Zen and the art of long distance flying

Ahh, the holiday season. When airports are chock-a-block full of families transporting themselves across the country – or internationally, on occasion. Here’s my top 5 list for surviving the holiday season travel with mindfulness and zen.

Top 5 tips for surviving holiday travel

#5 Nourish thy soul.

You wouldn’t have thought that airports are the best place to nourish your soul: as the late Douglas Adams said, “It can hardly be a coincidence that no language on earth has ever produced the expression, 'As pretty as an airport” (Adams 1991). But now is a great time to write out your plans and journal; it’s a really good habit to get into, to always have a pen (or pencil) and paper. For those who subscribe to the idea of “Capture” in Getting Things Done (Allen 2015) – yes, I’m a devotee – it’s great to have such things handy. (And I'm pretty much a sucker for a shiny red Moleskine notebook anytime.)

So grab your notebook, pens, and pencils, and use your time productively to sort through things!

#4 ...and also thy stomach

I've written about food to pack on a flight here, so this is more a reminder to pack a few snacks every time. You could have unforeseeable delays, and not all airports have much in the way of decent catering (if you’ve ever landed at Doha in the middle of the night – or pretty much anywhere in the middle of the night, you'll know what I mean). Nuts, crackers, trail mix and dried fruit all make great snacks to nibble on, especially if you end up stranded somewhere.

#3 Release attachments

I wrote about the joys of packing lightly here, so I won’t go over the details too much, except to say: having all your luggage with you is one less thing to worry about. You won’t end up in Brisbane with your luggage in Bahrain if all you have is carry-on luggage. And anything you need you’ll have with you.

But the biggest joy – oh, sweet, sweet bliss! – is at the other end of a delayed flight (and you’re over it, am I right?), you can sweep straight past the luggage carousel, and onto the taxi, train or bus, no further delay. Bliss.

#2 Breathe. Just breathe.

Now is the time to really advance your meditation skills. No, you don’t have a yoga mat; no, you don’t have Tibetan chanting playing; no, you probably don’t have incense (and it’s likely to be confiscated if you did); no, you don’t have a singing bowl handy.

But you do have your breath. (And if you aren’t breathing, I respectfully suggest that your problems are much bigger than your plane running late.) All you need to do is focus on each breath: in, out, repeat. Just a simple focus on your breath – and you are going to be breathing, whether you're meditating or not, so you may as well take advantage of that. And the benefits of mindfulness meditation have been shown in a meta-analysis of multiple studies (Grossman et al. 2004).

So take the time to do your health a favour.

#1 Surrender to the flow

Sometimes things go horribly wrong, especially in the holiday season. I experienced a spectacular snafu one year three days before Christmas (yes, about as peak season as it gets!) when I was flying to visit my family 1000 miles away, and my ticket printed out the wrong departure time, 2 hours after the plane departed. When I arrived at the airport, my plane hadn’t departed – because we were fogged in. I was eternally grateful to the crew member who got me on that plane with a lot of wrangling with the computer system.

And this is just part of the deal. There are strikes and thunderstorms and blizzards (OK, not so much in Australia) and turbulence and mechanical failures. And sometimes, by circumstances, you're forced to just – STOP.

And when things stop it’s OK. Remain calm, and see if you can do something useful with your time – call a loved one, or write something down. Please don’t demand that elements beyond anyone’s control be brought into alignment – sometimes they can’t. I've seen people arguing about the need to take off in a blizzard (important point: you need to NOT take off in a blizzard a whole lot more).

Please don’t be this person. Ever.

So if you're flying through a crowded airport terminal this holiday season and things get slightly unstuck, remember, it’s just part of what happens sometimes. Let it happen, and use your time as best you can.

References:

Adams, D 1991, Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul, Simon and Schuster.

Allen, D 2015, Getting things done: The art of stress-free productivity, Penguin.

Grossman, P, Niemann, L, Schmidt, S & Walach, H 2004, 'Mindfulness-based stress reduction and health benefits: A meta-analysis', Journal of Psychosomatic Research, vol. 57, no. 1, pp. 35-43.