This approach though had its drawbacks though: several times I over-meditated and was late for work, others I turned up frazzled from the abruptness caused by not having found it and having to rely on other very inferior solutions.Before you get too carried away that I've been searching for nirvana, shangri-la or some blissed out ecstasy, then you're wrong.
The hardest part of meditating for set lengths of time is knowing how long you've been going and when to stop. When I started out I used a chronometer from my old swimming days which had a bleep so harsh that it wasn't actually worth meditating with it at all: the sound at the end was like being woken up with a bucket of cold water thrown over you.
Then I had a stopwatch, which worked intermittently (hence the over-meditating, because it didn't go off and I happily kept going). After that there were egg timers, with annoying uneven tick-tocks which conjured up Long John Silver, and recently I've taken to using the oven timer which has the downside of meaning I had to get up to turn it off, but the upside that it was next door and so not so in my face. Worst of all was being in a class taught by someone who was so transfixed by setting the beastly timer to annoy you, fidgeting with it and then when that frightful beep-beep-beep-beeeeeep-bbbbbbbeeeeeeepppppp started failed to stop it because they either couldn't find it any more or because they were so intent on telling you to inhale and hold that they'd become completely deaf to its infuriating intrusion.
Now we have a wonderful solution courtesy of the iPhone (or your equivalent): the best app ever which allows you to set all possible permutations of timer and - here's the best bit - chose a singing bowl or wood tap as the marker. It's so civilised that you can almost imagine you're in a big Tibetan monastery with all those monks.
This app has made all the difference to my own meditation and yoga practice, I can't recommend it highly enough: Insight Timer: http://www.spotlightsix.com/. If ever you're looking for how it's the little details in life which make the biggest difference to the quality then this is it.
[Used with permission from Guru Kaur's Be the Woman... Inner Circle Blog]
