breath. Listening to someone else, takes us away from this focus, rather than putting our focus within. To meditate, thus, is daring to listen to the silence.