Three-Minute Morning Meditations

You do not need an hour. You do not need a cushion.

You do not need to chant in Sanskrit or burn incense, though I happen to like the smell of it drifting through the room while I sit. Controlled studies on brief mindfulness sessions, some as short as a few minutes a day, have found measurable drops in stress hormone levels and shifts in brain activity associated with calmer emotional regulation, results that used to be assumed to need much longer practice to achieve.

I wrote myself a note once, the kind you write when you badly need to believe it. I lovingly release all diseases and negativities.

It sat propped against a bundle of dried herbs for weeks before I actually read it properly instead of just glancing past it on my way out the door. Three minutes is short enough that there's no excuse left standing.

No time, no space, no proper cushion, none of it holds up against three minutes. It's also short enough that most days I don't manage to make my mind go anywhere near quiet in the time available.

I sit anyway. Most mornings it doesn't feel like much while it's happening.

It's only afterward, hours later, that I notice the difference between the days I did it and the days I didn't. The stillness isn't really the achievement.

Showing up for three minutes, on the days it works and the days it very much doesn't, is the entire practice. Everything else is just what happens to be in the room while you do it.