What are good meditation lengths?

[thelerner]

Earlier this year I was trying for long daily meditations of 90 minutes and ended up blowing them off entirely. Now I'm doing 2 sessions of 20 minutes of emptiness meditation each day. Its easier to do consistently but I wonder if I'm losing benefits by keeping it so short.

 

What are good lengths? Traditionally are there any minimums or 'daily requirements'for meditators to shoot for?

 

Thanks

Michael

[joeblast]

Quantity is one thing, but quality is another...

[thelerner]

For me quality differs widely even in the same session. The first few minutes are settling down, itching, shifting. The next few are plagued with goals of what I want or am trying to do, then random thoughts, then the body sleeps, Quietude, waves of thoughts, back to quiet, 20 minutes are up.

[gendao]

Quantity is one thing, but quality is another...

Yet, I think they are related. As in, quantity is symptomatic of quality.

 

IOW, the deeper you are going into meditation, the longer you can easily meditate...and the faster the time seems to fly by..

 

Whereas if the quality of your meditation is low (stuck in your monkey mind chasing the running horse of intellect), then time will pass by excruciatingly slowly..

 

Like when I first started trying several years ago...just 10 minutes felt like a torturous eternity!!

 

But now 45 minutes pass by quite comfortably feeling like a medium length of time.

Edited March 2, 2011 by vortex

[Friend]

Edited November 16, 2011 by Friend

[InfinityTruth]

Better to be consistent than to bulk it. The reason is because calming your mind daily lowers your alpha waves to theta? Something like that.

 

I started doing 30 minutes daily and I recently upped it to 45 minutes. I've been at 45 now for at least 2 weeks (probably more) but I've hit it consistently only missing like 3 days the whole period. Although I have on more then one occasion stopped before the 45 minutes was up. I don't want to up anymore because I know I wouldn't do well if it were any higher. I'm right at my limit.

 

Find your limit that you feel you can do daily. There is no wrong meditation length. Just be consistent. If you miss a day just be easy with yourself and restart the next day. Keep it flowing smooth. If you think 20 minutes is too low up it to 30. Or if you really want to try for 90 minutes cut it into two sessions or even more sessions.

[joeblast]

Yet, I think they are related. As in, quantity is symptomatic of quality.

 

IOW, the deeper you are going into meditation, the longer you can easily meditate...and the faster the time seems to fly by..

 

Whereas if the quality of your meditation is low (stuck in your monkey mind chasing the running horse of intellect), then time will pass by excruciatingly slowly..

 

Like when I first started trying several years ago...just 10 minutes felt like a torurous eternity!!

 

But now 45 minutes pass by quite comfortably feeling like a medium length of time.

yar! *thumbsup*

[mustardseed]

Earlier this year I was trying for long daily meditations of 90 minutes and ended up blowing them off entirely. Now I'm doing 2 sessions of 20 minutes of emptiness meditation each day. Its easier to do consistently but I wonder if I'm losing benefits by keeping it so short.

 

What are good lengths? Traditionally are there any minimums or 'daily requirements'for meditators to shoot for?

 

Thanks

Michael

 

Well. . .I find it helpful to do multiple meditations throughout the day (3 the most), at the same time every day I average about 30 mins each. I like the earlier post about quality, in any case its not something you can force anyway. Gotta make do with what you got! : D

[bamboo]

At the beginning of the path, little and often is best. Better to sit 20 minutes three times a day, than one block of an hour. A friend of mine in China used to sit four hours at a stretch, but he told me somewhere in the middle he used to get real drowsey.

 

In the Lamrim Chenmo [stages of the path to enlightenment] by Lama Tsongkapa it says regarding the length of the meditation session, 'You have to do numerous short sessions. Some say that if you meditate in brief sessions and stop when it's going well, you will still be eager to meditate at the end of each session, while if the session is long, you will become weary. Others explain that if the session is long, it is easy to fall under the sway of oblivion and scattering, so it is hard to develop flawless concentration.'

 

Kamalasila bodhisattva recommends 24 minutes as a good length for short sessions.

Edited March 2, 2011 by bamboo

[NeiChuan]

Quantity is one thing, but quality is another...

 

Found it to be true. I use to meditate one hour a day. now roughly meditate 10 to 30 minutes twice a day.

 

Good thing about limiting is every once in awhile you let yourself off the chain.

 

The other day I did 2 sessions of 1 hour each, so that's the most I've meditated in one day. I've felt much more benefit from meditating 2 small sessions then 1 long one.

[sean]

i've noticed diminishing returns on any set duration over time.

 

for example, 90 minute sits are fantastic for a few weeks, but eventually i get lazy in spite of them. "ahh... well, i've got 90 whole minutes here, plenty of time to be present, i'll just daydream for the first 20 minutes here". if i switch to super short meditations at this point, even as short as 5 minutes, it can actually have the effect of snapping my meditations back into a more alert presence. "i only have 5 minutes, every second counts". but this effect is only relative to the presence cultivated in longer sits, once again, after some days/weeks, 5 minutes just starts to zip by with less presence arising, or conversely even the 5 minutes starts to feel long and boring.

 

so as an experiment, lately i've been trying random interval meditations, between 5-90 minutes.

 

pretty interesting, for each sit i have no idea when the timer is going to go off inside of a pretty large range of time. i find myself more conscious of every second this way.

 

hopefully it takes my ego a little longer to game this system.

 

sean

[Spectrum]

Natural and artificial measurement

 

biological clock and time 'keeping'

 

these things come to mind...

sunrise & sunset

a rain shower

boiling water

clouds drifting by

natural meanderings of animals

the long form takes about thirty minutes performed slowly

as long as it takes

circadian rhythms

length of a song

100 breaths

1 breath

1 set

nap

[Kris]

great idea sean. but i need that fancy iphone. i guess i could close my eyes when setting my timer on my clunky 3 yr. old mobile phone.

 

Or you can get this random timer...

 

- Kris

[Mal]

Currently for me 20 min seems to feel "complete" almost like I've finished a cycle. But I can remember at around 45~60 min feeling a similar "complete" feeling when I was doing kunlun.

[The Observer]

The only amount of time I can recommend, is the amount of time it takes for you to completely let go.

[Seth Ananda]

at the moment I do 45 mins to an hour+ morning and night, and aim for many 're drop in' moments any time I get the chance. Also I aim to meditate during my various activities as much as possible.

 

Some times I did far less when I started, and sometimes I did far more. I always follow my self.

[Non]

heh, don't hav a particular timeset?

 

whenever I'd randomly meditate without having a time set goal it would be so much more relaxing...

[de_paradise]

I dont have a set time but some things only start to get good after 30 mins, and get better after an hour. It seems such a shame to quit just when things are flowing so optimally, so stay for an hour or 2.

 

This type of meditations work best when there are no duties, work or social things hanging over ones head, so need to restructure life to be very uncluttered.

 

I think with 5-6 hours/day, things tend to happen much faster, and there is an overall efficiency effect of putting in those kind of hours. Its just like practising sport or art, you need sustained lengths to actually improve.

[thelerner]

I dont have a set time but some things only start to get good after 30 mins, and get better after an hour. It seems such a shame to quit just when things are flowing so optimally, so stay for an hour or 2.

 

This type of meditations work best when there are no duties, work or social things hanging over ones head, so need to restructure life to be very uncluttered.

 

I think with 5-6 hours/day, things tend to happen much faster, and there is an overall efficiency effect of putting in those kind of hours. Its just like practising sport or art, you need sustained lengths to actually improve.

 

This is what I've heard from a number of sources. That 20 or 30 minutes is missing a level, staying to close to the surface..not getting deep enough.