Word Meds: Don't Call It Meditation

“You should sit in meditation for twenty minutes every day—unless you’re too busy. Then you should sit for an hour.” —Zen proverb

Wise words. "But I don't even have 20 minutes!" "An hour? That'll get me fired!" Totally hear you. But do you have five minutes? Or three?

Before January 1 sends us all into a resolution-making frenzy, or makes us want to denounce all resolutions forever, let's all just try this: Sit quietly for a few minutes, and breathe in and out, and try to count our breaths instead of obsessing about all the many challenges of our hour and our day and our life. Just do our best to not think about anything at all for a few minutes. That's it. Call it meditation. Or call it sitting still. Or call it me-time and turn off your phone. Just for those couple of minutes. The world can wait.

Yeah, it's harder than it sounds to slam the brakes on. It takes practice, and it's even tricky to find a place to sit quietly and un-self-consciously. If you have no privacy where you are, try hiding in a restroom or stairwell for a few minutes. Seriously, it's worth a shot. Just try it once, and see if it makes you feel marginally saner and calmer. And then try it again sometime this week. And again. If you can gradually increase the number of minutes where you sit quietly, breathe slowly, and NOT think, it'll be worth every second. If you can't, just do it for the three minutes you have. 

Prefer to use an app to remind and guide you? Go for it. I tried Headspace for a few days, then abandoned it in favor of just sitting quietly sans app. Do whatever works for you—no judgments.

Meanwhile, does meditation, or mindfulness, or mindfulness meditation, or quietly-sitting-and-breathing-and-not-thinking—whatever we want to call it—have measurable benefits for our health? UC Berkeley's Greater Good Science Center just posted this article, which takes a level-headed, hype-free approach and tries to sort out the provable claims from the fuzzy science. What we do know: Meditation makes us more sharply attentive (so those minutes away from our desk pay off big-time), and it makes us more compassionate and reduces our susceptibility to stress. It likely has many more benefits too, but the specific impacts are still being studied.

Read the article for more on who should (and shouldn't) meditate, and what the practice can do for your overall well-being. Here's the most important takeaway: "Our recommendation? Try out different durations, types, and frequencies of meditation and jot down how you feel before and after the practice—and see what seems to work for you."

In the meantime, happy not-thinking-about-anything-for-a-freaking-few-minutes. Really, is there a better gift you can give yourself?

Photo by Enis Yavuz on Unsplash.