Why two hours can feel like one

So often visitors open their eyes after a session and they can't quite believe the time has gone. Two hours felt like one - sometimes even less.

It turns out this isn't just a pleasant coincidence. It's one of the more interesting things people notice when their nervous system properly lets go.

Back in 2006, an early pilot study looked at how people experienced a two-hour quiet session in a scalar-field meditation room. It was a small, informal study rather than a rigorous clinical trial. But one finding stood out. On average the group who sat in the room said the two hours felt like 78 minutes. A comparison group who sat quietly at home under the same conditions experienced it as closer to the full two hours - about 115 minutes.

Same clock. Very different sense of time.

We tend to experience time differently depending on the state we're in. When the mind is busy, ticking through worries and to-do lists, time can drag. When we drop into something deeper, a state closer to genuine rest, the usual mental chatter quietens and our habit of clock-watching softens with it. The hours stop announcing themselves.

The same study noted that people found it easier to settle into that quiet state than they were used to elsewhere. Whether they were an experienced meditator or someone who has never quite managed to switch off, that easing-in seemed to come more readily.

This matches what we hear at the centre all the time. People arrive wound up, half expecting to spend the session fidgeting and watching the clock, and instead find themselves surprised when it ends. For a lot of us, that's a rare experience. Most of our days are spent very aware of time, measured out in meetings and deadlines and school runs.

An hour or two where time loosens its grip is worth more than it sounds. It's often in those gaps that the body does its quiet repair work and the mind finds a bit of room to breathe.

If your days feel like they're running away from you, this might be the sort of pause that's hard to find anywhere else. The simple act of stepping out of the clock for a while, an EESystem session is built for exactly that.

Brighton's only EESystem centre, at St Augustine's, Stanford Avenue.