Friday, October 17, 2008

Morning meditation vs Night meditation

Morning meditation:

Pros
1) You are fresh in the morning after a decent night's sleep. Your mind isn't filled with thoughts of the day's work. It's a clean slate unless you have got some pressing appointment during the day. But you can switch off that worrying mind just for those 20 0r 30 minutes and get a good start on the day.
2) Helps you be centred before you begin the day which ofcourse affects how you go about your day.

Cons
1) I don't think there are many cons. One disadvantage of meditating in the morning, specially if you are just getting into making this a habit is that you can skimp on the duration of meditation. This might be because you have to get going quickly because you woke up late or you have to prepare for a meeting, etc. But again, if the habit of early morning meditation is established, then this shouldn't be a problem.
I mean, you wouldn't skip brushing your teeth because you had to prepare for a meeting, would you?


Night Meditation:

Pros
1) It has helped me sleep better and sooner. As a graduate student, I find that it is easier to sleep late than early. What happens when you meditate after a tiring day is that because you are tired, your body goes into a recharging/relaxing mode and the brain gets the cue to trigger sleep and you feel sleepy.
2) I look forward to my night meditations because there is no time limit I have to follow (I don't have to get going for work) and it's also pretty quiet at say, 11:30 pm.

Cons
1) I wouldn't call this a con, but since we are limited to a pros vs cons discussion, I would say that if I meditate close to my sleep times, my meditation gets truncated because 10 minutes into the meditation, I am very sleepy. Almost like, my head is going to hit the floor if I don't exercise control.

I would view the above text as a healthy comparison of morning vs evening/night meditation. I just started meditating regularly 3 months ago, so I have found that a morning and night meditation is pretty fun-tastic.
Sometimes when I meditate during the middle of the day, I feel sleepy immediately. This is like a signal to me (the ego, the mind, etc) that my body is running on a sleep deficit. I like those reminders.

3 comments:

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ദേവ് ഗൌരി said...

Thanks... i was actually looking for the best time to do meditation.. bcoz i'm a late riser. so i prefer meditating at night.

Unknown said...

thnx..!! this was really helpful