How To Create a Daily Meditation Practice
I have a confession to make. Although I've been doing yoga since I was five (thanks to my early years in India, where I learned it at school), I didn't start meditating until about ten years ago. And even then, creating a daily practice has been a challenge for me.
Can you blame me? Two of the most researched types of meditation, mindfulness and what's called "transcendental meditation" both ask you to devote 40-50 minutes to practice, each day.
I know, I also stopped breathing when I heard that. It's not that I don't have 50 minutes, it's that when I do, the last thing I want to do with my free time is meditate.
For many good reasons, I also find it very hard to sit still and close my eyes.
Both of these are completely valid reasons not to meditate. What's important is that I don't stop there, though, because the benefits of meditation are just too good not to figure out a way to create a daily practice.
That's where the idea of a Minimum Viable Practice came in, based on the Lean Start-Up's idea of a Minimum Viable Product. What if I could make my meditation practice just as long as neuroscience says it needs to be, and not a moment longer?
Wouldn't that help me go from zero to one, the hardest part of starting any new habit? Once I had a daily practice, I could build from there.
My Minimum Viable Practice for meditation turns out to be three minutes. I've tested this with over two thousand students, face-to-face, of different ages, from all over the world.
Three minutes is the Minimum Viable Practice because everyone has three minutes a day to meditate. Everyone. New mothers, CEOs who live in business class, my friends on humanitarian assignment in Mozambique. In all my teaching, I have found this to be true.
Five minutes is just too long for a beginner to stay focused and want to commit to a daily practice. Any shorter than three minutes, and your mind doesn't have time to settle into the practice and you may not see any benefit.
When I told this to my friend, a long-time Zen master, he was shocked speechless, but the data supports me. That said, in Zen the teachers are allowed to hit their students with sticks, so to each their own...
If you'd like to give daily meditations a try, I created 3 Minute Mindfulness, an 8-week online course for beginning meditators who want to create a daily practice. It’s trauma-informed, which means it’s accessible for people with anxiety, trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). It’s also free.
If you decide to join, you can expect to see:
Improved concentration, focus and memory;
Reduced anxiety and irritability;
More mental and physical stamina;
A stronger immune system.
Three Minute Mindfulness is based on an evidence-based framework and my years of teaching aid workers, activists, social entrepreneurs and corporate leaders how to resource themselves with the benefits of meditation.
Whatever path of meditation you chose, here's to prioritizing a daily practice.
*
Sign up here for updates and workshop invitations I only share with my community.
Sharing is caring, so if you know someone who might like to read this, please send it to them!