Why Meditation Is Highly Compatible with Today's Lifestyle

When people talk about meditation, in many cases they reference some retreat they went to (or planning to go), or something they used to do when they had more free time. However, it seems that more and more people I meet are meditators in one way or another. How is this possible, esp. in a city like Seattle where you need at least 2 hours a day just for the commute, while the work hours in the companies where most people work are often long?

It took me a while but I eventually came to realize that meditation takes many forms and that it doesn't have to be in retreats mainly. Surely the 2-day or 10-day meditation retreat will have more to offer than the 1-hour practice once a week that many people find more feasible. However, meditation is more of a way of life than something you do on a certain weekend or in a meditation vacation. The hard-core meditators will tell you that you need to meditate at least X amount of minutes (or hours) before you can consider yourself a meditator and that anything less than that is just fooling yourself. However, in my experience even a short meditation session can have profound results, if done with the right mindset. Also, you can sit in the meditation position for hours and not get any real benefit, if all you do is thinking about what you are going to have for dinner.

Today we need to detach from things more than ever, especially technological possessions of ours. If you do something, be it playing music, painting, Tai-Chi, Chi-Gong, or Yoga, this can be a kind of meditation, one that is easier to fit into a busy lifestyle. Of course more passive meditation types, like emptying the mind, focusing on the breath, listening to binaural beats, etc. are also valid and have their own sets of benefits. However, you don't need to do X just because many people believe that X is the only valid meditation type and the everything else is substandard. If Y or Z works better for you, who is to say that you should do X? 

After all, the ultimate form of meditation is being mindful of everything you do, making your every action an act of meditation. Till we reach that stage, anything you do that brings you closer to your center and provides you with peach and tranquility is a meditation of sorts.

What's your experience with meditation?