10 Great Guided Mindfulness and Kindfulness Meditations
These are some of my favourite free guided meditations on YouTube, from teachers I’ve learnt an enormous amount from over the years. I hope you love them too.
A note before you start: this list is deliberately made up of other teachers, not me. If you’re new to meditation, a good way in is to try three or four different voices and notice which one your mind actually settles with. It matters more than people expect. A teacher whose pace irritates you will make the practice feel like hard work, and that’s usually the voice, not you.
I’ve checked every link below, so they all still play.
10. A guided meditation with Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh
Calm and Ease, from the Plum Village team, with gentle music underneath. Thich Nhat Hanh died in 2022, and there’s something rather moving about the fact that these recordings go on quietly helping people.
9. Sharon Salzberg, with ocean waves and bells
If you like the sound of waves and gongs alongside a kindfulness meditation, this one is lovely.
8. Jon Kabat-Zinn’s long body scan
Fancy a proper, unhurried body scan? Try this one from Jon Kabat-Zinn, the man who got us all researching mindfulness meditation when he founded MBSR back in 1979. This track has become a bit of a classic, if you can have a classic for guided meditations.
7. Jon Kabat-Zinn: breathscape and bodyscape
Another lovely one from him, called breathscape and bodyscape. A play on the word landscape.
6. A shorter body scan
Want a body scan you can fit into a lunch break? Look no further than this one, from the Mindfulness: Finding Peace in a Frantic World tracks by Professor Mark Williams.
5. Befriending
While we’re with Mark Williams, do try this one, called Befriending. It links beautifully with the kindfulness approach: warmth pointed at yourself first, then outwards.
4. Tara Brach, for sleep
Need help sleeping? Tara Brach is here for you. Try this any time, except when operating heavy machinery. Or light machinery, for that matter.
3. Ajahn Brahm’s Body Sweep
Now we come to my favourites. Here’s 40 minutes with Ajahn Brahm, called a Body Sweep.
2. Loving Kindness with Ajahn Brahm
I love the style of this one. He has a way of making kindness sound like the most obvious thing in the world.
1. My favourite of the lot
And here’s one of my favourite meditations and reflections from Ajahn Brahm. If you only play one thing on this page, make it this.
One thing I’ve noticed about free meditations
Having pointed thousands of people at lists like this one, here’s the pattern I see over and over. People collect. They bookmark twenty tracks, play a different one each night, feel vaguely better, and never build anything.
The teachers above would all say the same thing: what changes you isn’t the perfect recording, it’s turning up regularly, ideally at roughly the same time, ideally with somebody expecting you.
So by all means enjoy these. But pick one, and play it again tomorrow.
Here’s one of mine to finish with, if you’d like to hear my style:
If you’d rather practise live with other people than press play on your own, that’s what I do every weekday morning at 7.30am UK time in the Daily Mindfulness Club. A fresh meditation every day, live or on demand, and your first 7 days are free. :)