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How To Meditate Longer And More Often
5 helpful strategies
1. Use A Timer To Incrementally Increase Your Meditation
Spontaneity can be great sometimes. You feel inspired to connect more deeply with your spirit, so you sit down, close your eyes and such, and begin to meditate. And then a few relaxing minutes go by — or wait, it was only twenty seconds?
It’s hard to tell with your eyes closed. When I meditate, I usually use a timer, and give myself something like 10 or 20 minutes. The timer helps me relax into focus, without wondering if I’m being lazy and stopping too soon, or being a little too relaxed for too long, and missing an appointment or something.
If 20 minutes of meditation sounds valuable, but maybe a bit too hard for now, start with something easier. In music classes, long ago, my favorite expression about learning to play was: “Go so slowly that you cannot fail.”
What’s an amount of time you know you could meditate for? Two minutes? Set the timer for that. Do that for a week, and then increase it by a little. If you start with two minutes, move to three minutes next week.
