What’s Your Goal?
I recommend short practices for all beginners. Short meaning 2-5 minutes per practice. And the inevitable question is, is that effective? Should I practice longer?
The real question here is how long should I practice in order to get the best results?
My answer is, as always, it depends. As soon as you know why you’re practicing, what result you want, then you can answer that question yourself. The tricky bit is getting clear about why you’re practicing…
If You’re New to Practicing
Are you wanting to feel more peaceful? Then you’re going to want to practice long enough each sitting to see changes in your life overtime. That would be super tricky to figure out, until you’ve done it long enough to know.
In these kinds of cases, when you don’t know (yet) how long you need to sit to achieve your results, I recommend that you decide to practice an amount of time that fits super easily into your schedule. If you feel that it’s easy to fit in 5 minutes of practice a day, you will feel more peaceful already with your 5 minutes than if you try to cram in 20 (feeling rushed and stressed the whole time.)
Have You Been Practicing for Awhile?
On the other hand, if you’re wanting to achieve inner peace and you’ve been practicing long enough that you can reach that state DURING your practice, then simply choose an amount of time long enough that you can regularly reach that state. If you’re generally able to reach that state in 5 minutes, you could practice for 7, knowing that touching it for a few minutes every day will carry it into the rest of your life.
Remember that 7 minutes may be a good average amount of time, and that some days you may need more or less practice to get there. If you have a flexible schedule, feel free to change it up. On the other hand, you can sit for 7 minutes every day knowing that most of the time you will achieve your desired result.
Why All of That Might Be Wrong
I can think of about a million reasons, why the above two things are are a bad idea… For the first one, you could argue that everyone should sit for at least 20 minutes because that is the amount of time it takes for your average person to calm their mind. (Are you average? Me, neither.)
This I would argue with because, most of us will not start a new thing if it is too much of a time commitment. Plus, it’s extremely boring and challenging in the beginning and I prefer you to go slow, take it easy, enjoy what you’re doing and build into a longer practice (if you want to) knowing what you’re doing and armed with lots of experience about what works for you and what doesn’t.
Longer is only better if you’re really into it, and ready for it.
For the second, you could argue that if we’re hanging on to our expectations while we practice we’re not actually practicing mindfulness. We’re not observing what’s happening with non-attachment because we’re attached to our expectations. If we sit with, “I want to reach a state of peace during this practice, and I’m not going to stop until I get there,” that’s a lot of expectation to take into our practice.
This I agree with. And I also think that I’m able to notice if I’m able to reach the meditative state I’m going for or not. And when I’m doing well, I’m able to let the attachment go and just notice, “I’m here.” or not.
I have theoretical issues with this. And in practice, I do it all the time.
I could keep going…
Stick to the Shallow End at the Beginning
In the end, I think that if you’re new, shorter is definitely better. Get good at the mechanics before diving into the deep end. If you’re fairly experienced, I think it’s up for debate how to measure what’s best for you. I used to stick to a set amount of time for a slew of reasons. These days, I’m going for sitting in the Witness state for a few minutes.
There are traditions which have really strong opinions on this. Some of them are conflicting, and I’m sure they’re all correct.
I would love to know your experience! Feel free to share.
Enjoy!