Published: 30.12.2025
Today was my fourth session, and I increased the duration by another minute, bringing it to 32 minutes. One of the first insights today was triggered by my dogs. Almost as soon as I sat down and closed my eyes, both of them walked into the room. As I tried to stay still, I could feel them whining and nudging me for attention. I could have given them attention easily, and part of me wanted to, but because I had set this intention to stay with the practice, I kept ignoring them. After a while, they settled down on their own. That moment felt like a metaphor for life - so many things demand attention on their own terms, often urgently. In those moments, we actually do have a choice, even if it does not feel like it. We can engage, or we can stay with what we had already decided matters.
There was, again, a lot of mental chatter. I didn’t fall asleep at all today (maybe I did just once) which is a big change from three days ago. But the chatter was relentless. After a while, I even felt my forehead muscles tensing up, almost like I was trying to resist the thinking. I kept wondering: Why is it so hard? Why am I obsessing over when this session will end? I think part of the difficulty is that nonstop mental chatter feels similar to consuming endless short-form content. There is constant cognitive switching without any real feedback loop. One thought triggers another, and then another, without ever settling. In the same way that scrolling through reels eventually makes the brain feel strained, the mind seems to get tired of listening to its own noise. My assumption is that if I stayed long enough, maybe closer to an hour, the chatter would eventually dissolve simply because the mind would run out of energy to keep producing it. Another thought category I noticed today was nostalgia. Alongside the usual goal-seeking thoughts, I found myself drifting into old memories - moments from building Alle with the team, fragments from college. Yesterday there was more critique in the chatter. Today, there was more nostalgia. That contrast stood out to me, almost as if the mind cycles through different modes of distraction depending on the day. My mental thoughts also veered towards the structure of this practice itself. My current plan is to increase the duration by one minute every day, which means it will take about 30 more days to reach 60 minutes. But I keep doubting myself: Is this too slow? Should I jump by 3-4 minutes instead? Will increasing by only one minute per day even get me to the benefits people talk about - the ones that supposedly kick in only after 30-40 minutes? If most of the chatter dies down only in the last 20-25 minutes, am I even reaching the real part yet? For now, I am choosing to trust the gradual approach. The intention is still the same: sit, do nothing, and stay.