One of the effects of formal meditation practice is the way that it expands our sense of time. Particularly during long meditation retreats, time becomes much more vivid, more palpable, more liquid. I often use the phrase "thick time" to describe this phenomenon. At work we experience time as thin — rushed, hurried, noisy, distracted. Following our breathing, minute by minute, hour by hour, time becomes neither slow nor fast. Time reverts to just what it is — breath, heartbeat, birdsong, sunlight imperceptibly traveling across the rug. Time simply holds and contains us.
— Lewis Richmond, Work as a Spiritual Practice