Ten minutes is the whole secret

Every January I get a run of enquiries from people who want an hour a day. They are serious, they have bought the mat, and they have cleared six to seven in the morning. I say yes, and then I quietly build them ten minutes, because I know what six in the morning looks like on a Tuesday in February.

The ten minutes is not a compromise. It is the version that survives contact with a real week. An hour asks you to be a different person, one with an empty morning and no children and a body that wants to be on the floor before coffee. Ten minutes asks nothing. It fits between the alarm and the kettle. You do it on the day the boiler breaks.

And here is the part people do not expect: the ten minutes grows. Not because I add to it, but because on a good morning you do not want to stop, and you find you have been down there for twenty-five. The short practice is the door. Nobody keeps a door they cannot get through.

So if you have been meaning to start, start with three minutes of breathing on the edge of the bed. That is day one of Seven Mornings, and it is the hardest day, because it is the first one.