How to Meditate Unguided – 5 Practices to Try

Last Updated on August 28, 2026 by Matthew Sockolov

Anyone that learns how to meditate likely begins with some guidance. Guided meditations are certainly a useful tool in our path of practice, but they aren’t the entire path for everyone.

As you progress in your practice, you may want to investigate sitting without any guidance. Learning how to meditate unguided can support your practice in many ways, especially if you have a solid foundation of understanding the practices.

The Benefits of Guided Meditations

First, let me start by saying I personally meditate with guided meditations sometimes. I generally sit in silence, but sometimes I see a new meditation from a teacher I like and sit with the guidance. So although you may think of guided meditations as a tool for beginners only, I think it is important to recognize the role guidance can play for us through any stage of our practice.

In general, guided meditations are a fantastic tool to use when we are first learning how to meditate. Guided meditations can help us stay on track, give us new perspectives on practice, and introduce us to new meditation techniques. I still hear things in guided meditations that prove insightful. It may be somethign we already know in general, but it is phrased or offered in a new way that changes our experience of the practice.

The other reason I really recommend guided meditations for beginners in general is the overall structure. Guided meditations will guide you both in and out of the meditation period, and offer you the meat of the practice in the middle. The timing is set for you, and you don’t have to overthink. With the structure offered, it gives the beginner’s mind an opportunity to really focus on the practice at hand!

Why Meditate Without Guidance?

With the benefits you might find from guided meditations, why would you go without any guidance? Well, there are several reasons. Meditating without guidance means you are simply meditating by yourself. In my experience both personally and with students, this can offer a few benefits if you do this when the time is right.

Embracing Silence

First, meditating without guidance offers us the opportunity to sit in relative silence. In the beginning of many suttas, such as the Satipatthana Sutta (the Buddha’s discourse on establishing mindfulness), the Buddha instructed his followers to sit “in the forest, at the foot of a tree or empty place…” Many scholars and monks agree this instruction is related to finding a quiet place to meditate.

Silence offers us the opportunity to calm the mind, body, and mental formations. Yes, you may notice thoughts more intensely, but silence is where we find calmness, samadhi, and peace. In fact, when the Buddha spoke of concentration, or samatha meditation, he spoke of sounds as being one experience that can pull us out of concentrative states.

More Freedom

With the silence and lack of external input comes more freedom. When meditating without guidance, you can do what you want. If you wish to sit in an open awareness practice, you may do so. If you want to do an equanimity practice, you may do so. If you are sitting in open awareness and find the need to switch to self-compassion due to an experience you’re having, an unguided meditation really offers you this opportunity.

In your period of meditation, you have the freedom to adjust how you see fit. If something grabs your intention and you wish to investigate it mindfully, you can rest your awareness there. If you feel the need to adjust in any way, unguided meditations offer this little bit of extra freedom. For the beginner, this may be overwhelming or we may fall into thinking and hooking into thoughts. But as we progress with our practice, this freedom can actually help us strengthen the qualities of mindfulness and discernment.

Maybe Trickier

For many, unguided meditations can be a little bit more difficult. We may have to work a little harder to work with monkey mind, or thoughts bouncing from one thing to the next. When the attention does wander off, we won’t have the voice of the teacher to guide us back to the practice. It all falls on you as the meditator.

Although this may be more tricky, I actually think it can be a powerful benefit. Much like other skills we learn in our lives, we do have to lovingly push ourselves sometimes. The difficulty of staying on track and beginning again actually serves us if it is an appropriate amount. Every time we bring the mind back, we strengthen that mental muscle and ability to return to the object of meditation.

Meditations to Try Without Guidance

So if you’re ready to give unguided meditations a shot, I have a few practices I often recommend to people to get started. You’re welcome to do any kind of meditation you want, but these are a few relatively structured meditations that you can do on your own unguided. In my opinion, they are solid introductions to meditating unguided due to a clear structure.

You may want to try a guided meditation or two, or at least familiarize yourself with these practices before going solo with them.

Counting the Breaths

One of my favorite practices for building concentration, breath-counting is a great way to start with unguided meditation. With each breath, you count silently in your head. We are working to build concentration in this way, bringing our attention back to the breath whenever it wanders. You can count on each exhale, each inhale, or both. Whenever the mind wanders to something else, simply come back to the breaath.

Metta Phrases

Metta, or loving-kindness, is another great practice when you are learning how to meditate unguided. Much like the breath-counting practice, metta offers a very clear structure with mental noting. You might start with loving-kindness for yourself, or move through the traditional groups of self, loved one, neutral person, and difficult person.

Offering the phrases of metta silently in your head, you can use this as the object of your awareness. Rest your attention on each phrase as you offer it. When the mind wanders off or hooks into another experience, simply come back with gentleness to the phrases of metta.

Body Scan Meditation

A body scan meditation is another practice that works well for those new to meditating without guidance. Although it doesn’t have the mental noting quality of the previous two, it still offers a clear structure. Start by bringing the attention to the crown of the head, and slowly move through the body until you reach the feet. Again, when the mind wanders off, just bring it back to the last place in the body you were practicing with.

Open Awareness Noting

This is a practice from Mahasi Sayadaw. You can find it in one of my favorite books, The Manual of Insight (warning, it is a bit of a dense read). You can start by noting the inhale and exhale somewhere in the body. Using a simple noting like “in” and “out,” stick with the breath for a few minutes to settle. When you’re ready, begin to also note the posture of the body after each exhale. So in your head it may sound like this: “in, out, sitting.” As you notice your posture, notice the actual physical sensation of sitting.

After a few minutes like this, you might note what else comes into your awareness after each inhale. There’s no right or wrong answer. For example, it might be something like: “in, hearing, out, sitting, in, thinking, out, sitting…” and so on. I find this to be a nice structure to vipassana, or insight meditation. Rather than just leaving the awareness completely open, we anchor in the breath and body, and tune into what else is arising in our experience.

Walking Meditation

Finally, there’s the often-forgotten walking meditation. If you’re a regular reader of the blog or listener of the podcast, you know I’m a big fan of walking meditation. It makes for a wonderful practice to do without guidance. The structure of walking back and forth offers a bit of a reminder to return to the present moment. With walking meditation you can do any sort of mindfulness practice or heart practice, so this is really an open suggestion. If you’re working with a group, walking meditation works well as an outdoor meditation activity as well.

When to Switch to Unguided Meditations

Finally, the question that sparked all of this. A student asked me last week, “How do I know when I am ready to switch to unguided meditations?” It frankly was the first time I’ve been asked a question like this, and I didn’t know what to say. Some questions are easy to answer, and some are like this one. I had to pause for a moment and reflect before responding.

I don’t know when the right time is for anyone to switch to unguided meditations. Some people perhaps may benefit from always using some guidance. In general, it has to be something you know within yourself. Give an unguided meditation a shot. Not just once, but a few times. What is the experience like? Are there any differences for you meditating without guidance? Was it more difficult or easier in certain ways?

If you have been meditating for enough time to know and understand the practices, I think that is your time to at least give it a shot. Remember that it has nothing to do with how good of a meditator you are, how far along the path you are, or anything else. Do not use it as a tool to judge yourself harshly. Use it as a way to discern, to look at your experience with wisdom and understanding. And don’t forget to bring some loving-kindness or gentleness into whatever practice you choose to do.

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