When do you meditate: Morning, afternoon, or night?
What I’ve learnt so far in maintaining a daily practice.
I’ve always been a big fan of meditating in the morning, usually after some form of exercise. It sets a good tone for the day, and it feels great to achieve some Quadrant 2 activities before the craziness of the day sets in.
However, in the past 3 months, I started experimenting with meditating at night, mostly a seated practice doing body scans, before bedtime. To my surprise, it was easier to settle into the session, and there is little to no drowsiness even though it’s night time.
There is a sense of coming “home” when I sit on my cushion at the end of the day. It almost feels like a long exhalation, a sigh of relief.
Maybe as compared to a morning practice, I don’t feel as hurried, not needing to complete my practice so that I can jump to my next agenda.
The meditation sessions at night feel a bit more settled, quiet in general. A pleasant side effect that I wasn’t anticipating. Because of this, the sessions are becoming more enjoyable and time moves a bit faster.
That said, I still am a big fan of starting the day off with some form of mindfulness or grounding practice. While I’ve moved my formal seated meditation practice to the night, I still practice mindful movements, breathwork, and gratitude exercises to begin my mornings.
Different meditation techniques have their own prescribed best time for meditation. I’ve also experimented with those, and haven’t found my sweet spot amongst those timings.
What has worked for you? Some say that any time you get to practise is a good time–and I agree! While I previously thought that I wouldn’t be physically alert enough for a night meditation, I found otherwise, coupled with a few additional benefit that I wasn’t expecting. So for now, I will be sticking with a night meditation as my formal seated practice.
Feel free to leave your comments and questions. You can also follow Have A Breather on Instagram where I share tips on meditation and breathwork.
