How to maintain a daily spiritual practice while traveling

I love to travel. It is one of my favorite things to do. I love the sense of adventure that being somewhere I've never been brings. But, my favorite thing in the whole world, is my daily spiritual practice. Hard to believe I know, but I do love it even more than traveling. My practice gives me a sense of calm, joy, and peace.

Over time however, I've noticed that my travel time and daily spiritual practice don't always play well together. I have the best of intentions, but somehow when I'm on vacation, my daily spiritual practice and rituals suffer. Meditation is one of my daily rituals, and when I don't meditate while traveling well then my mind really starts to suffer. I get cranky, I have unhealthy thoughts. Basically, I start acting out like a toddler who needs a nap. Because of my commitment to my spiritual growth, I decided to create a simple vacation practice that works for me. I'd like to share it with you in case it helps you and your daily spiritual practice.
 

On a normal day I spend about an hour doing the following items before I start my day. 

I meditate. My mediation practice looks different depending on what I’m working on. Some examples of different mediations I perform are…

• I focus on my breath

• I clear and balance my chakras

• I do a full body scan 
  

I say affirmations. My affirmation are an ever evolving thing, but a couple examples of my affirmations are as follows…

• I claim my abundance mindset with regards to money, time, ect.

• I affirm my clean and balanced eating plan for the day

• I remind myself of the beautiful healthy body I have and how blessed I am to call it home
  

I read positive quotes and books. As with my meditation practice, the books I read vary depending on where I am in my journey. A couple of books that have helped me along the way are…

·     The Book of Joy by Dali Lama and Desmond Tutu

·     Raise Your Vibration by Sabrina Reber

·     Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself by Dr. Joe Dispenza

I visualize and focus on and feel of the way I want my life to look in the future. Some of the areas I work on with my visualizations are…

·     My body image

·     My career growth

·     My relationship with my partner

Now I know what all of you are thinking… an hour! Who has time an hour to spend on a morning spiritual practice? Well on vacation, I definitely do not. Which I think is opposite of how it should be, but I digress. So, I came up with what I like to call the vacation spiritual basics. 

The Vacation Spiritual Basics

1. When I wake up, I take about 5 minutes and I do the following things-
   
   ·      I say my affirmations

   ·     visualize my future self. 
   

2. I then take another 5 minutes to meditate. 
   10 minutes! 
   

We all have 10 minutes a day, right? I found that spending 10 minutes each morning on myself and my spiritual growth starts my day off right. My mind feels clearer and calmer for the entire day. 

This not only works with meditations, visualizations, and affirmations. For example, if your daily spiritual practice is prayer, take the first 5-10 minutes of your day to pray.  If your spiritual practice is reading by quotes, for example by the Dalai Lama, take the first 5-10 minutes and be inspired by what you read.


Whatever your daily spiritual practices are, I challenge you to maintain your practice while you're away from home. You will reap the benefits and to be honest with you, so will the people around you.