The One Minute Meditation

After falling away from meditation for many years I have started to return to it.  My full meditation sessions are great but it has dawned on me that I can do short meditations as well.  My favorite is waiting for the computer to startup.  I close my eyes and meditate for a moment.  System startup meditation is almost a full minute or more.  Another good one is waiting for a spreadsheet to open.  This takes at least ten seconds and I make sure I don’t come out of my mini-session too early to see the annoying screen still generating.

Your boss can’t tell you’re doing it as long as you are facing away from the doorway and you don’t actually fall asleep and start snoring.  Simply maintain the computer position with hands on keyboard poised to type, keep the slouch, shut your eyes, take a breath, think a nice thought and let the tension drain out.  Don’t open your eyes too soon or you are likely to see some annoying screen still developing.

Another one of my favorite ten second meditations is waiting for my flash drive to open.  This one is probably worth more like 30 seconds, don’t cut it too short, keep your eyes closed, think of something nice, and give the stick plenty of extra time to wake up.  At first it might seem like you’re wasting time but you’re really using this dead time for a much better purpose.  The eye rest alone is worth it.  Some common sense advice I have heard often is to rest your eyes every ten minutes, especially in the dry winter air when dry-eye syndrome is at its worst. People on the computer tend to focus longer and blink much less, so the benefit of closing your eyes is really a preventative health measure.

So turn the anxiety and tension of response time drag into a pleasure; look forward to logging in to the network or opening a slow loading application because you know you are going to get at least a full minute rest for that.

Perhaps I take my favorite mini meditation after rushing to catch to the train.  After running across town and through the station to arrive on time, I crash into my seat, drop my stuff, close my eyes and say the Lord’s Prayer.  That just seems like the perfect mantra at the perfect time.