Why you should meditate daily—and how to do it

This week marks 11 years of me meditating every day.

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Me meditating in my (parked) car this morning, because I was commuting to D.C.

This week’s question from a subscriber is...

“I don’t think I really need therapy, but I definitely have a lot of stress day to day. I’m a little worried about the self-sabotaging ways I’m dealing with it. What are some other, cheaper-than-therapy ways I can handle it better?”

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Well, my friend, I don’t like to show off about my meditation practice, but I’ll use this opportunity to give myself some flowers: This week marks 11 years of doing it every day.

I started precisely because it calmed my stress. An ex-partner took me to a meditation class with Tara Brach, the renowned teacher in the Washington, D.C., area. Brach guided us for 20 minutes and then gave a talk about some of the finer details of meditation practice. I felt like a different person on the way out the door. Like years of tension in my body had faded. Like the near-constant worrying in my mind had silenced. Like the existential heaviness that had followed me around since being a teenager had lifted.

But the next morning, it was all back. So, I eventually committed to meditating daily. I never wanted to lose touch with that sense of calm and satisfaction that I’d only felt before in fleeting moments when I was with the right person or taking the right amount of the right drug.

I started with five minutes at lunchtime. I’d find an empty meeting room in my company’s office (this was before I was a therapist), close the door, find a YouTube clip of Brach leading a meditation, close my eyes, and follow along (I also recommend the free app Insight Timer). Some days I was too busy and had to fit it in just before bed.

Eventually, I stretched to 15 minutes, then 20, and now 35. After a year or so, it felt like I didn’t need the guided meditations anymore because I’d memorized the basic outlines of the instructions.

This is all to say that I recommend some sort of daily practice for regulating your nervous system. Meditation is my jam. Yoga or breathing exercises might be yours. But I can’t recommend enough sitting in silence with your eyes closed noticing sounds and the sensations of your breath and energy pulsating through your body.

Often people say they can’t get their mind to stop, so they quickly give up. I’ve been doing this for 11 years and still can’t get my mind to stop.