How Long Can You Sit Quietly By Yourself?
Use these tips to dissolve resistance and enjoy the many benefits of sitting quietly by yourself
Does the idea of sitting still for any length of time disconcert you?
If so, you’re normal. Most people dislike being alone with their own mind.
When people were ask to sit with their thoughts for 6–15 minutes in a series of studies conducted at the University of Virginia by psychologist Timothy Wilson, most said it wasn’t enjoyable and it was hard to concentrate.
In one study of the series, the majority of men preferred to self-administer a mild electric shock rather than sit quietly with their own thoughts for the full 15-minute period.
You could just leave it at that, thinking, “Sitting quietly is too hard. It just isn’t for me.”
But sitting quietly brings many benefits. Maybe there’s a way to outwit resistance and reap the positives that come from learning to sit quietly by yourself.
Let’s take a look.
The Many Benefits of Sitting Quietly
The philosopher Blaise Pascal believed:
“All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”
I agree with Pascal. Sitting quietly is the starting point for getting to know oneself, which is the basis for becoming a better person. And, becoming a better person is the foundation for creating a more compassionate and enlightened world.
To zoom back in from the big picture, these are some of the other benefits I’ve personally discovered from sitting quietly alone by myself:
- Quiet nourishes your nervous system.
- Quiet helps you let go of unnecessary activity.
- Quiet enhances creativity.
- Quiet can improve focus and productivity.
- Quiet gives you a break from sensory overload.
- Quiet turns down the static so you can tap into your intuition and connect with your innermost wisdom.
- Quiet creates space in which you can tune into your body’s messages, potentially averting future health problems.
- Quiet allows new solutions to arise so you’ll be able to handle problems or situations differently.
- Quiet promotes spaciousness and humor, so you’ll be less perturbed by all the craziness of modern life. And people, too.
I bet you would like some of that goodness, wouldn’t you? So let’s look at how to get past resistance.
7 Simple Ways to Sit Quietly
“There’s more to life than increasing its speed .”— Mahatma Gandhi
You don’t have be a meditator to sit quietly. Anyone can give it a try.
But how do you trick resistance?
Following are easy ways to integrate quiet into your daily life. They won’t confront you with the terror of sitting quietly in a room by yourself for 15 minutes. Therefore, they may not arouse resistance.
To start, you can try one or more for a minute or two. Resistance won’t even notice!
- Sit quietly after a meal to allow for proper digestion.
- Sit quietly and give your full attention to someone else.
- Sit quietly in awe and wonder under the night sky.
- Sit quietly and listen to the sound of rain, surf, or wind.
- Sit quietly and feel the sensation of warmth on your body or the solidity of the earth beneath your feet.
- Sit quietly in your car while driving. Yes (gasp!), that means turning off the radio.
- Sit or lay quietly and be aware of the rising and falling of your belly as you breath in and out.
This isn’t cheating!
In the first level of mindfulness meditation, you use an object as a support for staying in the present moment. The object could be:
- Your thoughts or emotions—simply being aware of them as they arise and dissolve, without thinking about them.
- A physical object (like a stone, a flower, or a Buddha image) upon which you lightly rest your gaze
- A sensory experience: what you hear, see, smell, taste, or feel physically. For example, when you work with sound, you become aware of whatever sound touches your ear rather than selecting your favorite music.
The secret is to focus lightly on whatever object you choose—your digestion, the stars in the sky, your belly rising and falling. If you focus too tightly, you’ll bring tension instead of ease.
You can use the wisdom of mindfulness to help you sit quietly even if you never intend to do formal meditation.
The untrained mind wants to be busy. So you give it something to do—focus on an object—as an alternative to thinking or resisting. The seven options listed above are far better than an electric shock, don’t you think?
If you like the idea of sitting quietly by yourself and the potential benefits it may bring, start out using any of the above seven methods for just a minute or two at a time. Then gradually add another minute until you can sit comfortably for five or ten minutes at a time.
Tendencies like resistance, restlessness, sleepiness, fear, and perfectionism may come up. Respond with a sense of humor instead of fixating on them as a problem. In time, these fears and emotions will dissolve so don’t take them too seriously.
Just sit quietly in the present moment. You can focus on an object as described above. If your mind wanders, just bring it back to the present moment.
Thoughts Are Not the Enemy
When you try to sit quietly, at first, it may seem like you have a million more thoughts than ever before. They were always there. You just never noticed until now.
According to a 2020 study published in Nature Communications, the average person has more than 6,000 thoughts in a single day.
Don’t lose heart. The more you sit quietly by yourself, the more you thoughts will begin to slow down.
Gradually, you’ll sense more space between you and your thoughts as well. They’re don’t feel quite as close as before. So, they’re less likely to grab you and take you on a thought expedition.
This takes time, but if you make it a practice to regularly sit quietly by yourself, you’ll get there.
Thoughts are not the enemy, whether your aim is to simply sit quietly or to meditate. As the contemporary Buddhist teacher Mingyur Rinpoche says:
“Thinking is the natural activity of the mind. Meditation is not about stopping your thoughts. Meditation is simply a process of resting the mind in its natural state, which is open to and naturally aware of thoughts, emotions, and sensations as they occur. The mind is like a river, and, as with a river, there’s no point in trying to stop its flow. …But that doesn’t mean you have to be a slave to whatever your mind produces.”
As you sit quietly, just be aware of your thoughts without following them with more thoughts. Be aware of thoughts as they move by like a train moving through a train station. You don’t have to catch every train, do you?
Most people believe they are their thoughts and emotions. But, there’s a pure awareness — ever present — behind all the transitory chatter and clutter of your mind. Otherwise, how would you even know when you have a thought?
Rest in this awareness instead of getting caught by the thoughts, emotions, and sensations that pass by.
Of course, you’ll get lost in thoughts from time-to-time. When you discover your mind has wandered far away, just bring it back to the present moment. It’s as simple as that!
With time, you’ll see that thoughts and emotions get tired of being ignored. If you don’t engage, they’ll dissolve on their own. That’s when you begin to taste peace and freedom.
When you’re able to be still in the present moment, aware of thoughts, emotions, and sensations, but not attached to them, you’ve learned to sit quietly by yourself. That is also mindfulness. That is also meditation.
Too Busy to Sit Quietly?
“If you’re too busy to sit still for 10 minutes, you need to sit still for an hour.” — Zen Proverb
Why would you need an hour, if you can’t sit quietly for ten minutes? I don’t know what was in the author’s mind, but here are five possibilities that come to mine:
- You’re running on adrenalin. So, it will take an hour for your body to calm down.
- You’re plagued by restlessness. You don’t know how to overcome the habit of busyness. You may even be addicted to it.
- Your self-esteem depends upon being busy and the external validation you receive as a result.
- You’re afraid to look into yourself. Busyness saves you from this terror.
- Your priorities are messed up. You take the impermanent to be permanent and invest all your time in it with nothing left to spare.
Most importantly, I think it means if you’re too busy to sit quietly, you need it more than anyone else. You don’t have to start with an hour, however. Just start with one or two minutes using one of the practices I gave above.
Final Thoughts
As we can see from the studies I cited at the start of this article, it’s not easy to sit quietly in a room by yourself. But there are many benefits as well as a sense of personal power and freedom that come from cultivating this ability.
You can beat resistance or at least whittle away at it by:
- Practicing stillness in everyday situations at first.
- Begin with small increments of time (one or two minutes) and build from there
- Even if your mind is busy at first, know that with time and practice thoughts will gradually settled down.
Sitting quietly by myself brings me so much peace. I feel nourished by the practice. I hope you do too.
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Originally published on alwayswellwithin.com
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