How long should I meditate?

There’s no fixed answer to how long you should meditate.

The destination for a meditation practice is ultimately to be in a better space than when you started. That might mean it takes 40 mins or on some days it might only take 3 breaths. What I believe is the most important factor is CONSISTENCY. There will be more noticeable spill over effects of your meditation practice into your life when you have more consistency with it.

5 minutes or 50 becomes irrelevant when you consider that someone could be meditating for 5 minutes a day or save those 5 minutes up until the end of the week and sit for 35 on a Sunday but be completely distracted by sore knees or back at the 10 minute mark. It’s like not eating anything during the week so you can save up all your meals until the weekend. Crazy!

Meditation when practiced unjudgementally and consistenly brings a gentle background flavour to your life. At first imperceptible and then gradually over time it becomes more noticeable. Paradoxically, we don’t practice with this end in mind though. Letting go of any particular outcome will bring you to that outcome faster. Isn’t that annoying?! Sometimes all we want to do is put the pedal to the metal and get to where we want to be. This is our relationship to time and productivity and not being at peace with the mess of whatever our life contains at this point.

Meditation can take us precisely to this space of acceptance. Of accepting the mess of where we are and lessening the grip of desire that propels us forward, straight into suffering because we aren’t there yet. It also addresses the spin of the mind that we feel as anxiety. The incessant story telling and futurising that we do. It’s necessary sometimes but most people have a preoccupation with this mode of cognition.

All this means is it’s better to sit in meditation every day for a little bit than once a week for a long stint. The length of time for each session will depend on many things. Like how much time you have, if you get interrupted by the kids fighting, if you are able to get up early enough to fit in everything else and your inspiration or motivation to do it. The realities of life aren’t going anywhere, but the good news is that meditation, like a warm and loving grandparent, can hold it all. We just have to make the time.