There is a saying in Zen that if you have time, meditate for 20 minutes a day. If you don’t have time, meditate for an hour a day. A big obstacle to meditation is that it is hard to set aside the time to practice. Practicing for one minute, a few or several times a day may be a way to get a little mediation into your routine.
To do a precise one-minute mediation you need a timer. Use can the stopwatch on your phone or computer. When you have a minute, sit on a chair with your back straight, head level, and tongue gently touching the front of the inside of your mouth, above your teeth. Hold your phone on you knee and look at it softly by looking downward with your eyes, keeping your head level. Take a regular breath, and when you are ready to begin, start the timer as you breathe in.
Breathe in for three seconds, hold the breath for one and then breathe out for six seconds. When your timer gets to ten seconds, take your next breath in for three seconds, hold for one, then out for six, and so on until a minute is up.
As thoughts come and carry your attention away from the breathing, notice the thought, and bring your attention back to your breath and the clock.
When a minute is up, you will have taken 6 breaths and you are done. If a minute seems to short, you can do another. If you want to do twenty, you can do twenty.
When you get used to doing your one-minute mediation you won’t need to time it to get the minute exactly right. You can count as you breathe in and out and count 6 breaths to gauge a minute. You can do it while walking, waiting in line, commuting, in the bathroom, in a meeting, as you go to sleep, when you wake up. You can do this anytime at all when you think of it and have a minute or need a minute. You can try it now.
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