3 places to find guided meditations for beginners

Experienced meditators can make it all look easy, but you’re not going to be a Zen master your first time around.

Learning to meditate can be strange and awkward — you’re down, drenched in silence and trying as hard as you can to think about … nothing?

Thankfully, there are plenty of resources for first-timers and beginners looking to get into meditation. And, considering some studies have found the practice to reduce a person’s anxiety by up to 39 percent, it really could be worth giving these tools a shot.

Here are three places to find easy, beginner-friendly guided meditations.

YouTube

As you might expect, YouTube is full of free, guided meditation exercises. There are almost too many channels to choose from, but one great option is Yoga with Adrienne.

Her highly popular yoga and meditation page has playlists for every skill level and situation, and she appears in each of her videos to calmly guide you through the process.

Spotify

If videos aren’t your thing, try Spotify. The music streaming service has tons of playlists — including ones the company has curated itself — dedicated to calming meditation.

The good news here is that you’ll never have to worry about getting bored or running through the same instruction twice. Instead, just pop on a playlist, press play and follow along for as many minutes as you’d like.

Meditation Apps

Credit: Headspace

Another option is to go straight to the source. If you want a service specifically geared to your meditation experience, try downloading one of the many apps dedicated to the practice.

A few solid choices? Headspace, which will help you set a program based on your individual needs, is incredibly popular with more than 60 million users in total. Meanwhile Calm, available for both your phone and desktop, offers a free trial so you can see if the routines feel right for you.

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