Experience has shown the that we get the most benefit from meditation by establishing a rhythm of regular practice.

This might sound like a rigid discipline, but in fact it’s the best way to help ourselves.

What this means is to make some choices about meditation in advance and then to stay with our decision for a given time.

The choices to make are:

– which meditation practices are we going to do (a selection is available here)
– what time of day we will do our practices
– for how long we will do the practices each day
– for how many days we will do these practices

It is also helpful to think about the place and posture we use for meditation.

Timing

For many, first thing in the morning is the ideal time, although this is not the case for everyone.

About 20 minutes each day is a good length of time to begin with.

We could decide to do the practices for, say, 14 or 21 days. After that, we can review our timings, make adjustments if necessary, and choose a new set of practices for another period.

(This might appear rather strict, but in fact, if we just abide by it each day, rather than thinking ‘Shall I, shan’t I today?’, we actually save ourselves a lot of stress and mental effort!)

Place

When possible, it is good to do our meditations each day in a particular place, ideally somewhere we can reasonably expect not to be disturbed, and with helpful associations.

Posture

Also significant is the posture for meditation. It is sometimes said that the floor is better than a chair because one day we might find ourselves without chairs, but the absence of a floor is very unlikely!

That said, a firm chair is perfectly acceptable; the main thing is that the body should be upright and self-supporting, and most important, that we should be able to forget the body for the period of meditation. It is not helpful to try to meditate in bed or an armchair.

For more on getting established in meditation, see this extract from Stages in Meditation.