It’s no secret that meditation can have a wide range of positive effects. The benefits are expansive, from feeling calmer and more peaceful to releasing old pain to being more creative and productive. However, these benefits can also feel fleeting and temporary, depending on your meditation practice.
How long the effects of meditation last depend on the strength of your practice. The more dedicated and integrated your practice is in your daily life, the longer you’ll feel the positive effects. For best results, meditate regularly and integrate mindfulness into your lifestyle.
In the rest of this article, we’ll look at how to best integrate meditation and mindfulness into your busy modern lives in order to feel the effects most powerfully. We’ll see some tips and tricks to get the most out of your meditation practice and live your life in a more mindful way.
Maximizing the Effects of Meditation
It’s no secret that meditation has a wide range of appealing benefits.
From feeling calmer to being more productive to spiritual connections, you may experience many positive effects after meditating.
If this kind of positive life change is appealing to you, it’s important to understand how to devote yourself effectively to your meditation practice. By regular engagement with meditation, you’ll be able to connect to the benefits more easily and experience them for longer durations.
Frequency of Meditation
The first way to dedicate yourself to your practice is by the frequency you sit for meditation.
After you have your first meditative experience, you may be intrigued to try it out more often. What started as a one-time event may turn into a weekly practice. As the benefits become more clear, you may feel naturally compelled to practice more often.
Ideally, sitting for meditation every day will help you get the most out of your practice. However, allow yourself to build up to this frequency over time.
If you meditate once a week, you may be able to organically notice how much calmer, happier, and more productive you are following your meditation. You may notice this feeling fade as the week continues, and you may be craving another session of meditation to restore the benefits.
Length of Meditation
As you become more intrinsically motivated, it’ll be easy to build up to a daily practice. The same goes for the length of time you meditate for each day. The longer you meditate, the more intense and fruitful your practice will become.
However, having a beginner sit for an hour or even 30 minutes might be a very frustrating activity.
Start small with the amount of time you’re comfortable with meditating. This duration may only be five or ten minutes to start. There are even guided meditations as short as three minutes for people who need to start small.
Over time, you may find yourself wishing the meditation would go on for longer. When you have this experience, it’s a perfect time to expand your practice, pushing it fifteen, twenty, or even thirty minutes.
It’s also important that you don’t overload your schedule, as that might make it easier to skip meditation on busy days. You’ll know what’s best for you and your daily routine. Simply make sure you engage with your practice daily, even if the duration fluctuates slightly during the week.
Living Mindfully
The more you can find ways to integrate meditation into your lifestyle, the more you’ll be able to strengthen your practice and feel its effects.
By practicing small mindfulness exercises throughout your day, you’ll begin to shift into a more conscious way of living. This will make it easier to settle into meditation when it comes time for your session. It’ll also make the effects of the practice easier to feel.
Practicing mindfulness simply means to be fully in the present moment.
Another way of saying this is having your mind where your body is. So, if you’re chopping vegetables for dinner, your full attention should be on the activity you’re engaged in. Your mind isn’t thinking about work or your to-do life or anything else. It’s engaged with all the physical sensations of the present moment.
A great way to practice mindfulness is simply to bring your attention back to the present moment whenever you’re engaged in a routine, mundane activity. This could be brushing your teeth, making your morning coffee, taking a shower, or even eating. We do so many things on autopilot, and we miss the chance to be present with the actual experience we are having.
Instead of letting your mind wander the next time you grab your toothbrush, try to stay fully engaged in the activity.
Notice the movement in your arms and hands as you apply the toothpaste and bring the brush to your mouth. Notice how it feels as you brush all the sides of your teeth.
You can practice coming fully into the present moment at any point during your day. Taking a deep breath is a great way to give yourself an anchor to pay attention to. If you’re at work, try just taking three deep breaths, giving your full attention to the sensation as the breath comes in and out of your body.
Mindfulness practices are wonderful because they can be done anywhere, anytime, and can be done with eyes open.
Final Thoughts
As you begin your meditation journey and enjoy the benefits of the practice, it’s natural to wonder how long the benefits will last. The more you devote yourself to your practice, the more easily you’ll be able to experience the positive effects.
Remember to build up to a daily practice for a duration of time that works for your schedule. Practice having mindful moments throughout the day to strengthen your ability to come back to the present moment. The more meditative practices are part of your life, the more you’ll be able to feel their benefits.
