Peter Gamma (Physiologist & Director) Meditation Research Institute Switzerland (MRIS)

Who long should we meditate daily – what do scientists say & what do spiritual teachers say?

Last Updated on February 26, 2024 by pg@petergamma.org

Which meditators believe in the fairy tail that 20 minutes of daily mediation practices can perform miracles?

Richard Davidson has taught us to teach 20 min. a day. But this does not mean that a daily practice of 20 min is very effective. It means only that 20 min of daily practice is sufficient that our brain is changed in an objectiverly measurable way in a brain scanner. But is a daily practice of 20 min. effective?

Let us ask these persons:

  • Richard Davidson meditates 20 min. a day.
  • Matthieu Ricard meditates 20 min a day.
  • Cody Rall MD with Techforpsych meditates 20 min a day.
  • Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche meditates 1 hour a day.
  • Peter Gamma from www.petergama.org currently does a full-time training, but has no tools which are suitable to quantify his meditation practice at the level of a clinical or research study.

And do not really serious spiritual teachers teach us to do a full-time training of at least 13 years, and then another 4 hours of daily meditation practice? They taught this as guidings stars in teaching meditation. And some of them did this by themselves, as for instance Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche. You can read about this under www.petergamma.org.

But aren t many of these questions asked here open and too little investigated scientifically?