How do you time a meditation?

[opensourcemind]

How do you make sure your meditation ends in a set number of minutes or hours? Do you keep looking at the clock or do you set an alarm? I don't really see any alternatives.

[pollyanna]

Hi there and welcome to the community. C.D4 of the free course "Discover Medition" has 5,10 and 20 minute meditation timers which end with the gentle sound of a tibetan bell.

Hope that helps and wish you much peace and joy

[Hazelkay]

There is a pen you can buy that will give a gentle vibration at the time you set it.

On the web you can download gongs that you can set for the time.

A clock can be looked at - but this is a bit distracting.

Any sort of alarm can be set, from the very gentle ( which you might not notice!) to the shake you out of your socks variety.

In the same way you can go to bed and determine what time you will wake up by voicing the time you want to do it, you can do the same for your meditation period. I find it fairly accurate and I don't worry if I am out by a few minutes one way or the other.

peace and joy

[GilesC]

Originally Posted by opensourcemind

How do you make sure your meditation ends in a set number of minutes or hours? Do you keep looking at the clock or do you set an alarm? I don't really see any alternatives.

It's a good question, and the answer is... it depends.

Some people use timers, alarms or whatever.

Other people can just 'set' their body clock, by intending to meditate for X minutes and the mind will naturally bring them back at the right time or thereabouts (this is a method I've used myself).

Others just meditate with the intention of a period of time and if it's shorter or longer that's fine.

Of course, if you meditate with the Lifeflow CD's you would be triggered by the end of the track at 40 minutes (or 60 minutes or whatever depending on the version you have), and as already mentioned, Michael's Discover Meditation CD's include tracks of various lengths of silence before ending with a bell.

To keep looking at a clock isn't really an option because you will be keeping your focus on your thought about the need to check the clock, and this will distract you from the meditation practice.

Hugs

Giles

[Bryan555]

An old post by Raven tipped me off to the Audacity music player, which is not only superb, but also has a feature allowing you to set the length of anything you play.

So, with Lifeflow, you can set a 60-minute tape to play 20 minutes, 40 minutes, or whatever. It will also, of course, do the opposite: turning a 14-minute "sample" into a 40-minute meditation tape. It's totally free, and it is compatible with Windows, Mac or Linux. Highly recommended.

Thanks, Raven, for the original tip...