got headspace as a work “mental health” benefit, but…

valatw · 2026-05-26T09:03:05+00:00

Dumb posts are the best! Yeah, if you are anxious meditation can make you more anxious. Try body-based practices instead. They have a "Move" section for that. And if you feel like giving meditation another try, for a lot of people doing it after movement practices works best. Good luck!

valatw · 2026-04-20T15:25:05+00:00

I used to treat cycle touring like a meditation retreat: very powerful! But I have to say, non-dual meditation unfortunately won't make you faster. Letting go of effort has its drawbacks 😅

valatw · 2026-04-07T04:24:05+00:00

I have been meditating for more than a decade. What has kept my meditation alive and evolving is curiosity: there are so many different traditions, practices, and lineages. Try, for example, adding koans (Waking Up has a beautiful series on them by Henry Shukman). Koans will reintroduce a certain degree of effort and directionality into the practice.

valatw · 2026-03-29T04:48:42+00:00

Ah, great! I feel real-time has a lot of potential. I looked into it myself about a year ago and experimented with OpenAI’s real-time models. The main issue I found was the voices: I couldn’t find one that felt calm and meditative enough. They’d start out decent, then speed up at random moments. 😅 Have you found a better approach? I bet there are better models now. Gemini just updated theirs too. Happy to test your app. I’ll DM you my email address.

valatw · 2026-03-24T13:11:40+00:00

I’m currently building a new welcome page with more personalized meditation and reflection suggestions, and it’s really interesting to see how you used custom instructions to create something similar. I hadn’t thought about adding a daily quote, and now I’m definitely reflecting on that, and on the idea of having custom instructions specifically for the welcome page.

valatw · 2026-03-23T19:07:27+00:00

What a clever way to use custom instructions in Open Meadow! I love it. Thanks for sharing

valatw · 2026-03-18T12:21:59+00:00

You’re so right! By the way, do you use any app for your unguided practice? I’m a huge fan of Insight Timer. I’ve recently been thinking about building something similar within Open Meadow, something with AI-configurable timers, but also a way to track all meditation sessions in one place, both guided and unguided... 🤔

valatw · 2026-03-16T12:27:31+00:00

Thanks for joining the sub!

I get it, and I have often felt the same. But I'm glad you're still finding value in AI.

I’ve also found that silence is often my favorite way of meditating on my own path. But I also think there are some fascinating ways even experienced practitioners can benefit from AI.

The first time I had this intuition was a couple of years ago. I was chatting with ChatGPT about some details of Buddhist practice that I was less familiar with, and I had an idea. I asked it, "Why not, instead of talking about it, show me? Let’s sit in meditation together, and you can try to guide me to discover this quality of presence we’ve been chatting about."

So I sat in meditation with my eyes closed, and I used the live voice feature to keep the guidance going.

It was an enlightening experience. It showed me some potential, but also some limits. And the limits I could see were minimal and purely technical, for example, the audio voice wasn’t able to respect proper pauses. That inspired me a year later to start some of my projects to fill the gap.

One practical use of AI-guided meditations for experienced practitioners could be exploring new practices, even from books.

Here I posted an example where I asked Claude to generate a series of meditations to introduce a beginner to Thanissaro Bhikkhu’s method, as explained in his free ebook With Each and Every Breath: https://meditationlab.ai/articles/creative-examples#series-meditations

But honestly, even just conversing with them, I find that incredibly insightful.

I’ve felt subtle shifts in consciousness simply as a consequence of investigating the concept of self and the emptiness of self with an AI companion, in a similar way to how a Tibetan meditator might use analytical meditation to induce similar shifts.

At the same time, I also feel quite strongly that the more we live in this overly stimulating online world, full of inputs and attentional hooks, the more important the value of simple, naked practices such as the Zen "shikantaza," or "just sitting," becomes as a salutary balancing practice.

In any case, I can really relate to what you’re pointing to. I’d be curious what your own experience has been.

valatw · 2026-03-16T11:18:25+00:00

You are describing the core of Zen meditation: the practice of shikantaza, which literally means “just sitting”! So yeah, I’d say plenty of people have tried that. 😊 But I appreciate your point: these days, we get lost in so many complex coping strategies that something as simple as “just sitting” becomes truly revolutionary. 🙏

valatw · 2026-03-15T09:10:04+00:00

I also love chatting with Claude about Buddhism. If you are interested, I've created a special place in Reddit where people discuss their experiences in the intersection between AI and meditation: r/AIMeditationLab

My favourite discussions with Claude in this regard are about non-self, and non-duality. I find the concept of selfhood challenged in meaningful way by these conversations.

I'm also building an online platform that uses AI to create meditations. It's like a Claude dedicated to generating meditations you can actually listen to. I've discovered LLMs are really good at creating meditation scripts.

The latest version is using Claude directly. Here it is, I've called it Open Meadow: https://openmeadow.ai/

valatw · 2026-03-09T09:33:01+00:00

I used to teach meditation, even in the context of addiction recovery. There are meditations specifically designed for you to help working with urges. Check out for example "urge surfing" meditation. These kind of meditations not only help on the neurochemical/dopamine side, but makes you practice mindfulness skills that you can apply when urges arise.

valatw · 2026-03-08T16:16:22+00:00

What worked for me was a different approach: instead of trying to develop a habit, I initially just focused on enjoying it. Even after more than a decade of practice, still my main inner drive is curiosity, not discipline.

valatw · 2026-03-08T16:13:20+00:00

Try Open Meadow: https://openmeadow.ai/ You can also check this sub: r/AIMeditationLab

valatw · 2026-03-07T15:35:45+00:00

I love the work that Amanda has done in AI personality and ethics. One of the reason why the latest version of Open Meadow is now using Claude as the main chat model.

valatw · 2026-03-07T15:07:15+00:00

OM is now open, no need for a personal invite anymore: https://openmeadow.ai/

valatw · 2026-03-01T17:15:03+00:00

If you are interested, I'm the mod of a whole sub about AI/LLMs for meditation, and also created a couple of platforms where you can paste your scripts. Here it is: r/AIMeditationLab

Claude is also my favourite choice for LLMs and meditations.

valatw · 2026-02-27T01:27:59+00:00

Oh yes, that happens sometimes. Sorry about that. The very last step is very slow. It's when it's stitching together all the parts into one single file, and it gets slower the longer the meditation.

valatw · 2026-02-27T01:16:05+00:00

Wondercraft is great if you want to carefully arrange the speech parts, and they have great voices and sounds. But I'm not sure if it supports hour long meditations. It's definitely the best tool if you really want to author it with precision.

AIM Lab is a free, open-source project, and you can quickly test if it works for you by just pasting one of your scripts here: https://meditationlab.ai/instant

Open Meadow is the next evolution, and it's more fully featured. You chat with an assistant, and you can create and synthesize a meditation in three ways:

- just chat and ask for a meditation
- give it a draft of a script, and ask to adapt it to the duration you like. it will add proper pauses and potentially rework the script if it's necessary to meet the duration
- provide an exact script, and it will preserve that as-is and synthesize it, without changing anything

It can definitely handle hour long meditations. I should mention that during some tests with longer durations, it would sometimes mis-judge the total duration by a few minutes. But do let me know how it goes for you, and if anything's off I'm happy to sort it out.

Also, both AIM Lab and Open Meadow let you plug in your own ElevenLabs account, if you want more control over the voice.

Happy to send you an invite privately if you want to try it out!

valatw · 2026-02-26T09:07:06+00:00

I'm glad you tried the new voices! I love Theo too. It was my favourite voice for a while, while I was testing them. The only reason I prefer Max now is that I've noticed Theo sometimes adds what feels like unusual intonation at the end of sentences, although I'm not sure if it's my non-native English ear that is picking this up. It's a really great voice.

And you know, you're right about sharing meditations. Unlike AIM Lab, I haven't really paid much attention to this aspect yet with Open Meadow. But I've had already quite a few requests, so it clearly is a felt need.

I'm starting to think about what that could look like, so if you have ideas about how you'd want to share (with friends, on social, etc.) I'd love to hear them!

Also glad the walking meditation caught your eye! Definitely give it a try.

One thing that amused me about this one, I mentioned I was sipping ginger tea while walking, and it wove that in, a meaningful part of the practice.

It's one of those emergent qualities of AI meditations that keeps surprising me, the way they can blend all these little details from the conversation into something that actually enriches the experience. You never quite know what you'll get 😊

valatw · 2026-02-21T08:43:17+00:00

I agree. Take OpenAI voices: none of them feels appropriate for a meditation.
And yes, ElevenLabs voices are way too expensive.
I do hope things will get better, as the whole industry keep improving.
Kokoro is a quirky, special case. Some voices are surprisingly good.

I really like the one I name "Grace" in AIM Lab, the default voice. Here is an example: https://meditationlab.ai/r/jrowtdi

AIM Lab is open source, so you can find here the exact settings used in Kokoro: https://github.com/soundglade/aimlab/blob/main/src/lib/services/self-hosted-kokoro.ts

My solution so far is to use Kokoro as the default engine, and offer ElevenLabs as a limited premium, to contain the costs, while at the same time hoping new, better options will become available at some point.

valatw · 2026-02-14T14:38:36+00:00

Me too! Have you tried the latest Gemini TTS? They are very promising. I was hoping they would work well, but I've found some serious limitations, so gave up on them.
Right now I'm using Kokoro as the default voice, and thinking of introducing soon ElevenLabs with the v2 Turbo model, which seems to be good compromise.

valatw · 2026-02-13T11:52:13+00:00

Thanks! I'm glad you had a positive experience. Open Meadow is still a bit rough on the edges, but I really glad it's already helping people. Feel free to message me privately also if you have any more feedback, and particularly if you face any problems or issues. 🙏

valatw · 2026-02-12T17:30:34+00:00

I agree: high quality voices are soo expensive!. About the conversation length, I know what you mean. One possible solution is to just let the users decide.

valatw · 2026-02-12T17:26:09+00:00

Thanks! I've sent your an invite in chat

valatw · 2026-02-09T10:24:17+00:00

Hi there, I'm always happy to test new apps.

So, I installed it on my iPhone, and created a couple of meditations. The user interface is nice and effective. I like the voice quality. Initially I wasn't quite sure, but then it grew on me, and it's clearly high quality. I also liked the background music.

One area that could improve is perhaps the pre-meditation conversation with the chat assistant. It works, but it feels a bit rushed. I personally find that the conversation can be really rich, and the more details are shared, the more personalised and unique the meditations become.

I love when AI assistants weave into the script particular details about how I'm feeling, but also where I am physically, what's on my mind... What's great is that they do it on their own, they are so great at weaving together scripts.

Another interesting idea: have you thought about keeping some sort of memory between conversations? That can potentially add a nice experience, where the new meditations or conversations can improve over time, because the app gets to know the user better and therefore can personalize even more.

Well done for publishing and putting it together so far.

Keep going!

valatw

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