Guiding Meditation, Like Riding a Bike!

The Art of Teaching

Guiding & Riding the Bike of Meditation

Guiding meditation is like teaching someone how to ride a bike — at first you are holding the handle bars for them, cueing them to get their feet pedaling, and then you gradually begin to release one hand, then the other, continuing to guide them as you walk beside them, until you are able to step back completely. It’s a gradual process that requires skillful attention, practice and experience. When done well, this process helps the student achieve depths in their meditation that they could not have achieved alone, while also empowering them to be able to reach for those depths in their personal practice. 

Step 1) Introduce the practice

In one or two sentences, tell your students what you are about to do together. In terms of riding a bike this would be like telling them that we are going to ride this bike around the cul-de-sac today for 15 minutes. Or, in our case, you might say, “Now we are going to practice mantra together. We will begin by doing mantra out loud, focusing on the mouth and then the throat, getting slower and quieter as we go. After that we will transition to doing mantra silently with our breath at the heart. This will help us connect to the deeper aspects of the mantra that I was describing earlier." 

Step 2) Teach the technique

Guide your students simply and repetitively into the practice you are teaching. When learning to ride a bike, your teacher would hold the handle bars and walk the bike, cueing you to ‘pedal your feet’ and ‘look straight ahead.’ They would be holding the bike, but giving you simple repetitive cues that you could keep re-focusing on until they felt like you got it. After a while, they might let go of the handle bars with one hand, continuing to give those same simple and repetitive cues, and finally they would release the handle bars and continue walking beside you. Teaching meditation is exactly the same way. We need to boil our technique down to simple and repetitive cues. Beautiful metaphors and images are of no use to someone who is not yet able to pedal their feet and keep their balance. Keep it simple, keep it repetitive. For example, “As you inhale, feel the breath make its way to the heart as you continue to silently repeat the mantra Om Namah Shivaya. As you exhale, keep your focus in the heart as you repeat the mantra again, Om Namah Shivaya. Each inhale, Om Namah Shivaya at the heart. Each exhale, Om Namah Shivaya, keeping your focus at the heart.”

Step 3) Step Back

The next step involves transitioning your cues to a more narrative style and empowering your students to work more deeply within themselves. As we saw in the last step, at a certain point you let go of the handle bars to allow the student to begin taking the practice deeper inside, but you keep walking beside them as they do it. This is the exit strategy, the conscious transition from breath-by-breath cues to a more narrative, detached style of cueing. In the following example, the ellipses indicate a moment of silence that helps you make your exit. Example: "Continue breathing at your own pace, bringing the mantra to every inhale and exhale … Try to hear the repetition of the mantra with each breath … Continue Repeating Om Namah Shivaya at the heart with every single breath.”

Step 4) Depth Cues

Depth cues are one or two ‘narrative-style’ cues, with plenty of room in between them to practice, that encapsulate the trajectory of the practice and enable your students to dive more deeply inside. For our bike analogy, our students are riding around the cul-de-sac at this point. Depth cues are what we would say to them to help them really start to feel their practice and explore it more deeply. These types of cues are rich and powerful gems that encapsulate the practice and give them room to explore. Each one of these cues is surrounded by plenty of silence for them to work with it.

Example 1: "Feel the mantra filling your awareness at the heart just like the breath fills your lungs. Allow the awareness to grow beyond the space of the body, filling the room and beyond.”

 Example 2: “Bring your awareness to the center of the chest, like a turtle drawing its head into its shell. With each breath, draw your head down into the heart, repeating the mantra Om Namah Shivaya, from the center of the chest, inside your turtle shell.”

Step 5) Cue Out and Absorb

The final step in guiding meditation is to clearly end the meditation and help your students notice any positive effects. An example of this could be: "At the end of your next exhale, allow the mantra to subside and your eyes to open a little bit. Notice the space of the room, and the quietness of your mind."