Best Guided Meditations of 2024 (2024)

Best Guided Meditations

Best Guided Meditations

• Cost: $69.99/year or $399.99/lifetime membership
• Notable Features: Calm background waves, individual exercises
• Length: Three to 25 minutes

Calm offers a quick and easy guided meditation for anxiety on its flexible app, and has a free trial so you can check it out before subscribing.

If you live with anxiety, adding one more thing to your day is enough to trigger thoughts of worry, stress, and panic. The good news? Calm offers guided meditations specifically for anxiety, and they only take three to 25 minutes.

The meditations are perfect in the morning to help prepare your mind for the day ahead or at the end of a hectic day to help ease stress and anxiety. There are lessons that focus on body awareness and deep belly breathing as well as ones that focus on calming racing thoughts. The meditations often pause to let you just focus on breathing (while listening to waves), which can be useful for someone with anxiety.

• Cost: Free, but donations are suggested
• Notable Features: Website with video classes
• Length: One to 40 minutes

We chose Tara Brach because the meditations are guided by a clinical psychologist and are peaceful and cathartic.

If you’re looking for a deeper practice that also feels like you’re getting a dose of therapy, then Tara Brach is for you. Brach, who has a doctorate in clinical psychology, will guide you through a peaceful, yet cathartic, meditation that helps you discover how self-compassion can relieve emotional suffering.

There are four meditation categories to choose from: Basic, Heart, Open Awareness, and Special Meditations/Reflections. Pre-recorded meditations include Relaxing Back Into Natural Awareness, A Calm Refuge, Touching Peace, Embracing Life With an Open Heart, and more.

Some meditations feature guidance with just a few silent pauses, while others feature gentle rain or birds singing in the background. Most meditations are around 10 to 25 minutes long. All of the meditations are free, but Brach asks for donations to make them as widely available as possible.

A Verywell Report: Americans Find Strength in Online Therapy

• Cost: $69.99/year or $12.99/month
• Notable Features: User-friendly app with guides for beginners
• Length: One to 20 minutes, on average

Headspace has a user-friendly interface with hundreds of guided meditations suitable for everyone from beginners to experts.

With Headspace, you will learn deep breathing. The app walks you through how your breath should feel throughout your body and what you should be noticing about your breath. At the same time, it will also help you find where in the body you feel your breath and the rhythm of your breath (long, short, deep, or shallow).

Headspace provides helpful cues for when external sounds appear. You can choose from a variety of meditations based on your needs and how long you want to focus on the practice.

• Cost: Free on YouTube
• Notable Features: Calming imagery and background sounds
• Length: 10 to 40 minutes, on average

The Honest Guys offer free, simple meditations with breathing techniques to help quell anxiety.

Many users swear by these guided meditations. The Honest Guys narrator, Rick Clarke, has a voice that is alluring without being distracting. He focuses on deep breathing and points out that thoughts of anxiety and stress are common when starting to meditate.

The key to success with these guided meditations is to allow yourself to be in total peace with your surroundings. As you feel more relaxed, Clarke walks you through peaceful journeys, taking you deeper into relaxation. As the journeys end and the only sound you hear is the calming nature sounds, you have the option of drifting off to sleep, continuing in this deeply relaxed state, or resuming your day.

• Cost: Some offerings free with email sign-up; meditation albums cost about $11 to $18
• Features: Upbeat music, short meditations
• Length: Six minutes

We selected Gabby Bernstein because her meditations are great for active individuals who want to turn exercise into more of a mind-and-body experience.

If you’re new to the idea of moving while meditating, the short intro from Gabby Bernstein is a great place to start. During the six-minute recording, you’ll focus on each step and how it connects to your breath. Her voice is very upbeat, which is helpful since you’re walking and not trying to fall asleep.

The overall goal of the meditation is to help you understand how to connect your mind with the body. After a few minutes of breath work, she asks listeners to repeat a simple mantra while walking: “My happiness is a choice I make.”

Whether it’s her voice or the beat of the music, this guided meditation will empower you to take action as it calms, eases stress, and helps you focus on your breath. Listen to this meditation each time you go for a walk and you’ll be amazed at how it changes your perspective on exercise.

• Cost: Free on YouTube and if you subscribe by email
• Features: Calming guide voice and music
• Length: One to three hours

Jason Stephenson offers super relaxing guided meditations designed to help you get to sleep.

Jason Stephenson's meditations are designed to be used at bedtime to help you rift off for a refreshing night's rest. You’ll begin by taking an inventory of the tension in your body. With your breath, you will free the tension and mental and emotional stress.

In one of his meditations, Jason Stephenson will guide you through the seven chakras, or energy centers in your body. You will understand what parts of your life need energy healing. Stephenson's voice, along with the accompanying gentle piano music, will help you release stress while sinking into your mattress.

• Cost: $99.99/year
• Notable Features: User-friendly app and website
• Length: Unclear

We chose Ten Percent Happier because it offers beginning guides for people who aren’t sure about meditation.

If you’ve convinced yourself meditation isn’t for you, because you can’t focus or you're skeptical of anything related to mindfulness, Ten Percent Happier will speak your language. It’s specifically marketed to “fidgety skeptics,” especially beginners who need more of a guiding hand.

The app came out of the New York Times best-selling book of the same name and features a number of expert guides who can walk you through all the meditation basics. If you have questions, the guides will even respond to you personally. It has hundreds of meditations that can help you sleep better, cope with anxiety, or find ways to be a little calmer, and yes, happier. And the premium version has even more. There are also several informative podcasts and a newsletter.

Article Sources

1. National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health. Meditation and mindfulness: what you need to know.