How to Start and Grow a Mindfulness Practice
"The goal is to come out of the trance of discursive thinking and to stop reflexively grasping at the pleasant and recoiling from the unpleasant, so that we can enjoy a mind undisturbed by worry, merely open like the sky, and effortlessly aware of the flow of experience in the present." - Sam Harris, Waking Up
Starting a mindfulness practice is simple:
Take a comfortable seat
Close your eyes
Place your hands on your lap
Take a few deep breaths, noticing what it feels like to breathe
Continue to breathe while paying attention to the sensations of breathing
If your mind wanders to something else, bring your attention back to the sensations of breathing
Continue steps 5. and 6. for as long as you choose
If you followed the simple steps above, you just completed a mindfulness session.
A single, short mindfulness session is a powerful exercise. Mindfulness can help you:
Decrease your experience of immediate anxiety
"Reset" from your daily routine if you feel overwhelmed
Create some space to remind yourself to get "back in the moment"
Disconnect you from thoughts or somatic experiences that "get in the way"
The benefits of mindfulness of compound if practiced regularly and over a long time.
So now that you know how to practice mindfulness, the next step is to practice it more often.
How to Add Mindfulness to Your Current Routine
1. Make It Easy
One of the most effective ways to keep your mindfulness practice going is to make it as easy as possible.
It may be tempting to set an ambitious goal of practicing 10 or 15 minutes daily. But if you're starting out for the first time, it's best to shoot for an easier, more achievable goal.
Start by finding a time during the day when you have a few minutes for yourself. All you need is 1-2 minutes.
2. Create a Reminder (a Prompt)
Before a behavior can become a habit, it needs prompting. Otherwise, you'll "forget" to do it.
Next, create a reminder at the time you want to start practicing. To create a reminder, you can:
Use a task list app to prompt you at the start time
Use a habit-tracking app to send you a notification at the start time
Use your mobile phone to create a calendar entry with a reminder at the start time
Use an Action Prompt
How to Use An Action Prompt
An alternative approach is to pick a behavior that you're already doing on a daily basis and use that as a prompt. Dr. BJ Fogg calls these Action Prompts. For example:
After you brush your teeth
After you get dressed for the day
After you make your first cup of coffee
Each of the above activities can serve as prompts to remind you to practice.
The key to Action Prompts is that they should already be occurring in your current routine.
To create an Action Prompt, pick a simple behavior that’s already in your regular routine. Then, start practicing mindfulness immediately after you do the Action Prompt.
What to Do When It’s Time to Practice
Don’t Worry About How Long You Can Practice
When the time comes in your schedule to finally practice, don't set a time-based goal for yourself.
Rather than focusing on how long you can practice, allow yourself to go practice for as long as you want. When you feel like you're done, open your eyes, and you're done.
The initial goal is to establish the routine, not increase the session length. Just make mindfulness part of your routine. There's no need to challenge yourself with longer sessions just yet.
How to Grow Your Practice
You'll find that it gets easier to do longer sessions over time.
It's at this point that you might begin challenging yourself with longer sessions. To do this, continue your daily mindfulness practice just as before. Continue practicing as long as you feel you can in each session, and over time, you’ll naturally increase your session length.
Alternatively, if you have a specific session length goal, here’s a more methodical way to achieve it:
1. Figure Out Your Average Session Length
Begin by using a stopwatch on your phone to time each session.
Start the timer at the beginning of your mindfulness session, and end it when you finish your session.
Then, write down the date and total session time (for example, “3:10” for three minutes and ten seconds).
At this point, you're still not concerned with making your sessions longer. Instead, you're capturing your Average Session Length. Your Average Session Length is a simple measurement of what's already happening. The goal here is to figure out how long your sessions are on average, without a goal in mind.
To get an accurate Average Session Length, continue to practice for as long or as short as you want in each session. After documenting 5-10 sessions, you'll see that you have an average session length. This equates to the total time that you've practiced divided by the number of sessions you've done.
2. Set a New (Achievable) Average Session Length Goal
The key to developing any skill is to challenge yourself with goals that are just outside your current ability.
Suppose that your average session length is five minutes. A reasonable Average Session Length Goal would be six or seven minutes. These incremental goals are just outside your current average session length of five minutes. The smallness of the new challenge increases your likelihood of success. It also prevents you from burning out over time.
3. Start Timing Your Sessions
To challenge yourself with longer sessions, this time, use a timer instead of a stopwatch.
Set your timer to your new Average Session Length Goal. For example, if your current average session length is five minutes, set a timer for five minutes.
Continue with your daily practice, now practicing daily for the duration of your new Average Session Length Goal.
After each session, continue to log the total amount of time you practiced for.
4. Increase Your Average Session Length Goal
Over time, your new daily average will now be six minutes (or your new target session time).
You'll also start to feel that six minutes is now too short. You might notice that the timer is going off while you’re still comfortably practicing.
This is when it's time to increase your Average Session Length Goal.
Remember to always increase by just a little bit. Each time you set a new daily session goal, it shouldn't overwhelm you. The goal should challenge you just enough to practice longer, but not make you want to stop.
What to Do When You Stop Practicing
Life will continue to challenge you with different routines, schedules, and demands.
Because of this, you may one day find yourself in a period when you've stopped practicing.
It may be for a few days, or a few weeks, or a few months.
When this happens, most people choose to stop practicing altogether. Stopping feels like a failure, and any motivation to continue practicing disappears.
Instead, if you find that you've stopped practicing, just begin again.
Like when you first started learning to practice, the key is to make it easy.
Just follow the steps from before:
Take a comfortable seat
Close your eyes
Place your hands on your lap
Take a few deep breaths, noticing what it feels like to breathe
Continue to breathe while paying attention to the sensations of breathing
If you notice that your mind has wandered to something else, bring your attention back to your breath
Continue steps 5. and 6. for as long as you choose
Starting a mindfulness practice is as simple as sitting and breathing.
Restarting a mindfulness practice is no different.
Just begin again.