Are Short Meditations at all Beneficial?

Do you live a busy ‘always-on’ life? Do you struggle to even find a few minutes ‘me-time’ during your day?

Then short meditations are going to be your friend.

 

Finding time for meditation

If you’re looking for information on ‘how to meditate’ online, you’ll most likely find instructors explaining that meditations should last anywhere from around 20 minutes to an hour, or so.

This is great for people who have that time to spare every day. You might also read about people who are busy during the day, so they get up an hour earlier each morning to meditate before the day starts.

Again, good for them. This is something I do now that all my Children have lives of their own (my youngest is 33).

But, for any working parent, or anyone who works long hours, that extra hour in bed is all that prevents the madness of family life from taking over 😒 . So, I get it.

To find out more about short meditations, let’s have a look at the opposing opinions.

 

Are long, or short meditations better?

There are two sides to this argument and that’s what creates the misunderstanding.

So, let me explain what they are and why it matters.

There are a some apps, websites, teachers, etc. that tell you it’s absolutely fine to only meditate for a few minutes a day. That huge benefit will be gained by even small periods of meditation.

On the other side, there are people who say that meditation for less than 15 minutes is worthless So, who’s right?

 

Opinion One: Short meditations are a waste of time

There’s scientific and anecdotal evidence, that meditating for longer periods of time is the only way to get real, lasting benefits.

According to Buddhist texts, the Buddha meditated often for many hours at a time, sometimes for days.

Buddhist monks often meditate for several hours each day. Most meditation retreats have periods of meditation that can continue for hours.

Scientific studies of 20 Buddhist monks have shown that their brains now have some huge advantages.

Many meditation teachers out there will tell you that you should meditate for at least 20 mins each time. In fact, I love this recent adage that’s often attributed as an old Zen proverb..,

You should sit in meditation for 20 minutes a day, unless you’re too busy; then you should sit for an hour. 

Dr Sukhraj Dhillon

There’s definitely a lot of weight regarding longer meditation practices. So, that would seem to be the correct way to do it, wouldn’t it?

But…

 

Option Two: Short meditations are beneficial

So, if there’s so much evidence for longer meditations, why do I advocate shorter ones?

Well, there are actually two really good reasons for it.

Firstly, in our ‘always on’ lives, we often don’t take the time to relax… AT ALL! So, short five minute meditations give us a chance to slow down and notice the things around us.

Even just those five minutes each day teaches us that we can take time for ourselves.

Like the short relief when you’re in the eye of the storm.

You know it’s going to be short lived.

You know that in a few minutes the whole world is going to be chaos again. But for now, everything is calm and sublime 🙂

And the second reason, is short meditations are great for forming a habit of meditation. If you were to set yourself a goal of meditating every day for 20 minutes, you’ll probably fail.

Life happens. Things get crazy, work needs that report, the kids need feeding, the dog needs to be walked, etc. 20 minutes of ‘me-time’ isn’t always going to be possible. But, on the days when it isn’t, you’ll definitely find five minutes. And five minutes continues the habit.

 

Conclusion

Personally, I get a little annoyed with people who say that short meditations are worthless. Sure, you could say that they’re not really a meditation, but that’s not their purpose. That’s what the 20+ minute meditations are for.

The purpose of short meditations, is to remind you that you have the power to take time away from all the madness that surrounds you. And, that you can do it whenever you like, no matter what else is going on.

Five minutes each day of mindfulness, has to be better than five minutes of mind-LESS-ness.

There are a lot of misunderstandings about meditation, I’ve covered some of them before in an earlier article.

My view, is try whenever possible to set aside at least 20 minutes each day for meditation practice.

First thing in the morning is probably best, even if you do need to get up a little bit earlier. But, I know that’s not always possible. So, if you can’t manage 20 minutes, just use the time you have.

Do you have a view on this? Let me know in the comments below.