What You’ll Do: So far, you have been meditating for at least five minutes a day. You have gotten into a good habit of making time for meditation in your life. This week, you will meditate for just a little bit longer each day.
How It Works: By adding just two minutes each day to your meditation period, you’ll work your way up to 19 minutes by the end of the week. Nineteen minutes is a fantastic amount of time for a daily meditation habit. When you achieve that, you will really start to feel the benefits of meditation in your life.
Get Motivated: By almost quadrupling the amount of time you spend in meditation, you will accelerate your meditation process. Meditation will become something you truly incorporate into your life. Nineteen minutes will challenge your mind and really develop your “meditation muscles.”
The Steps
- Adjust Your Schedule: You may need to make a few adjustments in your schedule to find the extra time you will need each day for meditation. If you have been meditating in your car, this week may be the time to find a new place to meditate. Whatever you do, the most important thing is to maintain your habit of sitting and focusing every day.
- Add Two Minutes: Each day this week, add two minutes to your meditation time. Today will be seven minutes, tomorrow you will meditate for nine minutes, and so on.
- Focus: As you add the extra time, remember to stay focused on your posture and maintaining your intention (counting your breaths or repeating a word).
Commitment
: 'This week I will increase my meditation time by two minutes each day.'Tips to Help You Along the Way
- Be sure that the increase in time won’t interfere with other things on your schedule. You still want to make sure that you will be completely uninterrupted during your meditation period.
- Avoid the temptation to skip to a 19-minute period right away. The process of gradually building up to this length of time will help you maintain your habit without needing a lot of willpower. Be patient.
- The most important thing this whole week is to keep up with your daily habit. If you can’t sit for the whole time, sit for at least five minutes every day. Be sure to do this, even when there are crises and other unexpected events. Some formal sitting every day will prevent you from losing everything you have worked for so far.
Ready for More?
If you would like, add a second five-minute session to your day (while still adding two minutes to your original session). You can keep that session at five minutes, and then gradually increase the time of that session when you are ready. Two sessions a day provide an interesting contrast. One session may be easy, another hard. Different things will happen in each session, and you will experience different benefits, such as increased creativity in the morning and a calming effect at night.
Here is the whole program. Give each one a solid one-week try, and then come back and do the next one. If you want a reminder, sign up for the How To Meditate E-Course. It is free, and you'll get short e-mail reminders each day to help keep you on track.
