Why Every Meditation Session Needs a Timer, Not a Stopwatch
Attempting to meditate and not even establishing some form of time limit is one of the most widespread beginner mistakes in meditation. The outcome can be expected: the first few minutes you are struggling over how long you have been sitting, open your eyes to see what is on your phone, re-close, wonder, and soon enough the time-anxiety, rather than the meditative session, is happening. This is eradicated by a special meditation timer. You decide the time, press start and truly leave the anxiety of counting the time- because the bell will inform you when the period is complete.
This is psychologically significant because meditation requires you to exercise control loss: even control of time. A timer is not a crutch. The scaffolding is what allows the practice to take place. It is not that you are not taking responsibility of your time; it is just that you delegate a single task (time tracking) in order to have your entire time devoted to the practice itself.
The Research Case for Daily Meditation
Mindfulness meditation has a growing evidence base since the original Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) Program developed by Jon Kabat-Zinn of the 1970s. Repeated peer-reviewed research results have consistently shown that meditation practice in regular use lowers cortisol levels (the main stressing hormone), enhances emotional control by thickening the prefrontal cortex, lowers the default mode network (the part of the brain linked to mind-wandering and rumination), and/or increases the quality of sleep. A meta-analysis study published in JAMA Internal Medicine discovered that mindfulness meditation programs resulted in moderate levels of improvement in anxiety, depression and pain. Most importantly, these advantages were discovered at the low levels of up to 8 minutes a day, which is far much more feasible by most individuals.
Combining Meditation with Physical Recovery
Meditation and high intensity exercises are good companions. It is recommended to do a 5-10 minutes seated meditation following a HIIT workout or Tabata session to jumpstart the process of restoring a parasympathetic (rest-and-digest) state to your nervous system, thereby quickening the recovery process and shortening the residual stress response. Meditation also works well alongside work periods: experiment with 10 minutes of meditation followed by a ten-minute deep focus period in our Pomodoro Timer and you will feel the difference in the quality of your concentration when you are calm before you start working.
