How Long Should I Meditate? Tips to Practice Mindfulness

The length of a meditation session should feel achievable and motivating. The optimal timeframe for a meditation session is ten to twenty minutes. When you first begin your meditation practice, meditate for a few minutes at a time and gradually build up to the ten-minute mark. Beginners can use a guided meditation or try a walking meditation set for a specific length of time.

Jon Kabat-Zinn—professor emeritus of the University of Massachusetts Medical School’s Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society—posits that any time you can dedicate to mindfulness meditation is worth it. “Well, the thought may be arising in your mind, like, ‘My God…what a giant commitment this must be. I don't have the time to commit to something this grandiose,’ so to speak. And that’s a very valid thought. Here’s another thought to, in some sense, parry it. You got nothing but time. The whole question is, how are you going to use the time that you have?”

How long it takes to see the results of meditation vary from person to person. Increasing the length of time and frequency can increase the benefits of meditation. Typically, it takes several weeks to months of daily practice to realize the full effects of meditation.

Regular meditation sessions yield the best results. Adding meditation to your daily life is a powerful way to reduce stress, connect with your body, reset your mind, and promote overall well-being. If you miss days here and there, simply return to your scheduled practice when possible.

The length of a meditation session can depend on the type you practice. Consider the common types of meditation:

1. 1. Breath awareness: Breath awareness is a meditative practice that focuses on breathing, using deep inhalation and exhalation to push out intrusive or banal thoughts. This meditation style aims to prevent the mind from wandering, allowing you to clear your thoughts and establish emotional stability during your session.
2. 2. Guided: Guided meditation refers to an instructor-led meditation session, performed live during a meditation course or via prerecorded audio, which you can listen to online or using a meditation app on your phone. The guider speaks in a soothing voice, guiding the listener through their meditation. They may instruct the meditator to do a body scan (mentally visiting the various parts of your body), hold their breaths for a certain number of seconds, or form specific visualizations in their minds.
3. 3. Kundalini: Part of the popular yoga practice, Kundalini meditation uses a combination of deep breathing, mantras, and hand movements, and mantra meditation to wake and distribute dormant energy in the body.
4. 4. Loving-kindness: Loving-kindness meditation, or Metta meditation, centers compassion, directing the meditator to feel love and kindness toward everyone in their lives, even those they consider their enemies. The meditation’s goal is to cultivate feelings of love and kindness that can erase the negative thoughts and feelings that cause stress.
5. 5. Mindfulness: Mindful meditation is a form of meditation that focuses on staying in the present moment and being completely aware of your body and the surrounding environment. This form of meditation can entail a quick check of your current public surroundings or a deep, quiet observation of your room at home. The goal of mindfulness meditation is to achieve a relaxed state of awareness without judging your thoughts, body, or environment.
6. 6. Progressive: Progressive relaxation, or body scan meditation, focuses on scanning the body for areas of stress or tension. In this meditation technique, users focus on body awareness, starting at one end, slowly combing their way through, and releasing each point of physical stress as they identify them.
7. 7. Transcendental: Transcendental meditation, created by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, uses the repetition of a silent mantra to help rise above oneself. This meditation practice introduces bubbles of thought into the mind gradually, causing a state of de-stress and relaxation.
8. 8. Vipassanā: With links to early Buddhism, vipassanā meditation uses concentration and awareness to help push out mental impurities and strip away the illusions that muddy the way we see the world. Liberation and self-transformation are the primary goals of vipassanā, commonly practiced by Buddhists in parts of Southeast Asia. In Buddhism, vipassanā (also spelled vipaśyanā) is a term that means “insight” or “without seeing.”
9. 9. Walking: Walking meditation involves the user switching between walking and long periods of sitting meditation (also known as zazen). The practitioner takes a few steps for a certain amount of time, hyper-focusing on the body’s movements and its physical sensations with every step.
10. 10. Zen: Zen meditation is a Buddhist tradition that allows the meditator insight into how their mind works. This meditation style is a common spiritual practice in Buddhism that uses pointed observation to help the meditator process and address core issues, providing clarity and increasing compassion.

Find something comfortable to sit or lie on, grab a MasterClass Annual Membership, and dial into the present moment with Jon Kabat-Zinn, the father of the Western mindfulness movement. From formal meditation exercises to examinations of the science behind mindfulness, Jon will prepare you for the most important practice of them all: life itself.