An old saying goes like this:
“If you can’t find 10 minutes in the day to meditate, make it a twenty.”
This goes on to show that how essential meditation can be for a balanced lifestyle. That if you can’t find ten minutes due to your hectic routine, you need more to reassess your priorities. You need to press pause and have some time for your own self before indulging in otherworldly chaos.
Overpower the negativities of life while you put yourself first. Being mindful of your body and its needs is vital. However, even more than that, meditation allows you to put yourself first, incorporate healthy activities within your schedule and manage your stress, all in one go.
Being constantly disturbed by overwhelming thoughts, managing stress and responsibilities of adulthood, and taking care of your health all this time can be like juggling on a single foot – one missed step and all comes crashing down. That is what makes meditation worthwhile. Not only does it allow you the balance to juggle all these things, but it prepares you to handle the consequences if something goes adversely.
According to one Harvard study, an average human spends almost 50% of their waking hours lost in thought. No wonder that overthinking and anxiety have become so common, given how half of the time we are awake, we let our minds astray. This constant mind-wandering has become a direct cause of unhappiness.
While absolutely meditation isn’t the answer to every problem you may face, and mental health isn’t something that should be addressed based on whims, meditation does conquer your mind and intrusive thoughts for the better.
According to a survey conducted by the US National Library of Medicine, 76% of respondents say that mediation helps them improve their overall wellness, 60% say it helps boost energy, and 50% say it helps with memory retention. Thus, it can easily be deduced that meditation is a power-packed punch against our daily reservations that we indulge subconsciously.
5 Best Times to Meditate
While research has repeatedly shown that mediation is the best course of action for both mental and physical wellness, experts have also deliberated upon the best time to meditate. However, in order to accommodate the likelihood of so many people who would like meditation to become a part of their lives, experts suggest the following five instances as the best times to meditate.
1. First Thing in the Morning
If your goal with meditation is to make it a part of your daily routine and you have some me-time right after waking up, then this is the best time for you to meditate. Not only does it set the tone for the entire day that is to transpire, but it also helps alleviate your senses to better comprehend the events of the day. You can use the early-morning meditation as a chance to step outside and breathe in the fresh morning air – pure oxygen bliss right under the trees.
Moreover, you can destress the previous day’s events, giving you a nice clean slate to work upon as the day goes by. Additionally, nobody is mandating or regulating your meditation experience, and it is all on you. So you are free to explore whichever way works for you. For instance, you can do yoga outside, do a quick meditation session on your balcony or patio, do breathing exercises in the shower, and so and so forth.
The best part is that you can start by trying out these different meditation ways and techniques on your own one by one and see what works for you. If a certain technique seems to be working, the idea is to stick to it and prolong the session every now and then for extra rejuvenation. You can even join an early morning yoga group if you would like to do it with other people and make it a socializing activity for you.
In fact, according to some experts, the best time to practice yoga and meditation is around ‘ambrosial hours.’ This is the time when the sun is at a 60° angle to Earth, and it is two and a half hours prior to sunrise. It gives you ample time to indulge in a soothing meditation session, including yoga and other exercises in the regime, cultivating both your mental and physical health.
2. Midday Meditation
Next in line, we have midday meditation which works best for people who require a quick yet daily meditation routine. It is best suited for people who work a daytime job, and the daily 9 to 5 grind doesn’t leave them the energy to contribute to a meditation session at the start or by the end of the day. Hence, a quick meditation session during the day works just fine helps them maintain their daily schedule while refocusing and being mindful towards their overall wellness.
Unless you have an instructor or are following a virtual coach, you are on your own when it comes to your midday meditation adventures. So you can explore all the possibilities to find what works for you. For instance, you can even meditate sitting right at your work desk. However, finding a quiet spot at work or somewhere nearby should do the trick if you find that too intrusive.
Moreover, you can easily search about quick meditation sessions online, and it would provide a wide range of breathing exercises and other ways to start off it. Most of these activities help readjust your focus and bring forth your attention span to carry on throughout the day without napping off. After all, it is better to meditate than take a nap, as meditation aims to alert your senses and make you more awake to go about your day.
Hence, midday meditation is also a great course of action for people who struggle to stay up and focus on work after lunch hours. It helps to align your thoughts with your work as it takes away the exhaustion and drowsiness. It greatly helps increase your productivity and makes you more active in participating in creative projections of ideas and the awareness of others.
3. At the End of the Workday
This is our personal favorite time of meditation, as we strongly believe that it gives you the motive to include meditation in your everyday lifestyle. The thought process behind this is that we all go through good days and bad days, extremely busy days and days that are just too laid back. When you include meditation in your daily life and set the time of doing it every day after you are done for the day, it allows you greater self-reflection, acceptance of your actions, and other people’s too.
Meditating sessions like these can take place at your home after you come back from work, or you can join yoga and meditation classes and go there after work. Either way, you will find a healthy break in the middle of your workday and your personal life that isn’t necessarily a gap but a bridge of sorts that makes your transition from workday to personal life easy. In fact, there are specific breathing techniques for meditation just to achieve this goal.
That’s why meditating after work hours works best for people who struggle with putting their work lives and personal lives separate. For instance, people who tend to personalize stressors at work or take work back home and struggle with boundaries. Meditation helps them draw the line between work life and personal life while providing a healthy balance for both.
The meditation sessions will help alleviate any intrusive thoughts you tend to take back home and overthink. The chances of you ruining your personal space, relationships, and boundaries with activities at work would be lowered because you will meditate them away. You will recognize and differentiate between what is important at work and what should be prioritized instead at home than merging the two.
4. Every Time You Are Stressed
This type of meditation works best for people who might not commit to daily meditation sessions or not be able to make meditation a part of their regular lifestyle. Hence, it greatly helps for them to meditate the moment they feel the need, i.e., anytime they are stressed. Yes, meditation works as a cough medication for cough- you take it when you have a cough. Similarly, meditation acts as a de-stressor when you feel stressed.
You may have heard plenty of times that you should count to ten backward when you feel a deep sense of any emotion rising, particularly anger. Many people even suggest simply breathe in and out slowly to regain focus and take away any intrusive thoughts that might be stressing you out. These are not hacks but genuine meditation techniques taken out from proper meditation and yoga sessions for quick ones like these.
The main reason these techniques are so well-known and commonly used too is not that it is just a smart way of telling someone not to be overwhelmed. It is, in fact, the genuine reason that these techniques actually help you to calm down and distract yourself from whatever you are feeling in the heat of the moment. You can research and find various other techniques that help with quick ways of overcoming stress.
Fundamentally, it is better to meditate for a little bit than to not at all because you can’t find the time. That is why many experts encourage people to see the benefits of meditating, even if it means doing so just because you need to do so. It helps you calm your nerves, reassess your stance towards something, and make better use of intellect than to be overcome by emotion. Slowly but surely, you will start relying on your ways of calming yourself and may even make it a bigger part of your day than just a de-stressor.
5. Hike Up a Hill
Lastly, one of the best times to meditate is when you take up a hike to a hill or someplace elevated from the regular city span. Some people may even call this the best place to meditate, given how the fantastic city view spans in front of you, and you can just meditate and feel in control of all the chaos down below. Many people even relate it to the feeling of distance from their every life and just taking a break from their worldly affairs.
Hence, this meditating time is best for occasional meditation and for people who savor these moments as a much-needed break. In fact, the meditation session doesn’t have to begin once your hike ends. But the hike up the hill in itself is a meditation session for people as they are surrounded by nature, taking the day in, breathing becomes more focused, and there are fewer distractions too.
It is even better if you take a friend along with you and make it a joint expedition for both of you. It is always therapeutic to talk to a friend, take a break in the middle, and indulge in healthy activities with people you like. It makes the whole experience even over worthwhile and helps you stay motivated to look forward to such occasions happening. Gradually, you start loving the whole ordeal so much that you want to make it happen more often and include meditation in your common routine, like every weekend or twice a week.
It is all about finding the goal that why you want to mediate in the first place and stick to it to reinforce a habit. Once you have formed a habit, you will become more regular at it than not because your mind and body demand it. Hiking in itself is such a healthy exercise and combined with meditation. It makes it ten folds better.
Our Final Thoughts
Having established that meditation is vital to becoming a part of your daily lifestyle, you must wonder what the best time to meditate is. Because after all, if you are someone new to the whole meditation for wellness regime, then you obviously want to do it right and put your best foot forward to make the practice a routine activity. So, in conclusion, the best time to meditate is whenever you like. However, we hope the five times we have listed help you assess your meditation routine and find an even better way to commit to it. Cheers!
