The Basic Minute

One-Moment Meditation: Stillness for People on the Go begins with an exercise called The Basic Minute. With the Basic Minute, you can learn to experience a quiet mind – free of thinking and doing – in just a minute.

Although the purpose of One-Moment Meditation is for you to experience deep peace in just a moment, we start with a minute because a moment goes by so quickly that you’d have to be a master to notice one. A minute, however, is like a moment with handles on it. You know where it begins and ends, so it’s easier to grasp.

Try to do the Basic Minute in a quiet place, once a day. The only equipment you will need is a timer (a kitchen timer is ideal). You may think it’s silly to use an alarm for just one minute, but it really is necessary. The alarm helps you to forget about time, while also ensuring that you don’t drift off. It’s essential that, for just a minute, you yield control of time completely—and this requires an alarm.

You can do the Basic Minute several times a day, but please don’t do it for longer than a minute. The purpose of this exercise is to learn that you really can tap a deep experience of peacefulness in a very short amount of time ... so if you do it longer, you’re cheating.
 

The Basic Minute

1.      Create a place of solitude.

2.      Sit down.

3.      Place your legs in a relaxed but fixed position.

4.      Sit up.

5.      Set your alarm for exactly one minute.

6.      Place your hands in a relaxed but fixed position.

7.      Close your eyes.

8.      Allow your mind to settle into your breathing.

9.      When the alarm sounds, stop.

Once you’ve mastered the Basic Minute, One-Moment Meditation teaches you how to make it more flexible and more useful, with exercises such as the Portable Minute, The Emergency Minute, The Bonus Minute, and the Surprise Minute.

You then learn how to reduce the length of the Minute gradually, until you can get the same sense of equanimity in just a moment. With one-moment meditation, you can experience peacefulness wherever you are–and stillness even when you’re on the go.