Do You Need a Teacher to Learn How to Meditate?

There's no shortage of opportunities for learning practices called "meditation." You can pick one up during yoga class, on YouTube, here on The Huffington Post or at the grocery store -- seriously, last week a guided meditation was going on ("All Shoppers Invited!") in the cafe of my local market.

In Western culture, meditation has reached a new height of respectability, partly because scientific research has shown that an effective meditation technique can yield transformative, lifesaving benefits.

Many of my meditation students say they've tried meditating before on their own. When I ask what kind of meditation, they sometimes say, "Oh, just something I made up from things I've read." The accessibility of so many practices suggests that learning meditation doesn't require an expert teacher. (MORE)

Source: Huffington Post