Should I give meditation a break?

[Nahm]

@rorghee After a year and a half of meditation, you should be in love with it.  Try simply returning your focus to breathing from your stomach.

[saint_charming7]

I've took a break off from meditation last year. I was really busy graduating from college and working, I started ignoring meditation and giving excuses to not meditate. It was a bad move, I ended up returning to the stress and anxiety levels that I used to experience before I started practicing. It turned out bad, my mental and physical health declined, and I was feeling like sh*t. The first thing I did once I had more free time, it was returning to my meditation habit. Now I'm back at it since June last year, and I hope I can maintain a daily meditation habit until my last day of life. Meditation is like going to the gym, its a mind work out, if you skip a couple of days its fine maybe you won't even feel very much, but in the long run its gonna suck. So in my point of view, it would be good if you just decrease a bit the daily time practice, to 10-20 minutes maybe. I'm sure once you have the motivation to do it for longer periods of time you will get back in your old shape. 

Wish you the best luck, hope I could be of any help!

[star ark]

After my first meditation session I learned mindfulness myself, then I read about it on the internet and I couldn't believe it was something that had to be taught. Like, it is impossible for me not to meditate/practice mindfulness, I find myself just doing it standing in line to buy something, I wake up breathing deeply and can maintain a meditative state upon waking and it is virtually instinct or reflex.

If sitting down isn't doing it for you are you taking the mindful approach to life? I don't believe you would seriously consider dropping the habit if you were experiencing full benefits from the practice. It feels like someone saying "I can't be bothered drinking, i was dying of thirst years ago but I've drunk all this water since, it was great for a while but it's too much of a time sink, i need those water drinking minutes back so i can ask questions on actualized.org about whether I should drink water or not"

[TriteNTrue]

@rorghee Well done creating a habit out of meditation.

In the beginning, I felt the same way - I had it scheduled on my phone and when I got the reminder, I'd meditate.  I'm about 9 months in and it's quite a bit different experience now - I look forward to meditating. The difference: dropping expectations of expecting something to happen and instead look at it as personal chill time - you don't have to do anything. 

I also do it randomly during the day depending on how things shape up.