Meditation helps you to relax and be less stressed, both in the moment and long-term. When you learn to meditate, you might do so at first in a quiet space, where you can be alone. However, there are times when you might wish to meditate, but you can’t find somewhere quiet to do it. Perhaps you’re visiting family during the holidays, or you’re in a busy airport. Wherever you are, you might feel like you can’t meditate if you can’t find a quiet spot. But you still can if you know how. Here’s how you can meditate if you don’t feel like you have a special spot you can go to.
Find Some Personal Space
You might feel that the best spot to meditate is a quiet, empty space, whether it’s your bedroom or a prayer and meditation room in a public building. Without one of these spaces, perhaps you feel a little lost. But you can still find some personal space, where you’re out of the way. You just might need to be a little creative. Even if you can only find a chair to sit in or a random corner, you just need somewhere that you can claim as your own and be safely out of the way of other people.
Use Mindfulness to Pay Attention to Noise
People often think of meditation as completely clearing your mind and blocking out external sounds. However, there’s no need to try and ignore everything that’s happening around you. In fact, if you practice mindfulness, it’s a good idea to pay attention to what you can hear. Listening to the sounds you can hear gives you something to focus on, instead of your stressful thoughts. Instead of assigning any judgements or opinions to the sounds you hear, just accept them for what they are.
Use Noise-canceling Headphones
If you struggle to deal with external noise, you might want to consider carrying noise-canceling headphones. You can wear these on their own to block out sound, or you can connect them to a device to listen to music or play sounds that you prefer. Maybe you like to listen to nature sounds while you’re meditating. If you want to use noise-canceling headphones, make sure you only do it when it’s safe. Although you want to try to relax, you need to maintain an awareness of what’s happening around you.
Practice
You might find it difficult to meditate in a busy environment at first. But, as the saying goes, practice makes perfect. If you want to be able to find inner peace anywhere and everywhere, you need to work at it. You might find it difficult to meditate if you can’t find a quiet place to do it, but meditation isn’t a skill that you can magically unlock. You need to be willing to learn, and that can include learning how to meditate when you don’t have the perfect meditation space.
Don’t worry if you can’t find a quiet space for meditation. You don’t have to have one if you have the right techniques.
