Meditation may well be the finest self-help tool available. It delivers a host of immediate benefits, and the mental clarity it brings helps you make sound choices across every area of your life.
Its single drawback? You actually have to do it. It calls for personal discipline. And while the discipline we mean here is the discipline of kindness — you are being kind to yourself whenever you meditate — the question still stands: how much is enough?
In workshops across the globe, I have asked thousands of meditators whether they meditate as much as they would like to. The reply — well over 95% say no!
So what is a realistic expectation? Let us look first at the evidence, then at particular situations.
Meditation has been practised across all cultures for thousands of years, yet science has only begun studying it in the last 30-40 years. A glaring gap remains in that research. There is no dependable way to calibrate the quantity and depth of meditation reported in the literature, and almost no studies have quantified how much meditation is ideal.
So to answer “how much?” we need to draw on the accumulated experience of meditators who have practised for particular reasons and in particular situations.
1. For general health, disease prevention and wellbeing
What clearly works best here is to build a regular formal practice that genuinely carries over into your daily life. Meditation aims to make you calmer, clearer and more content. The best way to gauge this kind of meditation is to ask your friends. If they find you nicer to be around, it is working! If they notice you becoming more irritable again, do more!
In practical terms, aim for some practice every day — even 5-10 minutes is a good start. What the research consistently shows is that 10-20 minutes once or twice daily prevents and/or treats a vast array of physical and psychological health problems.
2. Treating illness
Yes, I did say treating, not merely managing…. More than 4000 research studies support the notion of “treatment”, and it is true that meditation can improve the management of any illness and lead to an enhanced quality of life.
What matters is this: based on my 30 years of experience teaching others to meditate, once people meditate more intensively they develop an inner knowing of whether more is better or less is enough.
In the cancer field, most people who do this conclude that intensive meditation is best — meaning 3 long sessions per day of 40-60 minutes each.
3. The Spiritual Path
Here different traditions recommend different things. What they share is the understanding that retreats are of great benefit. A retreat is where you step away from the busyness of everyday life, receive good instruction from an authentic teacher and immerse yourself in meditation for a while.
Given the pace of modern life, I recommend at least one retreat each year as the minimum needed to maintain perspective and equilibrium.
WHAT I DID AND DO
I first heard about meditation at an early age and was deeply curious, but I put off doing it until I was diagnosed with cancer in January 1975. That year I meditated about 20 minutes daily, following the advice I had picked up from Chogyam Trungpa’s “Meditation in Action”.
When the cancer returned late in 1975, I went to Ainslie Meares and began intensive meditation along the lines he set out in “Relief Without Drugs”. Although I stopped consulting with him personally about 2 months later, I continued doing 5 hours per day for some months, and then on most days I did 3 long sessions, still in the Meares’ manner, of about an hour each until I recovered.
Since then, my main teacher has been the great Tibetan Dzogchen master Sogyal Rinpoche, author of The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying.
In a year now I do about 500 hours of formal meditation practice. This includes retreat time and the fact that I very rarely miss a day.
Perhaps more importantly, I feel that meditation has become part of my life. The formal practice reinforces it and helps me relax, stay balanced and be at peace; more and more, the line between meditation and life is seamless. A deep inner contentment is present all the time.
I have been blessed with great teachers, with an illness that provoked me to practise and established the habit, and with Ruth, who meditates with me and supports our shared interest in living and working with meditation.
RESOURCES: See the blog: Meditation and Satisfaction 5th October.
NEXT BLOG: GO WITH THE FLOW OR INTERVENE?
See Aine’s great question in Comments — as one meditates more, how is it best to respond to life?
These little vignettes are really helpful. It is good to be reassured that my own sense that 20mins of meditation a day is Ok for me, is highly likely to be Ok! Thanks Ian
ReplyDeleteThanks once again Ian for one of the many support tools for recovery you pass on to us. Mindfulness is amazing. Recently I had what was to be a very unpleasant procedure. My doctor and his nurse advised me the procedure will cause some degree of discomfort. I said no worries to assist I will use my mind. The procedure was over before I knew it and the medical team looked at me in disbelief. So thank you Ian had it not been for meditation the doctor and nurse would have had a screaming lunatic on their hands. Wendy Perth
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