How often do you need to meditate? To advance in your practice, should you meditate every day?

This is the question that we explore in this episode of the OneMind Meditation podcast.

Let’s start with the perennial problem. A lot of people feel guilty because they start meditating and then life gets in the way. Things happen and you lose your mojo. It happens all the time. And mostly, it’s for really good reasons.

What kind of reasons? Well, maybe you found out you’re pregnant. Maybe you have a killer series of work deadlines. Your parents moved in. Your kid moved out. We all have major life disruptions all the time.

It’s true, you could make the argument that it’s at those moments more than ever that you need meditation. And there’s real truth to that. A daily meditation habit can be a grounding godsend when those hurricanes whip your life into a frenzy.

But it’s not the whole picture.

More often than not, it’s not the interruption or stopping the practice that’s the issue. It’s that you feel guilty about it or like somehow you failed. And that often prevents you from getting your backside on the cushion again.

It’s a negative cycle I hear about all the time.

But what if we tilt the picture just a little to see it in a different light. First, what is this compulsion to meditate? Why do you want to do it? Why does it feel important to you?

See, here’s the thing. You need to honor and nurture that impulse to meditate. It’s like a little green seedling that you’ve just planted. Each time you sit, it grows a little taller and soaks in a little more sunlight.

And that impulse is precious. It’s the part of you that yearns to let go of your moorings on planet earth and fly. It’s your desire for freedom and the pure intimacy of contact with life without any mediating filters.

So yes, meditating every day is a great way to nurture that impulse. But you’re probably living a busy life. I’m guessing you have people who count on you to show up and care for them and love them. For some, you may be the only person.

So somehow, you have to find a way to meditate regularly. Because you need that contact with the limitless part of yourself. You need to grow that seedling into a vibrant tree.

But maybe it’s not every day. Maybe it’s once a week. Maybe it’s a few times a week. The most important thing is to find a rhythm that works for you and your schedule and your existing demands.

If you start with a realistic approach like this, your much more likely to have a guilt free relationship to your meditation practice. And then, over time, you might just find that you’ve grown a little tree. And surprisingly, it’s providing some shade.

Now, amazingly, you find that you want to spend more and more time there. And at that point, meditating every day won’t feel like a chore. More likely, it will feel like home. And you’ll want to come back again and again.

The post OM049: Should You Meditate Every Day? appeared first on About Meditation.