I’ve tried adopting a meditation practice numerous times over the years. It has never stuck. But this year, something clicked and I managed to spend a total of 3,983 minutes meditating.

That’s just shy of 11 minutes a day. Nothing wild. More importantly, I’ve stuck with it.

But what changed this year?

I think it all started with this bench—this $500 meditation bench. (No I didn’t buy the bench.) It lived rent free in my head for most of 2024, and led me to discover the seiza meditation posture.

It’s a kneeling position that’s been the traditional way of sitting in Japan for a very long time.

A lot of my struggles with meditation in the past stemmed from my posture. Sitting criss cross applesauce is a non-starter for me, and I’ve tried other meditation positions like sitting upright against a wall or lying down, but I always dozed off.

When I decided to try meditating again, I was reminded of this bench. Rather than buying something for a practice I might not stick with, I decided to try “recreating” it.

Well, recreate an environment that let me comfortably sit in the seiza pose that is.

So I laid out a yoga mat, placed a folded blanket at the front to kneel on, and stacked three of my wife’s yoga bolsters to mimic the height of the bench and take the load off my ankles. (I’m not particularly flexible.)

Now every morning I wake up and meditate. During the week, it’s 12 minutes. On the weekends, it’s 15 minutes. I tell myself its because I have “more time” on the weekends.

I use the app Meditation Time 2.0 to keep track of the time which I split into thirds, so the gong chimes every 4–5 minutes.

In terms of meditation techniques, I don’t really do anything by the book. (If there is one.) Maybe I should. But I’ve just been doing what works for me.

Generally I just let my mind wander for the first third. In the middle I try to bring a bit of stillness to my thoughts—shifting my focus to my breathing. And for the last third, I have a few “methods” I try out.

Most common is this 1, 2, 3, 4 track that I map out in my mind where I align my breathes to the straightaways.

Inhaling on the up. Exhaling on the down.

The other approach is—I’ll admit—a little random.

It follows a similar breathing approach but employs a bit of visualization to make it less abstract.

On the inhale up, I imagine I am pulling a lever of a well upwards.

On the exhale down, I am slowly pressing that lever down and slowly filling up a bucket of water.

A few breath cycles (no set amount), will eventually fill up the bucket of water which I replace with an empty bucket and start over. I find this one a bit more effective if my mind starts wandering during the imaginary track circuit.

While I really think finding this posture and creating a set up for myself helped me the most, I also experimented with tracking a few metrics this year in a spreadsheet—one of which was meditation. Updating that daily kept me honest.

Undecided whether or not I will continue that spreadsheet approach going forward. Ask me in a year?