How to Create Guided Meditations Using AIM Lab

Hi there! In this blog post, I'll guide you through how to create personalized guided meditations by combining AI chatbots with some custom tools offered by AIM Lab. This article is practical and hands-on, but if you'd like some background first, you might enjoy reading my other posts: Welcome to AIM Lab: Who, What and Why. Now, let’s dive straight in!

The Basic Method

The basic method is quite simple: first, you'll use an AI chatbot, such as ChatGPT, to creatively generate a unique meditation script. Then, you just copy that script into our Meditation Composer, et voilà! You'll instantly have your very own, customized guided meditation ready to play, download, or share however you like.

In practice, though, there’s often a third, optional step: gathering inspiration. While chatbots have impressive knowledge about meditation, they sometimes lack specific details, especially when it comes to less common meditation styles. So, it can help a lot to provide the chatbot with additional material for inspiration, such as books, talks, or existing meditation scripts.

To quickly recap, the basic method involves:

1. gathering sources of inspiration (optional)
2. generating and refining your script with a chatbot
3. synthesizing it with the Meditation Composer

Generating a Script with ChatGPT

Let's go through a simple example. First, open ChatGPT and start with a straightforward prompt like:

It really can be that easy! Here is an example of a typical response:

However, a quick heads-up: sometimes ChatGPT suggests it can also generate sounds or music for your meditation. Unfortunately, that’s an hallucination. ChatGPT can’t do this (yet!), and that's why we built a separate tool: the Meditation Composer.

Adding Pauses to Your Meditation Script

You can keep refining your script with the chatbot as much as you like, but one important detail to check is whether your meditation script has pause markers. If there are none, you can simply ask ChatGPT something like:

The Meditation Composer is pretty clever, so don't stress too much about exact formatting: it usually figures it out just fine. However, right now it supports precise pauses only. If your script says something vague like "Pause for one or two minutes" the composer will pick a specific length for you. I’m considering making pauses more flexible, but for now, it picks a fixed duration.

Using the Meditation Composer

With your script ready, copy and paste it into the Meditation Composer. You'll see an area where you can paste the text and choose a voice. Currently, there are only two voices available, but I'm planning to expand this soon, perhaps even letting you pick voices from services like ElevenLabs. You can preview the voices to see which one you like best.

The Meditation Composer uses AI to process your script, adding structure to ensure pauses, text, and headings are correctly interpreted by the synthesizer. However, sometimes it makes mistakes. That's why the second step is important: reviewing the interpreted version. Check that the text, pauses, and headings look right. If something needs changing, right now, the only way to edit it is by going back to your original script, editing it there, and resubmitting it. I know this isn't ideal, and I'm considering more flexible editing options in the future.

If everything looks good, you can move forward to synthesize your meditation. This might take from one to a few minutes, depending on the meditation length and server load. Be patient, wait for it to finish, and once done, you’ll have a fully synthesized meditation.

The Meditation Player

When the synthesis finishes, you’ll be offered the chance to play your meditation right away. Here is how it looks like for our example:

The meditation player is quite interesting because, unlike most players in meditation apps, it shows your meditation script clearly, including headings and pauses. You can even tap or click on different parts of the script to jump ahead, skip parts you don't like, or revisit sections easily.

Of course, the player includes the usual features like play, pause, forward, backward, and a progress bar to jump around freely. You can also download your meditation as an MP3 file directly from here.

Sharing your meditation is also straightforward: just click the share button to copy the URL, which you can then send to anyone.

If something doesn't look right or you simply don't want a meditation online anymore, you can easily delete it right from the meditation player.

You can also view all the meditations you've created in one place, on the Meditation Composer main page, where you can easily open or delete them.

Known Issues and Glitches

It’s important to remember that AIM Lab is still experimental, and glitches are part of the journey. Here are some common issues:

First, the length of generated meditations isn't always precise. If you ask for a 10-minute meditation, it might actually be anywhere from 6 to 12 minutes. I’m working on improving accuracy, possibly allowing fine-tuning after generation, but right now, keep expectations flexible.

Second, sometimes pauses might be too short, too long, or simply awkward. Like being instructed to inhale and then wait 15 seconds, which isn’t practical. Sometimes instructions for breathing exercises move forward without allowing enough time to actually do the exercise. Watch out for these small glitches.

Lastly, remember chatbots occasionally hallucinate or confidently give incorrect guidance. While this can sometimes be funny, it could also be confusing or misleading. Always carefully review your script for accuracy and sanity before synthesizing.

Using Sources of Inspiration

One last tip: meditations become richer and more interesting if you provide your chatbot with additional sources of inspiration. These could include PDFs of books, meditation scripts, transcripts of talks, or even pictures. Chatbots like ChatGPT now allow you to upload these materials directly. Then, you can discuss with the chatbot how to creatively integrate that content into your meditation.

For more detailed examples and ideas on using inspiration sources, checkout the article I wrote about creative ways to generate meditations.

Final Recap

So, to quickly recap: creating a guided meditation using AIM Lab involves gathering inspiration (optional), generating and refining scripts with a chatbot, and then synthesizing them with the meditation composer.

That’s all for now! I hope you find this process enjoyable and insightful.

AIM Lab is a community-driven project, so please share your feedback. It's always welcome.

Enjoy your creative exploration!