Meditation in the World Around: Surprising Insights from a Change in Location
Here’s a little-known fact: you don’t need a quiet place to sit in the Lotus pose to increase your skill of paying attention. Mindfulness is not about curating your experience to exclude noise: it’s about your ability to be mindful in spite of the noise. Choosing a place you know will have distractions provides a powerful learning environment and a fun change of pace. In other words, mindfulness meditation is a skill meant to be applied in the world, not apart from it. Recently, I wanted to meditate in a different setting. It was a beautiful day and I wanted to be outside. The change of location had a much bigger impact on my practice that I expected.
Here’s what I did…
Sat on a bench beside a gravel walking path and started a 15 minutes timer. Then I set an intention to:
Actively listen for as many different sounds as I could discern
Resist the urge to open my eyes
Return to what I could hear when I noticed I’d become distracted by thoughts
Notice, then let go, of my reactions during this exercise
I didn’t really know what to expect but this is what I discovered:
I could discern and track about 5 different sound sources and the nature of the sound (it’s volume and sharpness) made a difference.
Like all of us, I’m very orientated to the visual realm which created a strong urge to open my eyes and investigate what I was hearing.
Like all of us, I’m a social creature and the footfalls and voices of people nearby created a particularly strong urge.
Allowing people to walk by with my eyes closed definitely created a sense of vulnerability.
The novelty of a new type of practice energized me to do more of it.
My new perspective left me feeling more connected to the world.
If there are hard numbers, I don’t have them. What I have learned in my years of researching how one can grow their physical, emotional, cognitive and social performance (including resilience, well-being, and overall health), is that increasing mindfulness has proven to be the most commonly recommended tactic to achieve these goals.
Something to note: 15 minutes might be a bit much in this setting if you’re new to meditation or prone to anxiety. While regular meditation has been shown to decrease anxiety, the added social component may be a big lift.
Best of luck to you! Keep (or start) a practice today.
