One of the ideas that makes me genuinely angry is the suggestion that if you don't feel like you can meditate for half an hour a day, you should meditate for an hour. It's a heartless dismissal of the many different kinds of challenges people face both with meditating and with pressures on their time. I suspect that it doesn't encourage people to meditate at all and that it might well be driving people away from even trying.
You do not have to meditate every day.
You do not have to meditate in a regular way or at fixed times.
There is no right amount of meditation that you have to do.
Meditation shouldn't be intrinsically stressful nor should it be something that adds to your burden. If it's just another duty on the list of things you have to get done today, it's probably not doing you much good at all. First and foremost, meditation is something to do because you get some kind of benefit from it and not because the meditation police have made you feel uncomfortable.
Slowing down is good. Resting is good. Taking time just to breathe, to think, to stop and look around, is good. Contemplation is good. Taking a meditative approach to the thing you had to do anyway, can also be good.
Meditation can mean spending five minutes trying to consciously unclench your jaw muscles. It can mean gazing peacefully out of the window as you contemplate the changing sky. You can get a lot done with a few minutes of deliberately calm breathing.
I can heartily recommend just stopping for a few minutes to check in with yourself every so often. How are you feeling? How is your body doing? Is there anything that you need? Take some slow breaths, drink something, let your muscles relax a bit. Give yourself time to process what's going on. Be kind to yourself. Making small spaces to draw breath and be present to your own experiences can open up room for more involved meditation. But it might not. Your life might not allow you an hour of pathworking at the moment.
Making the best of things while being kind to yourself and not beating yourself up for what's beyond you, is of itself, a very good approach to bringing meditation into your life. If you don't have time to meditate for half an hour every day, then meditate for ten minutes, or whatever you've got. Make it part of your shower, or take a moment in your lunch break to just stand outside and breathe. It's ok to do less. In fact, learning to do less will probably help you far more than making unreasonable demands of yourself ever could.
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