An egg timer or your mobile alarm is great but make sure you do not startle your self.

Wrap an egg timer in a tea towel to muffle the sound for a gentle awakening.

Thanks.
Brett

Brett's suggestion of wrapping an egg-timer in a towel is a good one. Or your mobile phone alarm with the volume set low.

Having a clock nearby is also fine (as long as it doesn't tick too loud ).

But more importantly, I wouldn't worry about sitting for some precise amount of time. The reason is two-fold: on the one hand, we might choose a period of time that is too long for us as beginners. Then we end up forcing ourselves to sit for that full length of time, and meditation becomes a chore. Once it becomes a chore, it's more likely we'll start missing sessions, and eventually give up altogether. It's better to meditate for as long as we feel comfortable doing so, and gradually allow the amount of time to increase naturally on its own.

On the other hand, we might find ourselves enjoying a particular meditation sitting - really getting into it, so to speak. Then the timer goes off, and we're interrupted and "need" to get up. The reality is, we don't have to get up - we can continue meditating for a few more minutes as long as it feels comfortable to do so.

Do pick a general time frame, usually between 10-20 minutes for beginners, but keep in mind that it's fine for your meditation time to vary - you might sit for 9 minutes one day, 12 minutes the next, and so on.

I suggest just letting the time go by. When you feel like you've done enough, check the clock. If it's way short of your goal and if you don't feel uncomfortable continuing (i.e. you don't have to force yourself to continue, and get tense doing so), then go ahead and meditate some more.

HTH

Peter

Originally Posted by Peter

Do pick a general time frame, usually between 10-20 minutes for beginners, but keep in mind that it's fine for your meditation time to vary - you might sit for 9 minutes one day, 12 minutes the next, and so on.

I suggest just letting the time go by. When you feel like you've done enough, check the clock. If it's way short of your goal and if you don't feel uncomfortable continuing (i.e. you don't have to force yourself to continue, and get tense doing so), then go ahead and meditate some more.

HTH

Peter

I don't have a set time when I meditate; if I did it'd become a chore and if I missed it I'd be more anxious then. I tend to clock watch too if I say ok I have 30 minutes from now to do this in. That's too distracting for me and I wouldn't be meditating very much or wouldn't have a good quality session.

IF I had only so much time and really want to meditate (like before an interview or before a tedious job assignment) what I do is slip on some earphones and meditate while listening to a block of soothing (usually Enya for me) music or even white noise. Serves as a noise blocker and if you have a selection set up (rather than just the entire cd) ahead of time and play it, then when it's done, you can stop your session if you choose. You can select the session using music/white noise to last 10, 20, 30 minutes or anywhere in between on up to an hour if you'd like that way. .

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.

The way I time my meditations is through blocks of music. The way it works is that you set up blocks of music equaling the amount of time you'd like to meditate, an example is setting up 4 pieces of music equaling about 20 minutes in duration set as set A and a second set of music equaling 30 minutes as set B and so forth. When you want to meditate for 30 minutes you load the set onto cds marking each or any other player on your computer or iPod grouped together in a folder so that they don't get lost among the other pieces. It's easier just to load them on cds marked 20, 30, 40, etc minutes so you can just load and not worry about timing anything, when the set is over, you'll know how long it's been.