With our busy, always-on-the-go lifestyles, it’s no wonder that time seems to zip by.
“There is this reality that aging imposes some important influences on our perception of time,” says Richard Davidson, PhD, the founder and director of the Center for Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.
It's a well-known phenomenon that, as people age, time seems to pass faster than when they were young, as described in an article in European Review in 2019. In other words, perceived (subjective) time can feel shorter than measured (or objective) “clock time.”
If time feels like it’s flying by, you may be interested in learning how to slow it down. One possible technique to use? Meditation.
Per the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH), meditation includes a variety of practices, many from Eastern traditions, that integrate the mind and body to promote well-being. You might focus on the sensation of your breath, or home in on the visceral experience of what’s going on around you (what you see, feel, or smell, for instance), which depends on the chosen practice. And while there are many different types of meditation, they all usually aim to help you cultivate more awareness and mindfulness of how you’re feeling and what you’re thinking in the present moment.
How Does Meditation Affect Your Experience of Time?
Research suggests that your experience of time may be influenced by meditation — both speeding it up and slowing it down.
You May Enter a State of Timelessness
A study in PLoS One in 2019 asked participants to practice mindfulness meditation for 30 minutes in the lab (note: they had practiced a guided meditation at home daily for the week prior). They were then asked to estimate various time intervals, from 15 to 50 seconds and two to six minutes. Compared with people in control groups, people underestimated short intervals of time (15 to 50 seconds) during meditation and overestimated long intervals of time (two to six minutes); time also passed faster for meditators, per their reports, than it did for participants who did a control exercise (relaxing to music).
The authors found that when participants focused on a meditation exercise, they weren’t, in general, using cognitive resources for time processing, which is why the disconnect may have occurred. “Most [practicing] meditators say their sense of time is altered when they meditate because they are outside time, e.g. in a state of timelessness,” the authors wrote.
It May Alter Your Perception of Time in Other Ways
Additionally, some studies have concluded that meditation has the potential to slow down one’s perception of time.
Earlier research concluded that mindfulness meditation “increases time sensitivity and lengthens perceived time.” This study included experienced meditators (defined as those who practiced daily for five weeks) and new meditators, and tested them with a time awareness task while they meditated. The researchers found mindfulness did lengthen perceived time, especially in the experienced meditator group. They also found, interestingly, that experienced meditators overall had fewer anxious feelings than the new meditators, and that those who felt less anxious had increased time sensitivity.
Another earlier study on mindfulness meditation hypothesized that mindfulness, with its focus on moment-to-moment awareness, would lead to a perceived lengthening of time. Indeed, people in the study who listened to a 10-minute mindfulness meditation exercise overestimated its duration, saying the exercise was longer than those in a control group who listened to an audiobook, whose responses suggested their perception of time had not changed.
Finally, another study found the opposite: When people completed a mindfulness meditation exercise, their perception of intervals ranging from 15 to 60 seconds was judged shorter than control exercises. The authors call their finding “consistent with the idea that time flies during meditation as if time no longer existed.” One factor that may have affected the results is that they recruited novice meditators; meditation requires more attention and effort when you’re new to it, which could have influenced the results.
Research Challenges to the Relationship Between Meditation and Time
This research has some gaps that need to be addressed to better understand the connection between time perception and meditation.
“In general, many of these studies have been done on relatively short-term meditators, so we need more research on those who have practiced for a long time,” Dr. Davidson says. “One of the predictions I’d make is that with long-term meditation practitioners, their perception of time becomes more accurate and not biased one way or another,” says Davidson, from his own academic experience. What does that mean? Well, simply that your subjective time matches objective, or clock, time.
Time alterations with meditation are likely caused by changes in the brain that occur with certain types of meditation, says Davidson. Exactly how this works is still being researched. Per the NCCIH, studies suggest that meditation and mindfulness affect brain structure and function, yet more research is needed.
The studies above focused on mindfulness-based meditation, but other forms of meditation may have effects on time perception.
Susan Chen is a teacher of Vedic meditation (from ancient India, also called Transcendental Meditation [TM]) and a former Wall Street research analyst and portfolio manager who is well-versed in fast-paced environments. “Vedic meditation takes your mind and powers it down to a place of very still activity,” she explains, from her experience. “It [may become] content resting there for the moment,” she says. This is counter to rumination that occurs in overthinking about something in the past or worries about what could happen in the future — meaning, you’re not fully aware of the present. And if you’re mentally always somewhere else, it's hard to tell time.
When meditation brings you into the present moment, “you [may] feel the expansiveness of time,” says Chen. “There’s a correlation of how stressed an individual feels versus how much time they feel they have,” she explains.
One study looked at experienced TM practitioners and found they performed more accurately in time perception tasks compared with controls. More research is needed to understand the effects of various forms of meditation on time perception and its mechanisms.
Should You Use Meditation to Change Your Relationship to Time?
One big question that remains is whether it’s worth it to alter your perception of time with meditation. The answer is: It depends on your intention. “If you’re pursuing this to somehow become more productive or have ‘more time,’ for things, it’s not a particularly viable or healthy strategy,” Davidson says. On the other hand, there is a distinct advantage to “slowing down time,” and that’s savoring and appreciating more moments, he says.
In addition, there can also be a benefit to feeling as if time is speeding up, which can occur if you enter a meditative-adjacent state of “flow,” which is when you’re so immersed in a certain activity that you’re completely unaware of time. You can sit down to write, paint, or work on a new project only to look up and realize it’s been two hours — and you could swear it’s been two minutes, says Chen. It’s a state of peak performance and productivity and one where there is no distraction, per a scientific review in the September 2020 issue of Behavioral Sciences.
How to Change Your Perception of Time Through Meditation
If you’re interested in experimenting with mindfulness and how you generally feel in your daily life (for example flustered or peaceful), the most important thing you can do is to begin.
It sounds simple enough, but meditation is a habitual practice that can be difficult to start for a variety of reasons: You may not think it can help you, you may not know how to do it, and there may be pragmatic barriers (lack of time or a quiet place), according to an article in the March 2021 issue of Mindfulness.
“For the average person who’s never meditated but is interested in trying it, it can be daunting to start,” says Davidson. Because there are so many different types of meditation — body scan, visualization, loving kindness, Zen, Transcendental, and yoga, to name a few — you can find what resonates the most with you through trial and error, Davidson says. Choose a practice and stick with it for at least 30 days and then evaluate whether it’s helpful and beneficial for you, he recommends. (Some people may prefer to set shorter or longer parameters.)
There are many meditation tools available to help you establish a regular practice and try various types. Apps like Headspace or the Healthy Minds Program App, developed by Davidson’s nonprofit, Healthy Minds Innovations, aim to deliver practices of different lengths and types, and give you support to track areas of your well-being to see if certain approaches are working for you. Meditation centers and groups provide an opportunity to practice with other people and within communities both in person and online.
In addition, seeking out a meditation instructor can help you establish a practice that you’re willing to do — and will actually enjoy, suggests Chen. “Many people enter into meditation through ‘crisis-style’ meditation, but that doesn’t [always] build the longevity of endurance and happiness in life,” she explains. In other words, if you turn to meditation only in times of deep stress or strife, you may struggle to build a lasting practice that can help you through the tough times. “A daily practice is great for stress prevention,” says Chen, of her experience.
One practice that you can start with that will bring you into the present moment “where [most people] feel an abundance of time,” says Chen, is what she calls “Come to Your Senses.”
“Tuning into the senses available to us is [one way to] interact with the present moment,” she says. To do it, tap into each sense, noticing and naming what you’re seeing, smelling, hearing, feeling, and tasting.
Afterward, “you [may] find there's a reallocation of time; worry and rumination [may] fade, and you can continue on with your tasks in a more relaxed way,” Chen says.
Additionally, similar sense-awareness practices also exist in mindfulness traditions outside Vedic and TM meditation. For example, used in Vipassana meditation, and referred to in ancient Buddhist texts, the method known as the Six Sense Doors also aims to achieve similar conscious observations, per Insight Meditation Online. If you’re interested, you can try a guided meditation in line with this practice via Rob Phillips Yoga and Meditation.
