And just like that, my break has come to an end.

I don’t think I did even half of what I’d intended, but it was really brilliant nonetheless.

I meditated (or tried to) every morning and went to yoga 5 days out of the 7 (one of those days was pilates, but I’m totally counting it). My goal is now to be a retired lady who goes to yoga every morning – there are a couple of ladies at the studio who do this and I am consumed with envy.

Honestly, I don’t think I can remember the last time I felt so calm and relaxed and dare I say, content. The meditation? The yoga? The not being at SML?

My only regret is that I didn’t take another week off, but I’ve booked in three weeks for the end of November / beginning December to make up for it.

And TheUniverse was clearly rewarding me because there were particularly good sunrises and sunsets which I was actually around to photograph.

Monday (21/08):

Tuesday (22/08):

Wednesday (23/08)

Back to reality tomorrow – prediction is I return to curmudgeonly self by around 10am.

And the last of the apps is potential project. Mindfulness is clearly having a moment in the biz world right now – this is another one I discovered on HBR.

While this is a standalone app, it’s also an adjunct to a mindfulness business consulting offering**.

The icon looks rather familiar:

This app is really stripped down and minimalist:

Eight guided meditations and a silence with bells:

Again – very minimalist interface for the actual meditation:

And a tracker (of course) – though extremely bare-bones:

What I liked: The minimalist nature of it – no social, very little tracking.
+ Voice is almost robotic – brings to mind a kind of soothing female Japanese robot.

What I didn’t like: Not that I didn’t like it, but I think this is a little too advanced for me. There’s loads of silence and it is an effort to stay on the breath. The large chunks of silence is probably a good thing, but I am not sure I have the mental discipline for this to work for me – yet.
+ ** Can’t say I’m not too keen on the mindfulness as extracting ever-more productivity from harried employees thing.

Things for next time: Increase efforts to focus!

Cost: It appears to be $2.99 in the app store. I got mine for free back in April when I completed the quiz in the HBR article (you can probably still get it that way if you’re interested).

Rating: 4/5 app | 3/5 meditation (but my experience was 2/5 because I found it hard to stay present)

xxx

Now all that remains is for me to decide what I am going to go with!