In general, you have two types of meditation; one is basically mindfulness body-orientated methods: the breath, the footsteps, sensations in the body, just noting and coming back, noting and coming back; just trying not to get involved in thoughts, trying to stay away from thoughts for awhile. The other is the reflection meditations - using thoughts wisely.
We often say, start with 50/50 practice. 50% the one, 50% the other; design your day accordingly. Or with the hour per day as this person says, design it accordingly, and it may not be 50/50 every day but it may be 100% one day, 100% on the next day, but to start off with a 50/50 balance practice.
Now, as we have said using the short form of reflections at the beginning of every session can be helpful as well. Even if you plan to use the mindfulness of the breathing for the whole period, starting with a little bit of the reflections helps to balance the practice a bit.
Make sure that you do not forget about walking meditation! It is the number one thing, I should say the number two thing, standing is thrown away first, walking is thrown away second for a lot of people when they practice back home; all they do is sit, sit, sit. A balanced practice is going to include at least the walking. And if you enjoy the standing then use it from time to time as well, it is part of our life.
A balanced practice, in that way, is start with 50/50, with the reflections on one side and mindfulness of the body on the other, and then you might want to adjust it from there to suit your own particular personality. Maybe it is going to be 40/60 or 60/40, but you never want to go 90/10, if you do you are going to miss a whole area in there. As much as you would not try to build a special complicated house with only a hammer, you would also not try to build a special complicated house without a hammer. Now, all the tools that we give you are important, every one of them. So you don't want to forget them, you don't want to leave any of them aside for too long and then forget how to use them. We are giving you a giant tool box.
You are very fortunate to get a giant toolbox, some teachers only give you a little toolbox, we are giving you a big one. On the other hand it gets complicated, like the screwdrivers. And some of them can be very difficult and they are not all your favorite at all. But if you want to build that special house you are going to need to use all of those tools from time to time. To practice them, means you will have more ability to be able to use them when you need them.
Within the reflection meditations, some of them can be done every day. Compassion/Lovingkindness - you can do it every day, no problem at all. Some others like how fortunate you are, if you do one hour of that every day you are going to get totally lopsided into kind of giddiness and spaced out state of mind. You may reflect, "I am so fortunate", and you just fly around the place, so some of them you don't want to do every day, you definitely don't.
Sympathetic Joy can not be done every day, because we simply run out of people we can have joy with very quickly. Compassion/Lovingkindness can be done with everyone on the whole planet, so this is endless. Death reflection, if you do it too much it can go into Dukkha. So we have to find a balance within the reflections as well, in fact tomorrow wif, wif, I will talk a little bit more about it.