INA WO(A)NDERS: About mindfulness when traveling
Whether in books, apps, courses or seminars: mindfulness training is now available on every corner. A trip works too!
Just before I open my eyes, I take a deep breath. The bed linen smells delicately of lavender and there is a hint of coffee in the air. Somewhere plates and cups clink, a car honks in the distance, a bird calls a cheerful morning greeting through the window as it flies by. The first rays of sunshine have already found their way into my room and are gently tickling the sleep out of my limbs...
Traveling can help you be in the here and now
I love those precious seconds when your senses wake up before your mind in a foreign holiday destination. When you don't know exactly where you are, but you feel exactly that you are in the right place. That's exactly how I felt when I worked for Good Travel in Sicily and Portugal was on the way. What I need apps, meditations, peace and incense sticks for in everyday life happens all by itself on vacation: more mindfulness of my immediate surroundings. Pause and consciously perceive what is happening in the here and now. Maybe this is easier for us when we travel because we know how fleeting this precious time is? Because a vacation is just a short immersion? Or is it more an emergence from a world in which we are primed for high performance but are rarely fully present?
Our autopilot doesn't work when we're on vacation
When you vacation in a foreign place, everything is new. The first trip to the beach and the temperature of the sea water that washes away everyday life from between our toes. The hike through foreign landscapes and the stroll through the old town, where behind every corner there is a small gem of a shop, a spontaneous exhibition, a tempting restaurant. Deciphering supermarket labels. The arbitrariness of the timetable when you want to go somewhere by public transport. In order for all of this to work, our attention level often has to reach unimagined heights. Because unlike at home, our autopilot doesn't work when we travel. And if we're not careful, we'll step on sea urchins, get lost in the woods, risk a food allergy, or end up on the wrong side of town. It's no wonder that when we travel, we often feel that complete heaviness in bed in the evenings that we long for at home, even after an intensive workout in the gym. Because it's not just our bodies that have reached their limits. But because our mind has also perceived everything around us more intensely.
Vacation as mindfulness training
Traveling is a wonderful opportunity to train our attention and be mindful in the here and now. Celebrate the feeling of water on your skin instead of just routinely jumping into the shower.
To consciously perceive distances instead of just covering them. To enjoy our food instead of just wolfing it down.
Would you like support for more mindfulness and deceleration for your next vacation? Then I recommend the blog post Five locations for your next retreat from my colleague Nadine.
© Photos: Unsplash / Callum Shaw, Ina Hiester
Ina Hiester
Ina is a digital nomad and travels through Europe by land and sea. The journalist is always on the lookout for special places for Good Travel, philosophizes about travel in her column, takes photographs, makes music and writes articles on all kinds of environmental and sustainability topics.
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