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Nous faisons la méditation avec de l'encens pendant une demi-heure.

Nous faisons la méditation avec de l'encens pendant une demi-heure.
We do the meditation with incense for a half-hour.
From Lesson 400:Invariable adjectives before nouns (demi, nu)·French

Questions & Answers about Nous faisons la méditation avec de l'encens pendant une demi-heure.

Since heure is feminine, why isn't it written as une demie-heure?
When demi comes before a noun, it is attached with a hyphen and remains invariable (it never changes to match the noun's gender or number). It only agrees in gender when it is placed after the noun, as in une heure et demie.
Could I use pour instead of pendant to mean 'for a half-hour'?
No, pendant is the correct preposition here because it describes the duration of a general, ongoing, or completed action. Pour is only used for an intended duration, usually for the future, like 'I am leaving for a week' (Je pars pour une semaine).
Why do we need de l' in avec de l'encens? Doesn't avec just mean 'with'?
While English allows you to say 'with incense', French almost always requires an article before a noun. Because incense is uncountable here (meaning 'some incense'), you must use the partitive article de l' since encens begins with a vowel.
If the English sentence was just 'We do meditation' without 'the', would we drop the la?
No, you still need it. In French, general concepts and activities require a definite article (le, la, les), even when English leaves it out. So, 'doing meditation' in a general sense translates to faire la méditation.

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