Is 10 Minutes of Meditation a Day really Enough?
In today’s ever-faster-paced world of hacks, it seems like nothing’s safe from being delivered via app. Meditation is one of the more ironic examples of this. Can an ancient practice meant to help people slow down and tune in work in such a hypermodern way?
Overall, the research-based evidence regarding the benefits of meditation is compelling, if not conclusive. It suggests that meditation might help people deal with both mental and physical health issues, like depression, anxiety, and high blood pressure. It might also boost attention and concentration levels, and even appears to help addicts in recovery.
In short, meditation offers a lot of apparent, research-supported benefits, although none are guaranteed to work the same for everyone. And, of course, there’s always the placebo effect—if you believe meditation is doing something for you, it might.
How Much Do You Need?
A couple of studies have focused on short-term meditation practices in particular. One conducted on 30-minute meditations discovered that subjects experienced fewer symptoms of anxiety and depression after eight weeks of daily meditation. Another found that stress levels were reduced after just three days of 25-minute meditations.
These studies focused on meditations that were longer than the 10-minutes sessions offered on most apps. However, a third focused on 15-minute meditations, which appeared to help people make better decisions. This offers great promise for shorter practices.
While studies abound on the effectiveness of meditation, there aren’t nearly as many on super-short sessions. According to the study we mentioned above, it might work, but more research is definitely needed.
There’s also a concern that the meditation studies that get published aren’t necessarily the most accurate. After all, it’s much easier to publish a study with positive, exciting findings about meditation than one that suggests it doesn’t work. This can create a misleading body of published research.
For example, Daniel Goleman and Richard Davidson, the authors of Altered Traits: Science Reveals How Meditation Changes Your Mind, Brain, and Body, “worry that too many studies lack rigor or that some well-done studies are never published because they don’t have positive findings.”
Their science-based book, however, does argue for the power of meditation, at least when people commit to it long-term. Even given their caution about the research on it, these authors still believe meditation can work.
So, while meditating for just 10 minutes each day certainly won’t hurt, if you want to reap more of the apparent benefits, you’re better off doing 30-minute sessions.
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Reference:
https://www.lifesavvy.com/15068/is-10-minutes-of-meditation-a-day-really-enough/