Why you should meditate while you travel
Travel can be an escape from everyday routine and a quick fix for a change of scenery. However, no matter how far we travel, we can’t always leave our worries at home. Anxious and depressive thoughts will follow us even to the end of the world if we keep escaping from facing our problems. What’s more, the stresses of traveling like unfamiliar customs and transportation inconveniences can trigger your wounded psyche and make you even more miserable.
These breakdowns can happen when we lose our mental balance and let our emotions consume us. A technique that helps manage the flow of our minds, and stay grounded is meditation. There are many misconceptions about meditation, and some of them prevent people from introducing meditation into their lives, let alone traveling.
Show up on your journey
Meditation can have many forms and not all of them have to be performed in complete silence and solitude. At its core, meditation is about being present in the moment, wherever you are. It’s about taking in everything that is in front of you and fully participating. It’s showing up for yourself by committing to your life. It sounds like a lot, but in reality, what it can really mean is looking at a sunset for a little longer before taking a picture with your phone. Or deciding to sit on a bench before you move to your next stop, and simply observe the local life around you. Give it a chance next time you have a little leisure time on your vacation and notice how much more meaningful memories form when you are fully present to make them.
Meditation for a Travelers tired mind
Even if you’re an experienced traveler, it can still be quite taxing to constantly be on the go, change climates and communicate through language barriers. Flight cancelations lost bookings, and other inconveniences can take away from your trip and overshadow the good memories. Meditation, through weaving out pessimistic intrusive thoughts can help you remain grounded. When you consciously start paying attention to even the little good things and stop trying to control what you can’t, a new quality to your traveling begins.
When you travel, you also get exposed to a whole array of new experiences, some of them fascinating or exciting, others disturbing or confusing. Meditation is a great tool to tidy up and process the thoughts that fill up your head after an intense trip.
Healthy mind, healthy body
In addition to helping you put your mind at ease, meditation has also many physical benefits, that will keep your body travel-ready at all times.
Practicing meditation, even-semi regularly lowers blood pressure, improves breathing, makes you sleep better, and generally increases your energy levels. If you want to keep enjoying traveling even after you retire, meditation can help you stay youthful and energized.
Travel for yourself
These days travel is one of the social currencies and the travel industry, more than anything, is selling a lifestyle that looks good on social media. All some people care about is going to an as far away country as possible, taking pictures with all the landmarks, and showing it off online. Somewhere in between the real purpose of travel was lost and creating aesthetic content became more important than simply enjoying yourself. By practicing meditation you can develop a healthy habit of keeping some parts of your travel to yourself, without sharing it with the whole world. They will become your private, precious memories that you will want to share only with those close to you.
Meditate to radiate
Sometimes all you need to take with you on a great vacation is a backpack and an attitude of gratitude. Even though traveling today seems simple and inaccessible, taking planes and traveling remains a huge luxury that is out of reach for many. Raising demand and diminishing resources make prices in the travel industry rise excluding people with less financial affluence. Other than money problems, there are other limitations such as health, work, and school obligations, or other personal struggles that can stop people from following their dreams on the map.
If you are able to go even on a small trip, you should consider yourself a part of a lucky minority. If you introduce mindfulness to your travel, you discover how much of a privilege it is to see even a little bit of the beautiful world we live in. Once you realize that, all of your trips will feel special, no matter how close or far.
No bad time to start
If you always wanted to try meditating, your next trip might be a place to start. The beauty of meditation is that you can do it anywhere and it can last as long or short as you need it to. Try meditating at the airport before your flight if you are scared of flying. Look up from your book at the beach and take a moment to observe the liveliness of nature. Engage in a conversation with a local, even if you don’t know the language very well. They will appreciate your effort and you will show respect by honoring the customs of the place you are visiting. Such practices of meditation will bring you a more authentic experience.
Meditate anytime, anywhere
If you have a regular meditation practice you probably have already noticed its positive effect on your life, but not everyone realizes that all the benefits of meditation you would normally experience, can be translated to traveling.
It’s understandable why you would want to take a break from your daily routine on vacation, but perhaps meditation is one of the things worth taking with you on your journey.
