***Starting a Regular Meditation Practice

Most all meditation traditions suggest practicing meditation daily.

Regardless of whether you are doing a mindfulness practice or yogic meditation, a Buddhist meditation or relaxation practice, or even listening to a guided meditatio
CD, daily practice is usually recommended by most meditation teachers.

My first formal meditation practice was in the Kriya Yoga tradition. It was in 1972 and I was ten years old. I was instructed to meditate for thirty minutes, twice daily, with an additional two hours each weekend. When I began practicing Buddhist meditation, it was suggested that I do so two hours a day, every day. If I wanted to attend an advanced meditation course, I wouldn’t be able to do so until I had been practicing a minimum of two hours a day every single day for at least six months.

Transcendental Meditation® instructors also tell their students to practice daily, recommending twenty minute sessions each morning and evening.

Other teachers strongly believe that when you meditate is very important and suggest doing your daily prayer or meditation at a specific time, like sunrise and sunset.

So, let’s be realistic about this, shall we?

Do you see an extra 40 minutes - or even half that - 20 minutes - in your daily life?

Sure, some meditation teachers will tell you that you will find that extra time by meditating.

Does that sound like it will work for your lifestyle? You could give it a try and see, but after asking numerous meditators what the biggest obstacles to practice are, the first answer I usually hear is that it is hard to make enough time for daily meditation.

Here is a story about that you might find interesting.

I struggled for 30 years to have a daily meditation practice. Finally, I came to see that forcing myself to have a daily mediation practice was causing me a lot of stress, and this tension was far exceeding any stress relief or spiritual growth I got from doing the meditation itself.

Ultimately, I gave up on the idea of meditating every day. What I found once I did so was that I began meditating spontaneously every now and again, at times when I was already feeling open to the idea. During moments when I was already peaceful and relaxed. When I just happened to have a spare minute or five when I didn't have anything in particular to do.

Like, during the commercials when I was up late watching TV. Or when I was stopped at a traffic light in my car. Or during times when I was waiting on my wife to finish some shopping.

After several years of meditating this way, I happened to think that maybe I ought to try my old meditation technique, the one I used to do every day. I walked to my meditation room and got into position on my cushion. Just before I started, the thought crossed my mind, "I imagine this won't be much good, because everyone knows that if you fail to practice daily, you can't go to the deeper levels of meditation." But I thought I would just try it and see what happened.

I barely noticed the time passing for the next 60 minutes, because I was having one of the most profound and deepest meditations I'd ever had. And I'm pretty sure it wasn't because of that particular technique I was using. It happened because I’d given up thinking that I had to practice meditation every single day to improve myself or fix something about myself. Free of all that pressure, I found that meditating was delightfully profound.

I do appreciate how valuable daily meditation practice can be, and, once in a while, I take up daily meditating myself for a week or two. But my suggestion is that if you find yourself thinking you need meditate, notice whether or not you actually want to meditate because you find it nurturing or because it you think you need to for self-improvement. If you discover it’s the latter, you may want to explore a different way. I’m always happy to share what I’ve discovered about that.