How Often Should You Meditate?

Meditation is a useful practice for learning how to regulate your emotions and calm your mind, but you might be unsure of how much time to dedicate to meditation each day to get the best effects of it. How long you should meditate depends on your experience level.

Meditation beginners should start by meditating from a minute to five minutes at a time, while intermediate students in meditation should aim for ten to twenty minutes. Advanced practitioners of meditation can meditate for forty minutes or more.

Meditation may seem difficult if you have never done it before, but with a little practice, you should be able to gradually increase the amount of time you can meditate without losing focus or becoming physically uncomfortable. Read on to learn more about meditation and how often you should do it.

Should You Meditate Every Day?

While many practitioners of meditation do make a point to meditate every day, there is no need to do so right away. It is easy to downplay the difficulty of meditation if you have never done it before, but meditation is a skill that takes serious practice to improve on and perfect.

If you are just starting to meditate, it is a good idea to aim for around 1-3 hours of meditation a week. But if you have been meditating for several years, you have most likely worked your way into a daily meditation habit. Once you start to experience the mental, emotional, and physical benefits of meditation, it encourages you to engage in it more frequently.

Whether you meditate every day is a matter of preference, since meditation is a personal practice, and there are no hard and fast rules for how to progress.

For those who do not mind progressing in their meditation practice a little more slowly, meditating 2-3 times a week is probably a good number of sessions to aim for at the start.
But if you want to become proficient at meditation quickly, you should aim to meditate as often throughout the week as you can find time to practice.

Beginning meditation students should not feel pressured to meditate every day, as this can make meditation frustrating and discouraging. If a student of meditation tries to meditate too much too early, it can eventually lead to burn-out and the student quitting meditation altogether.

Health Benefits of Long-Term Meditation

It is not necessary to meditate every day, but there are many benefits associated with a long-term meditation practice.

Here are some of the health benefits associated with long-term meditation:

Long-term meditation creates better sleep patterns. Mindfulness meditation has been shown by scientists to improve the symptoms of insomnia and the quality of sleep. This is because learning meditation teaches you to control your physiological relaxation response, an important part of sliding into a sleep state.
Long-term meditation enhances perception, memory, and focus. Not only is long-term meditation associated with improved memory and focus, but it has also been associated with affecting our perception of the passage of time.
Long-term meditation increases levels of happiness and compassion. For people who are more prone to stress and anxiety, taking up a meditation practice can increase activity in the centers of the brain associated with relaxation, pleasure, and joy.
Long-term meditation bolsters the immune system. Scientific trials have shown mindfulness meditation to have a positive effect on the performance of the immune system. This makes meditation a good practice for anyone, but especially for those with a compromised immune system.
Long-term meditation increases alertness and concentration. Meditation practice over the long-term has been shown to improve executive attention and concentration on the task at hand. As a result, meditation can make you sharper on the job and can increase your ability to both work and study.
Long-term meditation reduces anxiety, social anxiety, and depression. Because mindfulness meditation is good at helping people to learn to regulate their emotions, having a long-term meditation practice can help people learn to manage a variety of different mood disorders.

If practiced in the long-term (for several months or years), meditation can have many positive effects on both the mind and the body.

Benefits of Consistent Meditation

Not only is it a good idea to consider meditating as a long-term practice, but it is also useful to do it consistently at least a few times a week if you are serious about improving your ability to do it.

Here are some of the benefits you can get from meditating consistently from week to week:

Easier time getting into a meditative state. The more consistently you meditate, the faster you are able to settle down while meditating, and the sooner you can enter a true meditative state. For beginner meditation students, settling into meditation can take eight to fifteen minutes. But for those with experience who practice consistently, they can get into a meditative state in a matter of seconds.
Faster mastery of meditation. The more consistently you practice meditation, the easier it is to gradually increase the amount of time you can comfortably sit in meditation. The longer you can sit in meditation, the more benefits you can derive from it.
Stronger discipline. Just like working out or committing to a regular study session, consistently practicing meditation helps reinforce your sense of self-discipline and can eventually make it easier to follow through with other tasks that require repetitive discipline.

Meditation is an excellent practice, but you can only get the full benefits of it if you practice it consistently. It can be helpful to set out a period each day to practice meditation and make a note of how long you are able to sit in meditation each time. This can help you track your progress and figure out when it is time to increase the amount of time you meditate.

Beginning a Meditation Practice

There is no need to be nervous when you first begin a meditation practice. People have been practicing meditation for thousands of years, and even though it might seem daunting to join a practice that is so well-established in human culture, getting started is easy enough.

If you have never practiced meditation before, the easiest way to start is to practice meditating for sixty seconds at a time. While this might seem like such a short amount of time that it could not possibly do any good to you, meditating for sixty seconds at a time is a fantastic emotional reset if you are feeling stressed or overwhelmed.

To do a sixty-second meditation, perform the following steps:

Choose a location to meditate. Since a sixty-second meditation is so short, many people who do this type of meditation choose to do it while standing or sitting in a chair whenever they feel the need to compose themselves.
Set a timer. Using the timer setting on your smartphone’s clock is a good option for timing a quick meditation session.
Close your eyes. More advanced students of meditation can meditate with their eyes open, but for beginner meditation students, closing the eyes can help block out sensory stimuli and make it easier to fall into a meditative state.
Relax your body. When meditating, relaxing the muscles in the body consciously can help trigger a physiological relaxation reflex, which can then get you in the zone that much quicker.
Focus on your breath. While meditating, try not to focus on anything but the sensation of your breath coming into and leaving your lungs. If you feel your mind wandering or starting to think about something, bring your focus back to your breath.

A sixty-second meditation can be performed at any point in the day when you feel like you are beginning to lose emotional control. This type of meditation can almost be seen as a more advanced form of “counting to ten” when you are upset—this kind of emotional reset is crucial when you become overwhelmed with strong emotions such as anger, anxiety, or sadness.

Moving into Intermediate Meditation

Once you have mastered sixty-second intervals of meditation, you can move onto an intermediate form of meditation practice. This is the point in your meditation practice where you can extend your meditation sessions from sixty seconds to 5-10 minutes. For a longer meditation session, you will probably want to find a comfortable place to sit on the floor or in a chair.

The process for longer intervals of meditation is similar to the process for a sixty-second meditation session, except that focus is held for longer once you are sitting and concentrating on the in-and-out pattern of your breath.

After you get used to sitting meditation for five minutes at a time without getting frustrated or bored, you can slowly increase the amount of time until you work your way up to ten minutes at a time. A good way to do this is to meditate for ten minutes in the morning when you get up and ten minutes at night. If you meditate three times a week like this, you will have meditated for an hour a week. For an intermediate meditation student, this is a good start.

The advantage of breaking your meditation sessions up into short ten-minute intervals—at least at first—is that you can quickly become used to the process of sitting meditation without being forced to sit to the point of physical discomfort. This makes it much easier to focus on the mental aspect of meditation when you are first learning how to do it.

Moving into Advanced Meditation

After you can successfully sit in meditation for at least ten minutes without your concentration being disturbed, you can begin to increase the amount of time that you spend meditating. It’s a good idea to increase the amount of time of your practice gradually, rather than trying to jump from a ten minute to a thirty-minute or forty-minute interval. If you’ve never sat meditation that long, you will be surprised at how physically taxing it can be.

Most advanced practitioners meditate multiple times a day, with the most advanced students of meditation practicing meditation at least once a day for seven days a week. More advanced students of meditation, for example, Zen Buddhists, are known to meditate for several hours a day.

However, even for advanced practitioners of meditation, frequent breaks should be taken during meditation so that physical discomfort such as leg and back cramps do not occur or occur less frequently. It is also important to get up at intervals and stretch to return circulation to the legs and lower body.

The Miracle of Advanced Meditation and Biofeedback

Once more advanced levels of meditation are learned, it is amazing what the trained mind can accomplish. Advanced Tibetan monks can do incredible things under the influence of meditation, like raising the temperature of their skin. This allows monks in cold climates like Tibet to meditate in the snow without risking damage to their bodies.

Tibetan monks who have practiced meditation for their entire lives have also been shown to have a greater level of physiological heart coherence or synchronization between the beats of the heart and the rhythm of the breath.

How Many Hours to Meditate a Week?

So, if you want to develop a serious meditation practice, how many hours should you meditate a week? This is entirely up to personal preference.

Here is a general guideline for how much meditation time to aim for based on your skill and experience level:

Beginner: 60 seconds – 10 minutes, 3-7 times a week (or whenever stressed)
Intermediate: 10 – 30 minutes, 3-7 times a week
Advanced: 40+ minutes, 5-7 times a week

Meditation is often best accomplished early in the morning after waking up or late at night before sleeping. This is because the mind is more relaxed and pliable at these periods in the day, and you are more likely to be able to relax and get in the zone without a lot of stress in doing so.

Meditating with a Group

One way to greatly increase the amount of time you meditate from week to week is to participate in a group meditation. If you find yourself easily distracted when meditating on your own, a group setting can help keep you focused.

There are several ways you can get together with a meditation group to further your meditation practice. Here are a few methods to get in touch with one:

Check for meditation groups in your local area. Websites like MeetUp and Facebook are an excellent place to look for likeminded individuals who are also interested in improving their meditation practice.
Look for a local Buddhist center or zendo. Zen Buddhists are some of the world’s most proficient students of meditation, and a meditation center is a good place to learn meditation techniques from people who have been practicing how to do it for years. Meditation can also be pursued at a Zen center without religious involvement, too.
Check out an online meditation group. Many meditation groups meet remotely online, especially in a new age of social distancing. Getting involved in an online sangha of other meditation students can be a way to keep focused on your meditation practice without having to attend a church to do it.
Try guided meditation videos online. Although very different from meditating with a real group of people, sitting for guided meditation with a YouTube video can help keep you focused on meditation when traditional mindfulness meditation proves difficult to learn. Guided meditation gives you something to focus on so that you do not become antsy while sitting.
Try meditation audiotapes or meditation apps, like “Waking Up“. Along the same line as guided meditation videos, guided meditation sound recordings are a good way to help keep yourself focused when you are still new in your meditation practice, and the idea of meditating alone in silence is still daunting.

If the idea of sitting facing a corner for an hour a day is not appealing to you, there are plenty of other ways to meditate.

Alternative Methods for Meditation

Sitting meditation is not the only type of meditation, and if you find sitting for long
periods of mindfulness meditation to be difficult, frustrating, or boring, there are some alternative methods for meditation that you can look into that might afford you many of the same benefits as traditional sitting meditation:

Walking meditation: Walking meditation is commonly used in Zen temples to help break up long periods of sitting meditation for Buddhist monks so that they can maintain circulation to their legs after hours of sitting with their legs crossed. Even if you are getting used to sitting long periods of meditation, it is advantageous to occasionally break up sitting meditation with brief periods of walking meditation to reduce the physical discomfort.
Tai Chi: Tai chi is an internal Chinese martial art that is as focused on meditation as it is on physical movements. A large aspect of tai chi is the visualization of chi, which is a form of guided meditation that exercises the same areas of the brain as regular meditation practices.
Yoga: Like tai chi, yoga is an Eastern practice that combines physical exercise with aspects of mindfulness meditation. Yoga is a good meditation option for meditation students who would also like to improve their core strength and flexibility along with their ability to meditate effectively.
Stream-of-consciousness writing: As an alternative to mindfulness meditation, stream-of-consciousness writing (also known as free writing) is a way to harness the subconscious mind in the similar way that meditation does. Stream-of-consciousness writing also acts as a good supplemental practice to meditation to prevent runaway thoughts during meditation sessions.

You can use all the above methods or a combination of them to strengthen your overall meditation practice. Still, the best way to increase your ability to sit in meditation is to do it consistently and gradually work on increasing the amount of time you do it.

Tips for Increasing Your Meditation Times

You may find it difficult to meditate for very long at all when you first get started, but this is a normal part of the process of learning meditation. While it might seem simple on its face to sit in one place and think of nothing, it is a lot harder in practice than it is in theory.

Here are a few tips you can use to both increase your amount of meditation time and make your meditation sessions easier:

Be sure to stretch before meditating: This is an especially important tip if you are getting into longer meditation sessions, as a leg cramp halfway through a forty-minute session of meditation can be excruciating. Stretching your limbs before meditating makes sure that you have plenty of blood flow before you get settled, and this decreases the chance of painful cramps.
Break up longer meditation sessions into thirty-minute chunks: If you want to do a forty-minute session of meditation, do a thirty-minute session of sitting meditation followed by ten minutes of walking meditation. It is a good idea to include ten minutes of walking meditation for every thirty minutes of sitting meditation to decrease the likelihood of a medical problem such as a blood clot caused by inactivity.
Do not be embarrassed if you fall asleep: Meditation is a naturally relaxing process, and it’s easy to fall asleep during meditation by accident. This is especially true if you meditate very early in the morning or late at night before bed. If you find yourself frequently falling asleep during meditation, try meditating in a zendo. A Zen roshi (a teacher) will walk around the meditation room and gently tap any student who dozes to keep them focused.
Keep a journal of your meditations: Even though your goal during meditation is to clear your mind, you will inevitably have some thoughts crop up during your meditation sessions. These usually indicate thoughts that are troubling you, so be sure to write them down after your meditation session so that you can address them. Meditation sometimes provides important insights for solving philosophical and social problems.
Do not be afraid to get up and change positions. If you get very uncomfortable while sitting in meditation due to a cramp or other physical ache, do not be too bashful to get up and move into a more comfortable meditation position. Just be quiet if you feel the need to move during a group meditation session so that you don’t disturb your fellow students.
Try visualization if mindfulness meditation is difficult. Some people find it very difficult to focus on no thoughts at all, and this can lead to a vicious cycle of thinking about not thinking. Instead, try visualization to focus your meditation by imagining a single image or word in your mind’s eye to focus on. You can also focus on drawing a simple shape. This process helps keep the mind engaged and focused.
Use music as white noise: Quiet music such as flutes or wind chimes can help cover up some of the ambient noises that can be distracting during meditation. Another option is a tape of a rainstorm, the wind blowing in trees, or some other kind of gentle sound effects. Personally, I love to listen to this or this while I meditate.
Try setting up a designated meditation space: Meditation requires a great deal of focus and concentration, and if you meditate in a part of the home that is dedicated to doing many other activities, it will be challenging to still your mind. Instead, you should deliberately choose an area to meditate that is quiet. Gardens are a good choice for meditation spots, as are bedrooms – as long as being in a bedroom doesn’t make you sleepy.
You do not have to sit cross-legged to meditate. While the image of a monk sitting in a lotus position is synonymous with meditation, this meditation position can be uncomfortable for novice meditation students. When you are learning to meditate, focus on finding a position where you can sit comfortably for the entire meditation session, rather than trying to focus on looking cool while doing it.
Keep a record of your meditation sessions. Keeping notes on how often you meditate and how long you manage to do so can give you a concrete idea of how you are progressing in your meditation practice. If you find yourself hitting a wall with the amount of meditation you can sit, you may want to look into group meditation or some other form of support.

If you consistently practice meditation and try to get the most out of your meditation sessions, you will find yourself experiencing the positive mental and emotional effects of meditation right away.

Meditation Should Be Performed Often to Be Effective

Like any skill, meditation is a practice that must be improved gradually through hard work. As long as you are willing to put the time into progressing in the art of meditation, you will be sure to reap its many benefits.