When startinga meditation practice, one of the biggest questions that come to mind isregarding duration. Meditation is totally an individual journey and it mighttake different durations for everybody to find the desired level of focus or tostart the correct process for themselves.
When should I practice meditation?
This is yourown life and it totally depends on your priorities. If you wish, you may wakeup 10 minutes earlier then your routine and you can meditate before startingyour day or you may create this time for yourself before going to bed. Morningmeditation generally helps you to have a fresher and calmer day and also youcan apply the techniques that you learn during your morning meditationthroughout the day.
Theimportant thing with meditation is to start in a calm and quiet environmentaway from strong stimulants such as TV, phone or any device, which mightinterrupt you, and make necessary preparations for a comfortable seatedposition.
When themind is in chaos, the body is automatically contracted. Whenever you are goingthrough mentally and emotionally heavy period, just give a small break andstart observing the body. When you get stuck in traffic, you might find yourabdomen contracted; when you’re trying to catch a deadline in front of the computerin the office, you might find your shoulders tightened or during a tough andstressful conversation you might notice that you clench your teeth. Andrelaxing and releasing these parts of the body will impact your state ofemotions and hormones and this will ease the whole situation for you.
For how long should I meditate?
With most ofus the thought of sparing time for something every day regularly, even if it’sjust 10 minutes, creates a resistance in the first place. Generally speaking,new practitioners of meditation start with 5 to 15 minutes and then they extendthe time however long they would like to. So 10 minutes every day is quiteideal for a start. You may also think like this: During the day for how manyunnecessary actions, unwilling conversations, meetings, activities do you sparetime only because you have to, only out of courtesy or because of your habits?How long do you stare at the TV? Or how many minutes do you spend on socialmedia? How many minutes of your time do you spend on the phone onlychitchatting or how long time do you lose in a meeting that you don’t reallywould like to do? While going through all of these, please don’t judge orcriticize yourself; just see them as opportunities to open up some space for anew experience. I’m sure that you’ll spare that 10-minute of your time gladlywhen you have the intention to see through yourself honestly, with theintention to achieve something only for yourself.
