My last post was about choosing an ideal physical location to meditate in. This essay will be about how to set up our meditation space to best support our sitting practice.
To begin with, it helps when meditating to be in a space with subdued lighting – not pitch dark, but less bright than usual. Lower light can help us to calm down and to let go. We also want our environmental temperature to be in a comfortable range, not too hot and not too cold. Keeping in mind that people’s temperature sometimes drops when meditating for a while, it can be helpful to bundle up before we start, perhaps putting on a jacket or wrapping ourselves in a blanket.
I wrote last month about how it is helpful to have nothing around us that will strongly pull on our attention – meditating in a spot that is as quiet as possible, and, if you are someone who ever meditates with eyes open, with minimal distractions in our line of sight. This specifically also means having our phones and computers silent, out of reach, and with screens not visible. An exception can be made of course if our device is playing a guided meditation or is your timer to let us know how long to meditate for – then, of course, we want to try to use it for only that purpose.
Aiming to minimize distractions is more important when performing techniques that emphasize building concentration and focus than those that involve opening to experiences the way that they are. With the second more “insight” oriented type of meditations, it might be useful to, for example, fully feel being too hot. Minimizing distractions is also usually more important for beginner meditators than long timers.
It is helpful when meditating to have a timer sitting next to us, set to ring after our intended time period of meditation. I usually use a kitchen timer (one that doesn’t make any sound until it rings at the end), but, again, many people will use their phone. Guided meditations obviously last for a set period of time, and there are some apps or recordings that just ring a bell after a certain period of time.
Some of my teachers have suggested not having a pen and pad of paper next to one when meditating, but I have done so for decades and found it to be valuable. Some of the seemingly important ideas that have popped into my mind during a meditation period and that I’ve written down have turned out on later reflection to be unimportant or items already existing on my to do list, but other ideas have turned out to be genuinely useful creative inspirations or to do items that have turned out to be important to capture. Another thing that can be helpful to have next to us when meditating is a box of tissues or a roll of toilet paper.
In general, as with finding an ideal location, it can be useful to try to set ourselves up for an ideal, but also to open to and do our best with whatever meditation environment we find ourselves in.