How long to meditate?
Lucas Moura
How long should you meditate per day?
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There are many benefits of regular meditation from less stress to lower anxiety to better sleep. But how to meditate and for how long isn’t always clear. May 21 is World Meditation Day, and we asked Vishen Lakhiani, CEO of Mindvalley and a meditation expert with 20 years of experience, about how long people should meditate to get the most benefit from the practice.
“People think that the length of your meditation is what determines the quality of your meditation. [That’s] not true,” Lakhiani tells CNBC Make It. “The biggest benefits are going to happen in the first few minutes [of meditation].”
Vishen Lakhiani, Meditation Expert and CEO of Mindvalley
A longer meditation doesn’t always mean greater benefits, and meditating for too long can sometimes decrease the quality of your meditation. Often, people assume an hour is what they should aim for, for better quality meditations. But Lakhiani completely disagrees. Contrary to what we often hear, “I tell my students, do not meditate for an hour a day,” says Lakhiani. “Life is bigger than that.”
Instead, he recommends meditating for no more than 20 minutes, and sometimes less than five. “For most people, 15 to 20 minutes will give you just the changes that you need,” Lakhiani says. “You can take a one- to three-minute dip into peacefulness, and you can see remarkable results. The biggest benefits are going to happen in the first few minutes.”
“Don’t think that you need an hour in meditation,” he warns.
He suggests using the extra 40 minutes that you would have been meditating to do these activities:
- Most people are too busy to devote an hour to meditation, so Lakhiani encourages his students to practice active meditation throughout the day.
- “Active meditation is about turning problems into projects,” he says. “If you’re feeling a bit of anxiety or worry about a deliverable you need to do by the end of the week, and you are stuck, you might visualize yourself finishing the project, see yourself getting praise from the boss [and] see yourself so proud of your work.”
- This tactic is a form of active meditation that’s also known as creative visualization, and it’s something you can practice multiple times a day for less than five minutes.
- Other forms of active meditation can include practicing compassion towards others and thinking about the things you are grateful for.
Shorter meditations allow you to meditate several times in the same day, says Lakhiani. Meditate for “no more than 20 minutes, and you can stack these modalities.”
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What is the longest someone has meditated?
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Meditation played a very important role in the life and teachings of Swami Vivekananda. He was interested in meditation from his childhood. His master Ramakrishna found him a dhyana – siddha (expert in meditation). On 24 December 1892, Vivekananda reached Kanyakumari and meditated for three days on a large rock and took the resolution to dedicate his life to serve humanity. The event is known as the Kanyakumari resolve of 1892. He reportedly also meditated for a long time on the day of his death (4 July 1902).
Vivekananda is considered as the introducer of meditation to the Western countries. In his book Raja Yoga and lectures, he widely discussed meditation, its purpose and procedure. He described “meditation” as a bridge that connects the human soul to the God. He defined “meditation” as a state “when the mind has been trained to remain fixed on a certain internal or external location, there comes to it the power of flowing in an unbroken current, as it were, towards that point.”
Meditation, which gives an insight to the depth and breadth of the mystical traditions of India, was developed by Ancient Hindu Sages. He propagated it to the world through his lectures and practical lessons. He stressed the need to concentrate on the mind, which is a lamp that gives insight to every part of our soul.
Vivekananda defined meditation, first, as a process of self-appraisal of all thoughts to the mind. He then defined the next step as to “Assert what we really are — existence, knowledge and bliss — being, knowing, and loving,” which would result in “Unification of the subject and object.”
Vivekananda’s meditation is practiced under the two themes of “Meditation according to Yoga” which is considered a practical and mystical approach, and of “Meditation according to Vedanta” which means a philosophical and transcendental approach. Both themes have the same end objective of realizing illumination through realization of the “Supreme”.
Vivekananda was born on 12 January 1863 in Calcutta (now Kolkata). From his very childhood, he was deeply interested in meditation and used to meditate before the images of deities such as Lord Shiva, Lord Rama, and Sita. He was able to practice deep meditation at the age of eight.
In his childhood, when Narendra was playing meditation with his friend, suddenly a cobra appeared, frightening Narendra’s friends, who then fled. But Narendra was absorbed in meditation and did not notice the cobra nor hear his friends’ calls.
When Vivekananda (then Narendra Nath Dutta) met Ramakrishna in 1881, the latter found Vivekananda dhyana–siddha (expert in meditation).
Between 1881 and 1886, as an apprentice of Ramakrishna, he took meditation lessons from him, which made his expertise on meditation more firm. Narendra wanted to experience Nirvikalpa Samadhi (the highest stage of meditation) and so requested Ramakrishna to help him to attain that state. But Ramakrishna want.
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What is the golden rule of meditation?
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There are a lot of evergreen meditation tips. There are techniques and tricks you can learn along the way. But I’ve found that one lesson stands above the rest. After meditating for more than two decades, I’ve come to call it the Golden Rule of meditation.
The Golden Rule is simple. In essence, it tells us to never make a problem during meditation. And the reason I wanted to share this with you is because it’s a cornerstone of any thriving meditation practice.
So, why is this so important? There are a lot of reasons. In this episode we touch on just a few of them. My primary goal is to impress upon you the simple fact that if you take the Golden Rule to heart, it will save you trouble, reduce inner friction, and spare you from getting stuck in some perennial meditation pitfalls.
In essence, the Golden Rule is about hewing to an inner posture where nothing is ever a problem during meditation. No matter what happens or doesn’t happen, it’s not a problem.
It’s simple, but it’s hard. Often you can break this rule, and not even know it. Here are a few examples where it can be especially challenging but helpful to practice the Golden Rule.
Scenario one, you sit down to meditate when you’re really stressed out. You’ve got things going on at work, at home, or in your relationship and you’re stressed. So you’re sitting down in meditation to let go of that stress, calm your nerves, relax your body, and rest your mind.
But as you sit there meditating, you’re all over the place. Your mind is like a ping pong ball going back and forth on this problem and that issue and on it goes in an endless loop… In the end, you feel like you never really settle down, you never really relax, and you don’t feel much relief or release from your mind and your stress.
This is exactly when the Golden Rule is so important. In a moment like that, if you can be cool with all of it and not make a problem or feel like a failure then that’s a victory.
Here’s another scenario. We all have that hyper-critical voice in our head that’s just waiting for the opportunity to confirm our suspicions that we have failed in today’s meditation session. This is a moment to invoke the Golden Rule. When you do, that hyper critical voice doesn’t stand a chance. Why? Because you aren’t making a problem out of anything, that self-critical voice has no traction. It lives and thrives on problems.
However, during your meditation you’re asserting that there aren’t any problems. In the process, you short circuit an entire mechanism in your mind that leads many people to give up or feel guilty or feel stressed out.
And here’s another part of the golden rule. It’s a sneaky strategy for letting go. If you can let there be no problem at all, you end up letting go of a lot of the things that undermine your practice.
Here are some of the pesky questions that tend to send us down the rabbit hole:
- While meditating, you want to let all that go, because it focuses your attention on problems.
When you follow the Golden Rule, you s
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Is 30 minutes of meditation a day enough?
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With a record 2.5 million people signed off sick at present, the government is considering an initiative to allow GPs to refer patients to life coaches to help people get back to work. I’m not sure the government quite realise what they might unleash! I write from experience. Four years ago, after a stressful time at work, I signed up with Zen meditation teacher and life coach Nick Scaramanga, founder of Zen Skills. I joined an eight-week meditation course in Sussex and it revolutionised my life. Since that course, I have made huge life leaps, ended up leaving the stressful job, lived on a canal boat for a while and now have moved to the other end of the country, started a book festival and a new career.
For this week’s Big Happiness interview, I chatted to Nick about why meditation will not only make you healthier and happier, but also how it can transform your life:
I don’t know enough about their plans to comment. But what I do know is that when you go to see a doctor, you get 10 minutes, if you’re lucky, and that isn’t a lot of time. Coaching and meditation create space for people to notice what is really going on for them. It allows you to connect with another person but more importantly, connect with yourself. I practice and teach Zen meditation and I see how meditation will not only improve your life but also your health. You hear that life coaching improves your health anecdotally but there are hundreds of studies that show meditation will impact your health in positive ways.
Studies show that just 30 minutes of meditation a day will boost your health, empathy, joy, intelligence and creativity, as well as reduce your stress, anxiety and depression. It also helps us develop concentration, focus and a deeper awareness of how things really are in our lives; switching us from auto-pilot mode to being fully engaged creators of our own health, happiness and fulfilment.
When I first started meditating, I found it so hard. I became aware of all my dark thoughts and emotions and I just wanted to run away. Meditation is learning to sit and observe your thoughts and feelings versus engaging with them. I’m sure you still have dark thoughts and emotions, but you have simply learned that just as those thoughts and feeling arise, they drift away too. They come and they go. By meditating regularly, we learn that we don’t have to react or respond to every thought and emotion. It allows you to step back from the cacophony of noise in your head, and simply accept your thoughts and feelings, but not react to them.
If you really want to learn about meditation, it’s better to just to do it and experience it. I recommend that people set an intention to meditate for 100 days for 30 minutes a day. Journal after each session and see for yourself what happens – both to your health and your life.
When I committed to meditating for 100 days it helped me stop living in my head and start being more present and life became clearer. When we live in our heads, we’re often broo.
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How do beginners start meditating?
Find a quiet and comfortable place to sit where no one can disturb you.
Set a timer for the desired length of your meditation. One can start with 5 minutes.
Close your eyes and focus on your breath.
When your mind wanders, gently bring it back to the breath.
When the time goes off, slowly open your eyes.
What do I think when meditating?
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By nature, this aspect of awareness is free from opinion, belief, or judgment; it simply witnesses the mind as it is in the moment, whether there are many thoughts, few thoughts, or no thoughts at all. And because it is witnessing rather than being involved, it gives us the impression of having stepped back and zoomed out, shifting our perception of the mind. So back to the main point: when meditating, we are not engaged in thinking. That does not mean the mind will be empty—thoughts will still appear—but we are not looking to engage with these thoughts. We are training the mind to no longer chase every thought we like, and to no longer resist every thought we don’t like. Instead, we are learning to familiarize ourselves with the quality of awareness. Of course, even during meditation, the mind will sometimes wander and get distracted, but as long as we are sat with the intention to simply witness the mind as it is—recognizing when the mind has drifted, letting go of that thinking, and then resting our attention back on the original point of focus—then we can rightly call that meditation, not thinking.
Perhaps the easiest way to answer this question is through direct experience. How does it feel after a long day engaged in Small Mind, engaged in thinking? Or how does it feel to wake in the morning, when the thinking mind has been very active throughout the night? In contrast, how does it feel when you open your eyes after a meditation? Or how does it feel when you let go of thought and get lost in nature? The feeling between thinking and meditating is not even comparable.
Just to reiterate, and to be absolutely clear, it’s not that thinking is bad, or that Small Mind is any less valuable. It’s simply that when the mind is untrained, we tend to get lost in Small Mind and forget that Big Mind is here, with us all the time. And so we often become lost in thought, confused, distracted, or overwhelmed. But by practicing meditation—training in Big Mind—we reconnect with that quality of awareness, that feeling of space and clarity, and a renewed sense of perspective that fundamentally changes our experience of life.
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What are the basic rules of meditation?
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When you first decide to explore meditation, the practice can seem overwhelming. The dozens of meditation styles can make the basic steps sound far more complicated than they actually are. If you’re new, step back from all of the details and embrace these ten rules. They’ll guide the basic foundation for your meditations and answer the common questions many people have when just starting out.
Sitting cross-legged in tight jeans, dress pants, or a short skirt doesn’t make you want to stay put for very long. In meditation, you’re aiming to focus your mind and remove distractions. But when you’re too cold, overdressed, or sitting on rocky terrain, your comfort level can be more distracting than the punk band rehearsing next door. Wear loose-fitting clothing, sit on a pillow or cushion, and find a spot where the temperature is just right.
That’s not to say that you need a shot of espresso before your meditations, but making sure you are rested enough so you won’t fall asleep is important for your meditation to be effective. Your posture is important here, too. If you’re sitting upright, you’re more likely to remain attentive and alert. If sitting upright is not comfortable for you, refer to rule #1 and choose any body position that allows you to be comfortable.
When I first started meditating, I thought that if I couldn’t sit for 30 minutes (or if I didn’t have that kind of time to dedicate,) I might as well not meditate. Guess what happened? Not much for me in the meditation department. 30 minutes of meditation intimidated me.
Once I gave myself permission to meditate for just five minutes, it propelled me into a more steady practice. I naturally wanted to increase my time after that, and soon reached my original 30-minute practice without it feeling like a chore. The key here is to find a schedule that works for you—however long or short it is—and get consistent. You can begin to enjoy the benefits with even a two-minute meditation.
You don’t have to have a meditation space with Buddha paintings and prayer candles to meditate. All you need is a quiet corner of a room (or yard, or park…) where you can sit comfortably without distraction. And if you are met with noise or interruption, consider it an opportunity to practice with more willpower and concentration, inviting you to dive further into your meditation practice. If you can meditate in the midst of distraction, you’re a pro.
This is probably the most commonly misunderstood myth for meditation. The goal is not to clear your mind—that would be impossible, as the human mind naturally latches onto things. Calming, quieting, relaxing, and focusing the mind are all beautiful benefits that a meditation practice can bring. But wiping it clear completely? Good luck.
This really should be considered part of rule #4, but it’s so important and such a common mistake, that I’m turning into its own rule. Before you slip into your meditation, turn your phone off, put it on airplane mode, or silence it (no vibrate mode).
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