The Naked Hour (you keep your clothes on)

Don't worry about the name. You stay dressed. What comes off is everything else — the input, the scrolling, the sense that you should be getting something done.

One hour. No phone, no screen, no music, no plan. No meditation either: no mantra, no breathing technique, no closed eyes. You simply sit in a room and let it happen to you.

How I do it:

Sit, don't lie down — lying down turns into sleeping. A chair, a cushion, or just both feet flat on the floor. Hands resting on your thighs, nothing gripped. Upright but not stiff, chin tucked in a little, so you stay awake.

Eyes open. You're not escaping the world, you're in it. Look around like a child who has never seen this room before: the light on the wall, a cup, the window, whatever's outside it.

When the thinking starts talking — and it will, immediately — say one word in your head: next. Then move your attention to the next thing in the room. That's the whole technique. One word.

Look for what changes. Light shifting, a sound arriving, a car, a bird, your own breathing. Change is where life is. And no labels: nothing is good or bad, nothing needs a comment. You're not judging the room, you're just in it.

Be warned about the beginning. The first two to ten minutes can feel endless, and your mind will hand you a list of everything you should be doing instead. Around the twenty-minute mark something usually loosens. By thirty it often turns beautiful — no planning the future, no chewing on the past. Just: hello life, you're rather amazing.

If an hour is too much, do twenty minutes. If someone walks in, smile at them; it's not a ritual you can ruin. And if all you manage is to sit there feeling bored — that's not failure, that's the exercise. Real boredom is something most of us haven't felt in years.

I do this for one reason: it's the only hour in my week that asks nothing of me. And I come out of it lighter than anything else I've tried.