In the Mahamudra tradition, the emphasis falls less on a rigid schedule and more on the steady cultivation of clear, relaxed awareness over time. For a lay practitioner, a practical starting point is to sit once or twice a day for about 15–20 minutes, ideally including a morning session when the mind is relatively fresh. As familiarity grows, these sessions can be gently extended toward 30–45 minutes, and an additional evening session may be introduced. Many teachings stress that short, clear sessions practiced regularly are more beneficial than infrequent, lengthy sittings in which attention becomes dull or strained.

Over months and years, the duration and frequency of practice can naturally expand as stability develops. It is common for practitioners to move toward a total of 30–60 minutes per day at first, and eventually to sustain 1–2 hours of formal meditation daily, whether in one longer session or several shorter ones. Some traditions describe this as a progression from initial 10–20 minute sessions, to 30–45 minutes, and finally to sessions of an hour or more when the mind can rest in awareness without excessive effort. Throughout this process, the guiding principle remains continuity: daily practice without long gaps is considered more important than any specific number of minutes.

The maturation of stable awareness in Mahamudra is generally understood as a long-term unfolding rather than a quick attainment. With several months of consistent daily practice, many practitioners find that they recognize distraction more quickly and can return to simple awareness with less struggle. Over one to three years of steady practice—often around an hour a day—awareness of thoughts, emotions, and sensations tends to become more continuous, with less “forgetting” and a growing sense of an underlying clarity. More advanced stages, sometimes supported by longer retreat periods, allow this stability to extend into a wider range of activities and moods, not only during formal sitting.

Underlying all of this is a shared set of practical principles. Traditional Mahamudra instructions often recommend “short sessions, many times,” stopping while the mind is still bright rather than pushing into fatigue. Quality of attention is valued over sheer quantity of time, and relaxed continuity is favored over forceful concentration. Stable Mahamudra awareness thus arises from a rhythm of regular, sincere practice—built up gradually, maintained over months and years, and integrated into the flow of daily life—rather than from adherence to a fixed, universal timetable.