5 minutes; extend to 10 after several days
Begin somewhere you can return to without rebuilding the room. A chair beside a bookcase or a cleared corner is enough. The opening practice of The Meditative Way asks you to become familiar with the body already sitting there and the breath already moving. Nothing unusual has to happen before the sitting counts.
Choose a stable chair or a workable cushion. If the chair needs repairing, repair it. The exercise does not gain depth from an awkward seat, and the first month does not require an impressive posture. Make the arrangement simple enough to use again tomorrow.
Take the seat
Let the seat support you. Rest the hands on the thighs and keep enough tone in the back to remain awake. You may close the eyes or lower them toward a quiet patch of floor or wall. Choose a point where the breath is easy to feel: belly, chest, or the coolness near the nostrils.
- Set a timer for five minutes and place it out of sight.
- Feel the points of contact: feet with the floor, thighs with the chair, hands with cloth or skin.
- Notice natural breathing at your chosen point. There is no need to make the breath deeper or more elaborate.
- When attention follows a thought, notice where it went. Return to the body and the next breath.
- Continue until the time is complete. You do not need to list or explain each distraction.
Work with the actual body
Change position when the body genuinely needs it. The book gives aching knees as a plain reason to move. Restlessness can also suggest an endless series of adjustments. When the urge seems to come from annoyance rather than pain, stay for a few more breaths and see whether it changes. Learning that difference takes practice.
An errand, an old conversation, or a message you have not answered may take over almost immediately. This is material the sitting has made visible. Each return gives you another occasion to attend to what is here. A busy five minutes still contains the work.
Let repetition establish the practice
After several days, extend to ten minutes if the shorter sitting has become workable. Give the first five to body and breath and the second five to learning the return. Begin again at the chosen point whenever a story has carried attention away.
Keep the first commitment modest. The source favours five minutes maintained for a week over an ambitious twenty-minute beginning that soon disappears. Finish the sitting when its time is complete, then return on another day.
Read the source
Page numbers refer to the original-language PDF edition, not a translation of the book.
- The Meditative Way: PDF pp. 11–12