In this post, I share my initial disappointment and eventual appreciation of my experience with an Interactive Guided Meditation course from Jack Kornfield.
In April 2025, I finished an online Masterclass in Interactive Guided Meditation led by Jack Kornfield. Initially, I was disappointed. I misunderstood the nature of the “cohort” system for this course. Despite that, I was fascinated and, at times, moved by the new tools and the deeper dives into some of the techniques I learned.
Overview of the Meditation Course
The course was divided into four long sessions, about two hours each. Since it is online, you can take it at your own pace, stop to take notes, etc.
The class focused on:
- working with symbolic images and language (keys, walking sticks, healing palaces, etc.),
- helping folks visualize or “know” the messages they were receiving,
- personalizing the meditation based on what the person you are guiding shares,
- and working with meditations exploring a past life.
The course’s content really called to me. It provided a lot to think about and be inspired by.
My Misunderstanding
I mistakenly thought, when I read about the “see one, do one, teach one” approach and that there was a cohort, that the course would pair us with someone to practice with. That wasn’t the case. We watched Jack lead these experiences on the video. We also heard the feedback of the meditation teachers who were attending live when this series was recorded. I was disappointed not to have someone to practice with.
Some Initial Take-Aways
Despite the initial disappointment about the experience, I learned a lot from seeing Jack Kornfield lead these sessions on interactive guided meditation. I enjoyed how he talked through how he led the trainings, too. It was also very helpful to hear folks share their experiences being led or leading the guided meditations.
I have been working these past few years trying to hear and trust my intuition. It has taken time since I’ve spend decades learning how to be rational, linear, methodical, and philosophical. There are some great advantages to the latter, and I’m thankful I have those skills. But, there are other way of deep knowing.
I’ve found that working with symbolic images or guided imagery can unlock deeper knowing and more bravery to explore this side of understanding. Throughout the class, when Jack said “You can know,” I felt like he was directly reassuring me along this path.
You can know.
Jack Kornfield
My Future with Interactive Guided Meditation
I’m definitely inspired to work more with symbolic language and creating meditation prompts that allow people to reach into their own psyches or to see what bubbles up from their intuition. I started that work before, so this feels like a nice extension of it.
As for the smaller, one-on-one interactive guided meditations, I need to practice and explore this way of leading meditations before I have any thoughts of possibly offering such a thing. As a teacher in Higher Ed long before I became a meditation teacher, the idea of differentiation and customization is something I’ve long worked with. I’m excited to learn how to transfer these skills into my meditation offerings in such a personalized way.
The meditations and observations motivated lots of notes and thinking. I’m looking forward to what these experience inspire in me moving forward. I’m glad I took the course!
Other Meditation Teacher Trainings
I’ve written about some of my previous meditation teacher trainings on the blog. If you’re interested, you can read more here.
If your interested in learning more about the class described in this post, you can find it on Jack Kornfield’s website at Masterclass on Interactive Guided Meditation.