Structured Time Timers

Audio files for timers for taking regular 2 minute breaks

Taking 2 minute breaks either every 10 minutes or every 20 minutes has totally changed my life for the better. It's helpful to me that the breaks are contained, and 2 minute time periods have been a great container for taking a meditation break, or get up and stretch break, etc.

To download the mp3s in this blogpost, click on the button in the upper right hand corner of the screen after you click on the links below.

- The quickest and simplest way to give taking regular 2 minute breaks a try is to use this combined-into-one mp3. It is for taking 2 minute breaks every 20 minutes. It is just over an hour long, with three 20 minute time periods and two 2 minute breaks.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/fu5dgaa5xp5agw0/StructuredTime20min-2min.mp3?dl=0

- I particularly like finding out when I'm at the halfway point in the 20 minute time periods. So, here's an alternative combined-into-one mp3 that's the same as the previous one except that, at the 10 minute mark, there is an announcement that 10 minutes have passed, and there are 10 minutes left.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ddhkmu9a7hkqh6v/StructuredTime20-2-10minAnnounced.mp3?dl=0

If you want to make playlists for more than an hour long, or for taking 2 min breaks every 10 minutes instead of 20, you can use the following mp3s. My playlists have multiple copies of the mp3s, but you can also just set your playlist on repeat.

- This mp3 simply begins with an announcement that this is the beginning of a 2 minute time period and ends with 1 bell after 2 minutes of silence have elapsed.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/d9ldecdh4xs7uqk/2min.mp3?dl=0

- This mp3 simply begins with an announcement that this is the beginning of a 10 minute time period and ends with 3 bells after 10 minutes of silence have elapsed.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/29lizkitoaocwvu/10min.mp3?dl=0

- This mp3 is the same as the 10 minute one except it is for a 20 minute time period.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/i7373f0rut6gin1/20min.mp3?dl=0

- This mp3 is also for a 20 minute time period. But for this one, at the 10 minute mark, there is an announcement that 10 minutes have passed, and there are 10 minutes left.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/jvrw8kv42wbw2pj/20-10minAnnounced.mp3?dl=0

Acting out of silence is meditation

Who would I be if I weren't engaged in all my shenanigans? How can I get to see who I would be? The excerpts below speak to that for me. It shows me a way to not just react but respond skillfully...by seeing if can drop the storyline by interrupting things and experimenting with some silence...seeing if that can help me to respond skillfully instead of reacting...

Excerpts from: http://www.awakin.org/read/audio.php?op=play&tid=2093
"Minimizing in daily life the frequency, the duration and the field of mental activity and living in silence, acting out of that silence is meditation. This meditation, this silence, has got a tremendous momentum of its own…You do not have to do a thing. You are not there: the ego, the mind, is not there. What happens in that silence? How does that silence move? It is something to be experimented with."

"Meditation is watching the movement of mind in relationship. If you try to force the mind into silence by withdrawing from activity, you will never understand what silence is…There is a great beauty when one discovers what silence in action is. Meditation is a new approach to total life, it does not demand of you any isolation."

The 2nd paragraph led me to think that there's a contradiction between it and the 1st paragraph...but I don't think so anymore now that I've thought about it more... I think it's saying to bring meditation into daily life...incorporate it in...like I've done with my 2 min meditation breaks...

Here's a post that has download links for mp3s of timers that you can use to facilitate taking 2 minute meditation breaks regularly:
http://e-a-s-e.blogspot.com/2016/01/mindfulness-handout.html

Relax, nothing is under control

https://www.facebook.com/RelaxNothingIsUnderControl/photos/a.1455427581335317.1073741825.1455417351336340/1456204907924251/?type=1&theater

Sit back and admire me - know that others are doing that

"Sit back and admire you" is what my therapist Michael Lassoff said that he gets to do with me

Sit back and admire myself

To borrow from the poet Mary Oliver:

Let the soft animal of my body love what it loves

Live my life!
My one wild and precious life

You do not have to walk on your knees. For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.

I love it when ...

Just got home from a Nonviolent Communication practice group meeting, where I found being prompted with the stem "I love it when ..." to be a helpful way of getting connected to a feeling of having my nervous system say ahhh, to taking a deep breath, and to thinking about what I want.

Celebrating life
Seeing the beauty in all of life
That's what I was able to come away with when I left the practice group.

I want this.

Positive reinforcement

Seems like just like not getting hooked by negative stuff and letting anxiety run the show with negative stuff, similarly, there's also the possibility of getting hooked by positive stuff.

I guess it's about what keeps me in the game vs. what takes me out of the game. Maybe that's the answer I have to this question.

I guess the other answer I have to this question is that if the positive thing involves avoiding/escaping/getting rid of anxiety, then that'll keep me stuck with making my bully stronger and will tend to reinforce that anxiety is something that I can't handle...and such...

Fall in love

Fall in love with living
Fall in love with life

Fall in love with being with myself
Fall in love with uncertainty

Fall in love with the messy real-ness of life and let go of the unattainable Pema Chodron's hell way of going about trying to get more comfortable that only leads me to be constantly futzing with things to getting them the way I think I want them

Relax into stillness
Be curious about what pulls you out of stillness