BY TOM RAPSAS

If you’re the kind of person who says they don’t have time to meditate, this meditation may be for you—because it doesn’t take time out of your day, it’s something you do during your day. It’s called the “waiting meditation” and I learned about if from Zen teacher Jan Chozen Bays in the Everyday Mindfulness section of the Waking Up app.

Personally, I find the best time to meditate is in the morning, ideally at sunrise. But some mornings, when you wake up late, or need to tend to family responsibilities, or would rather just read a book, meditation doesn’t work. That’s the beauty of the waiting meditation: You can find opportunities to practice it throughout even the busiest of days. Bays explains the practice this way:

Anytime you find yourself waiting, whether you’re in line at the store, waiting for the spinning icon on your computer screen to go away, take this as an opportunity to practice a form of mindfulness, meditation or prayer.

Think about it: The next time you’re stuck in a traffic jam, or in a long checkout line at the supermarket, or waiting in a doctor’s office, you’re presented with the chance to get a quick meditation or prayer session in. And you might have this opportunity several times a day.

A barrier to waiting meditation: our natural tendency to distract ourselves.

Bays points out that when it comes to waiting, we seem to have trouble staying in the moment and begin looking for distractions. In her words, “We might turn on the TV or radio, text someone on the phone, or mindlessly scroll through our favorite social media channel, or just sit and fume.” The trick is to break this habit—by changing the way we view waiting.

While waiting “usually provokes negative emotions,” Bays also tells us it “can be transformed into a gift—the gift of free time to practice.” So, the next time you’re waiting in line, or stuck in traffic, you need to avoid the knee-jerk reaction of picking up your phone and instead try practicing mindfulness. Bay believes that:

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/wakeupcall/2023/11/the-meditation-practice-for-people-too-busy-to-meditate/