How to Restart a Spiritual Practice After You’ve Stopped

The prayer book is still on the shelf. You remember parts of the practice, but the time when you used to do it has disappeared into a different work schedule, a move, or years of other concerns. Returning can involve two tasks: deciding whether you still want the practice, and finding a workable way to resume it.

Give the first question some room. What drew you to it before? What do you understand differently now? If you choose to return, a modest, specific arrangement can help you begin without requiring the old circumstances to come back.

Identify what interrupted the routine

Write down the last period when you practiced regularly. Note the place, time, people, and event that usually preceded it. Then ask which of those conditions changed. An early sitting may have depended on a commute you no longer make. Evening recitation may have depended on a room you now share.

A small qualitative study by Phillippa Lally, Jane Wardle, and Benjamin Gardner interviewed ten people taking part in a habit-based weight-loss intervention. Participants described routines disrupted by weekends and holidays, then resumed when familiar work contexts returned. The study concerned those participants and behaviors, but it offers a useful question for your own situation: did the wish disappear, or did the setting that reminded you disappear? [1]

Your answer determines what to try. If you forgot because the evening changed, create another reminder. If you stopped because the teaching troubled you, seek a conversation or further reading before treating the issue as a scheduling problem.

Choose a cue you encounter on ordinary days

“Practice more often” leaves the starting moment undecided. A more usable plan specifies what happens immediately before it: after putting away the breakfast dishes, after changing out of work clothes, or before setting the morning alarm.

In an exploratory study published in 2020, researchers asked 39 participants to take vitamin C tablets daily for three weeks and interviewed them about remembering. Their findings highlighted the limitations of vague plans and reliance on a single cue. Participants often needed experience to discover which combination of cues suited them. This was a study of remembering tablets, so applying its findings to prayer is a practical inference. [2]

Try combining a routine event with an object you will notice. Put the booklet beside the chair you use after breakfast, and keep the audio link bookmarked. If the arrangement fails, record what happened. A booklet beside the kettle will not help on mornings when someone else makes the tea.

Define the first session before it begins

Choose an activity with a clear end: read the translation of the prayer once, listen to a complete recitation, or sit with the breath for a few minutes. Have the text ready. Decide where to sit. If you need headphones, find them beforehand.

These are suggestions for restarting an informal practice. If you previously undertook a formal commitment, discuss its resumption with the teacher or community concerned. A shorter activity chosen for convenience does not settle what that commitment requires.

You may discover that you remember the opening and lose your place halfway through. Use the printed words. The Seven-Line Prayer learning page lets you reveal one line at a time and check the English meaning alongside it.

A missed day does not require a new start date

In Lally and colleagues' 2010 habit-formation study, 96 volunteers chose an eating, drinking, or activity behavior to perform daily in a consistent context for twelve weeks. Eighty-two supplied enough data for analysis. The authors reported that missing one opportunity did not substantially affect the habit-formation process. [3]

That finding does not cover abandoning a practice for months, nor does it tell us how prayer changes a practitioner. It does give reason to question an all-or-nothing response to one missed occasion. If you intended to read on Tuesday and forgot, Wednesday is another opportunity. Waiting until a new month adds a delay you may not need.

Give repetition time without making it a deadline

The same study produced widely varying estimates for reaching a near-plateau in automaticity: 18 to 254 days among the fitted models. The study lasted 84 days, so the upper end was a model estimate beyond the observation period. The behavior also mattered. [3]

A 2023 study in PNAS examined patterns in gym attendance and hospital handwashing. Its analysis found different timescales for the two behaviors, with gym attendance typically taking months and handwashing weeks. Neither behavior was spiritual practice. The useful lesson is the limited one: a single universal timetable is a poor expectation for habit formation. [4]

For your own first week, keep a short record with three entries: what you intended, what you did, and what helped or interfered. Avoid assigning a spiritual grade. The record is there to show whether your chosen arrangement works.

Return to the words as well as the routine

With the Seven-Line Prayer, familiarity can bring back the sound before the meaning. Set aside one session to read the translation slowly. Notice the shift near the end, where the reciter expresses the wish to follow Guru Rinpoche and asks for his blessing. Consider whether those words mean something different to you now.

If pronunciation has become uncertain, our guide to learning Tibetan prayer sounds explains how to choose a recording and compare it with the printed phonetics. If the room is the obstacle, our home practice guide offers a simple starting arrangement.

At the end of the week, choose one adjustment supported by what you noticed. Move the booklet, change the time, ask a teacher a question, or continue with the arrangement that worked. Returning becomes concrete when you know what you will do at the next opportunity.

Sources and further reading

1. Lally, Wardle, and Gardner, Experiences of habit formation: a qualitative study. Psychology, Health & Medicine, 2011; 16(4):484–489. DOI 10.1080/13548506.2011.555774. Published abstract used.
2. What influences the selection of contextual cues when starting a new routine behaviour? An exploratory study. Stawarz, Gardner, Cox, and Blandford. BMC Psychology, 2020; 8:29. DOI 10.1186/s40359-020-0394-9. Abstract and published discussion checked.
3. Lally and colleagues, How are habits formed?. European Journal of Social Psychology, 2010; 40:998–1009. DOI 10.1002/ejsp.674. Publisher abstract used; shortened title.
4. What can machine learning teach us about habit formation? Evidence from exercise and hygiene. PNAS, 2023; 120(17):e2216115120. Published abstract used. These studies did not investigate prayer.

Written with AI assistance and checked against the sources linked above. This introduction offers context for visitors; instruction in a lineage's formal practices belongs with a qualified teacher.