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Letter to a Busy Parent: 4 Meditation Tips
Recently I received the following question:
“It feels difficult to have time to practice when you are the father of small children. Do you have any good tips for setting aside time, favorable times of the day, etc.?”
Here is an edited version of what I wrote back.
Being a parent of young children can really be a challenge.
I have a young daughter myself. She is four, so I know that the time constraint that many parents face is very real. With this time constraint, you may feel that you are already starting out with one strike against you in terms of maintaining a regular meditation practice. Then when you add on the inevitability of unexpected changes to “your plan to meditate”, the restriction of time becomes even greater.
The whole idea of feeling pressured to meditate or feeling pressured while meditating takes away from the pleasure of meditation in the first place.
The reward system that is built into the Unified Mindfulness techniques is interrupted, and then even the idea of meditation could become burdensome. The pressure to fit yet another “thing to do” into your already crammed schedule turns meditation into something dull, and the desire to meditate diminishes.
