Starting a spiritual practice routine is one of the best things you can do to support both your awakening and your general well-being. This article outlines how to create a spiritual practice routine that’s customized to your unique needs. It describes a general framework that can be used for many types of spiritual practice, with meditation as a foundation.
Prepare for Spiritual Practice
Spiritual practice requires some free time and energy. If your life is completely chaotic and out of control, you may find spiritual practice difficult—and in fact, for now, it may be appropriate to focus your attention on meeting needs more basic than spiritual growth.
If your life has some structure and your basic needs are being met, you can start preparing for spiritual practice by cultivating vitality through basic self-care. Start developing habits that support your well-being (like exercise, healthful eating, and so forth) and let go of habits that don’t.
We all deal with emotional pain from time to time; if emotional pain interferes with spiritual practice or other aspects of your life, seek psychotherapy or other modes of emotional healing before (or as) you start creating a spiritual practice routine.
Also, be aware that spiritual practice can allow latent emotional issues to surface. For this reason, I believe that psychotherapy can be an important and useful adjunct to a spiritual practice routine—even for people who have no major psychological problems. If you can find a psychotherapist who has at least some familiarity with meditation and spiritual awakening, that’s even better.
Make Meditation a Daily Habit
Meditation is the workhorse of spiritual practice. Meditation can be used to cultivate many faculties of awakening, including vitality, mindfulness, compassion, insight, and intuition; that’s why I suggest you make meditation the foundation of your spiritual practice routine. (To get started with meditation, see this article on how to meditate.)
If you’re new to meditation, I suggest you make cultivating mindfulness the initial focus of your meditation sessions. Mindfulness is a prerequisite for insight, and it’s also helpful for cultivating vitality, compassion, and intuition.
Meditation is most effective when done consistently, so it’s important to get into a daily habit of meditating. That means every day (with rare exceptions). Start with a schedule you can do consistently, even if it’s one brief session per day. (When I first started meditating, I started with one five-minute session per day.)
Meditating once per day is better than nothing, but meditating three times a day tends to work really well. Early in the morning and late at night tend to be times when we’re less likely to be disturbed, so these are generally good times to meditate. I try to meditate in the morning soon after I wake up, in the evening right before bed, and once in the middle of the day.
The benefit of having a short period of time between sessions is that to some extent, it allows you to pick up where you left off from the previous session; this way, your sessions can build on each other and the benefits of practice can accumulate more quickly. If you let too much time elapse between sessions, your mind and body will start forgetting what you accomplished in the previous session, and you’ll have to start over again with each session.
In a retreat, you might have many long meditation sessions per day with short breaks in between. While most of us won’t be making our entire lives into spiritual practice retreats, having a few practice sessions per day (rather than one) allows you to get some of the benefits of a retreat in the midst of daily life.
As you get comfortable with your routine, gradually increase the frequency and length of your meditation sessions. If you can get to a point at which you’re doing three sessions per day, where each session is 30 to 60 minutes long, this will get you a long way.
Consider Practicing with Others
Some practices require practice partners or groups, but most practices can be done either alone or with others. Try practicing with others occasionally, to see how you like that. (However, don’t make your daily practice dependent on having other people to practice with.)
I’ve sometimes enjoyed weekly meditation sessions with groups of local meditators. It may take some searching to find a local group that you resonate with. You don’t necessarily need a group whose focus matches yours exactly; you just need a group that’s open-minded enough to let you do your own practices (or a group that does practices that you want to learn).
Another option is online groups. The benefit of an online group (versus an in-person group) is that it can be easier to find an online group whose interests match yours; the drawback is that the “bandwidth” of connection is often a lot lower in an online group than in an in-person group. However, technological advances have been improving the online group experience, and these improvements are likely to continue.
In my experience, when I’m meditating concurrently with others, my meditation sessions tend to be deeper. That’s been true both of in-person group sessions and of sessions I’ve done remotely via technology.
Aside from the meditation experience itself, there are other benefits of connecting with groups of like-minded meditators; being in a group makes it easier to connect with peers and mentors who can support your practice. Being in a group can create opportunities for you to contribute to the well-being of others, as well.
Competitiveness tends to be a problem when meditating in groups; for instance, it’s easy to start feeling competitive about how long you can sit in a particular posture. Don’t succumb to these competitive feelings. Learn a few different meditation postures so you can change to a new posture when you get uncomfortable. If the group frowns on changing posture mid-session, consider finding a less rigid group to sit with.
Take Regular Retreats
In addition to your daily meditation routine, it’s a good idea to make time for retreats occasionally, as well. A retreat is simply an extended period of time reserved for spiritual practice (extended meaning longer than what’s usual for you in your daily practice routine). A retreat doesn’t have to take long. For instance, I do a mini-retreat every couple weeks in which I reserve a morning, afternoon, or evening for spiritual practice.
Retreats don’t have to be complicated or expensive. If your home environment supports it, you don’t even have to leave home to do a retreat; I am a big fan of do-it-yourself, stay-at-home retreats. I’ve done a few day-long and weekend retreats at home that have been quite deep and effective. As of yet, I don’t have experience with longer retreats, though I look forward to exploring them at some point in the future.
To plan a stay-at-home retreat, choose a period of time when others in your household won’t be around—or, at least, a time when others can give you some time and space to yourself. Plan a rough schedule in advance, with time set aside for a variety of spiritual practices, meals, breaks, and rest. By planning a schedule in advance, you won’t need to make decisions in the midst of your retreat, so you’ll be able to focus on your practices better. Consider cooking your meals ahead of time, so all you need to do is heat them up.
Rest is an important part of a retreat. When you find yourself feeling fatigued, it’s time to take a break. Go for a walk, or do something else peaceful that doesn’t require much effort.
One caution about doing retreats on your own: solo retreats are more intense than retreats with others because interaction with others is a significant way that we regulate our emotions. When you’re doing a retreat on your own, for the duration of your retreat, you’ll lose an emotional support system that you probably take for granted—so be prepared to work with feelings that are more intense than usual. It’s okay to end your retreat early if you find you’ve bitten off more than you can chew.
Integrate Informal Practice into Your Life
So far, we’ve been talking about formal practice (sessions set aside specifically for meditation or other forms of spiritual practice). Your spiritual practice routine can (and should) also include informal practice interspersed in your daily life (for instance, noticing the sound of the rain on the roof as you cook dinner).
The benefit of informal practice is that it allows you to maintain momentum between formal practice sessions. It also allows you to harvest some of the benefits of spiritual practice in the midst of your daily life.
Integrate Additional Practices into Your Routine
There’s more to spiritual practice than meditation. After the meditation component of your spiritual practice routine is solidly in place, consider adding other practices into your routine, as well. (You may also choose to do other practices instead of meditation if meditation isn’t appropriate for you for any reason. Meditation will be the foundation of most people’s practice routines, but everyone’s different—so if meditation isn’t working for you, try something else.)
You can create different schedules for different practices. These days, in addition to meditation, I do physical exercise (cardiovascular exercise and weight lifting) every other day, yoga and qigong on the days when I don’t exercise, and ecstatic movement and breathwork on my mini-retreats every other week. You can do most practices either alone or with others. You can integrate any of your practices into your retreats, and different retreats can be focused on different practices.
Tune Your Routine and Your Practices to Your Needs
Creating a practice routine isn’t a one-off task; it’s important to periodically assess your practice routine and your practices and adjust them to meet your changing needs. If your routine isn’t working for you, adjust it. Learn how to work your edges, take a balanced approach practice, and match your practices to your state of mind to avoid getting stuck.
Sources
My views on stay-at-home retreats have been informed by my work with Buddhist meditation teacher George Draffan.
Photo colour light painting by Creativity103 is used under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.