PORTLAND, Ore. – Waiting rooms in Portland are being converted into meditating rooms as part of the Don’t Wait-Meditate™ campaign. And waiting rooms across the country are expected to follow.
"The goal of the Meditation Challenge is to help 100,000 people develop the habit of meditation," says author, speaker and meditation teacher Lisa Hepner. "The biggest obstacle people face in developing a regular meditation practice is TIME. They say they don’t have enough time to meditate."
The average American spends 42-60 minutes a day waiting. "Think about it-we wait for doctor’s appointments or meetings. We wait on hold on the telephone and for computer programs to download. We wait in line at grocery stores and banks and we wait in traffic," Hepner says.
The Don’t Wait-Meditate™ pledge invites people to convert waiting time into meditating time. Hepner is approaching holistic health centers all across the United States to get them to participate in the Meditation Challenge by converting their waiting rooms into meditating rooms. In Oregon, Nature Cure’s Clinic and Willow Wood Cottage are the first centers to participate in the campaign.
Participating health practitioners and clinics receive flyers that look like magazines to put in their waiting rooms. These flyers include tips on how to meditate while waiting. Then when people sign the "official" pledge, they receive free podcasts explaining the meditation techniques they can use while waiting.
If one person can commit to turning their waiting time into meditating time, he or she would experience immediate, beneficial results, Hepner says. "I believe that meditating before appointments will also increase responsiveness to treatment." People from all across the globe already have signed the Don’t Wait-Meditate™ pledge.
As part of the Meditation Challenge, people can also participate in 21 day live meditation instruction (or commit to a 21-day program on their own) to develop the habit of meditation in only 15 minutes a day from the comfort of their own home. For more information, visit www.meditationchallenge.com.
