I highly second the “longer meditation sessions” thing since I had a similar experience. I feel like many people are giving up on meditation too early, saying “it doesn’t do much for me”, without ever really having tried it. I spent one year meditating for 20 minutes each day. It probably did make me happier, but not in a dramatic way. Then I went on a 10-day silent meditation retreat and started meditating 1+ hours a day for a while and got dramatic benefits to the point that I feel like picking up meditation is by far the most impactful thing I’ve ever done to improve my well-being.
Well, but of course not everyone is in a position to meditate that much.
That’s a great point—I’ve definitely also noticed a huge difference between a few minutes and an hour. The happiest I was all year was when I was meditating an hour a day. Though for me even 1 minute is also a huge difference compared to 0 minutes.
In 2019 I spent a few months doing 45-60 minutes per day and experienced dramatic improvements to my well-being, basically from “somewhat bad” to “quite good.” I’ve been able to maintain somewhere between “somewhat good” and “very good” for most of the time since then with only 10-20 minutes per day, which is what I had been doing for ~1 year before the more intense practice. This trend could be regression to the mean since I’ve historically had pretty high well-being. It may also be that the more intense practice resolved a particular mental difficulty I had been experiencing for ~6 months.
Note that intense meditation comes with higher risks; see Willoughby Britton’s work. I would not recommend trying 10-day retreats or the Finder’s Course without researching these risks and considering your personal risk factors.
I highly second the “longer meditation sessions” thing since I had a similar experience. I feel like many people are giving up on meditation too early, saying “it doesn’t do much for me”, without ever really having tried it. I spent one year meditating for 20 minutes each day. It probably did make me happier, but not in a dramatic way. Then I went on a 10-day silent meditation retreat and started meditating 1+ hours a day for a while and got dramatic benefits to the point that I feel like picking up meditation is by far the most impactful thing I’ve ever done to improve my well-being.
Well, but of course not everyone is in a position to meditate that much.
That’s a great point—I’ve definitely also noticed a huge difference between a few minutes and an hour. The happiest I was all year was when I was meditating an hour a day. Though for me even 1 minute is also a huge difference compared to 0 minutes.
In 2019 I spent a few months doing 45-60 minutes per day and experienced dramatic improvements to my well-being, basically from “somewhat bad” to “quite good.” I’ve been able to maintain somewhere between “somewhat good” and “very good” for most of the time since then with only 10-20 minutes per day, which is what I had been doing for ~1 year before the more intense practice. This trend could be regression to the mean since I’ve historically had pretty high well-being. It may also be that the more intense practice resolved a particular mental difficulty I had been experiencing for ~6 months.
Note that intense meditation comes with higher risks; see Willoughby Britton’s work. I would not recommend trying 10-day retreats or the Finder’s Course without researching these risks and considering your personal risk factors.