Headspace defaults to ten minutes and I haven't argued with it. The app offers three or five for beginners, but ten is the canonical sit, and for [DETAIL: how long has the habit run by late May? since March? April?] I've done it most mornings before anything else.
The on-ramp is the Basics course, ten sessions of Andy Puddicombe explaining the mechanics in the tone of a man describing weather he has no stake in. The core move is called noting: a thought shows up mid-breath, you label it "thinking" and come back. That's most of the practice. His signature image is that the mind is a blue sky and the thoughts are clouds passing through it. I'm not sold on the image. The practice underneath it has been harder to dismiss.
What a consistent sit changes, as far as I can tell: there is now a half-second between something happening and me reacting to it, and a surprising amount fits in that gap. I notice I'm tense before lunch instead of discovering it at dinner. The streak counter helps more than it should; I keep the chain going for the same unserious reason anyone does.
What it doesn't change: the thoughts don't stop, traffic is still traffic, and ten minutes does not reorganize a personality. Anyone selling more than the gap is selling.
This isn't a recommendation. People have sat for free for a few thousand years without a subscription and an animated blob. What I can report is narrower: ten minutes, most days, buys a small pause between the world and my answer to it. So far that's the entire return, and so far it's been worth the ten minutes.
— Lo