Do you usually use a timer when you meditate or do you stop when you feel “done”. If you don’t use a timer, how do you know when to finish?
I’ve usually been meditating with a timer set for 20 minutes, however I’ve been experimenting a bit with ending it early when I feel like I have calmed my mind. I’m not sure what approach I prefer, so I’m curious to hear others experiences.
I always use a timer. Sense of time can change when meditating and there have been times that when my timer wasn’t set or malfunctioned I accidentally meditated longer than I meant to, which can be an unsettling experience, and create distracting fears in future sessions.
Wow! That sounds intense, I don’t think I’ve ever meditated for longer than 30 minutes. Do you always meditate till your timer go off, or do you use it as a kind of maximum timer?
yes, I always meditate until the timer goes off - once you set the timer you don’t think about the clock or time anymore, and you trust the timer with that task so your mind can ignore it. :-)
I usually meditated 1 - 2 hours / day back then. Longest session was over 3 hours. I preferred sessions that were 1 hour because it seemed like 45 minutes was a minimum for getting to a decent level of concentration for me, and so I could sometimes enter a pleasurable flow state and things would be “happening” at that point.
