How to Organize Meditation (quiet) Rooms in Public Spaces

Can obesity be reduced by designing meditation rooms (quiet spaces) in food courts? If people are eating more from stress or anxiety before visiting hospitals, making decisions, or going to eat in a shopping mall food court or at a public park picnic, would a quiet room for meditation help to curb emotional eating or impulsive decision-making?

Would a quiet room near food or medical establishments be a healing tool for those who eat to calm themselves? Instead of using food for comfort in a state of stress, how about a meditation room before a meal or a decision?

Non-denominational, interfaith meditation rooms are needed at Sacramento hospitals, medical centers, and similar places to meet the needs of all faiths. Kaiser Permanente in Sacramento is constructing four mediation rooms in three hospitals. In two weeks, a meditation room will open at Kaiser Medical Center on Morse Avenue. See the May 13, 2010 Sacramento Bee article by Jennifer Garza, "Hospitals rethink spiritual spaces, create meditation rooms."

In the fall, UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento will open a large interfaith space in its new pavilion wing. Sacramento's Sutter Health's new hospital for women and children will open in 2013 with a new meditation room seating 40 people. What's new is that Jewish prayer shawls and Mulsim prayer rugs will be available at Sutter Medical Center in Sacramento.

So how can you get in on the big picture of opening a business at home online offering to organize meditation rooms at medical centers and other types of gathering places from hospitals and hospices to even dental offices and social centers, public parks, recreation rooms, gyms, hiking trails, learning centers, or wherever people gather? How about more public interfaith meditation centers in shopping malls or even at food courts or in sports arenas?

How would you establish a meditation center in the middle of a shopping mall or public park, for example? Take the inspiration from the new trend of opening or expanding meditation rooms in response to market demand. Visitors and staff at hospitals, for example want more meditation rooms because of the growing awareness of the value of meditation as a healing tool.

Meditation rooms would be better than time-out rooms at pubic schools. And since religion and state are separate in public schools, the meditation rooms could be used as a healing tool--to meditate, relax, or privately and silently get in touch with one's spirituality.

The idea is that the person sitting next to you may be of a different spirituality. That's why the meditation rooms are there so everyone of every faith or no faith in particular can have the chance to use meditation as a healing tool. That includes those with a religion who want to pray silently without disturbing the neighbor in the next seat praying with a different approach. The idea of silent prayer is also a Quaker inclination. But it reflects the multigenerational and inter-faith possibilities of expanded meditation rooms in places such as hospitals.

Schools probably might cut down on stress during the day for a time-out for meditation in an interfaith or no faith way. Meditation rooms actually are a healing tool that treats the whole person. For those who choose no faith, just the act of sitting down and relaxing becomes a healing tool because the person is in a meditation room to reflect.

A meditation room might be called a reflection room without mirrors. They are inclusive. That's the purpose of reflection and meditation to heal through inclusiveness and silent reflection. The reason many people go to meditation rooms whether they are in public schools, public parks, hospitals, or shopping malls is to make a decision -- to choose a path to take. That path might be about health, lifestyle, relationships, careers, travel, or studies.

For those with a religion, there's a trend towards recognizing the awareness of the role both meditation and spirituality plays as a healing tool. Another healing tool is music therapy -- listening to relaxing music while trying to meditate or while making trying to make a decision.

People might feel reluctant to go into a room in a hospital that's called a chapel, particularly if one is a Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, Jew, atheist, freethinker, or agnostic. Many non-Christians think at first that chapels in hospitals or in military service establishments are only for Christians or even only for Catholics.

That's why at least on the West coast, a chapel is called a meditation room because it's for all religions as well as those with no preference or no religion. If you want to organize a meditation room anywhere from a hospital to a school or shopping mall, make sure it's for everyone and without religious symbols.

The windows might represents scenes of the ocean and beach, serene rural landscapes, mountains, trees, a basket of fruit on a table, or anything that does not relate to anyone's religion or lack of it. That means no representations of visual art depicting humans or animals. Geometric designs appeal to all faiths, but are used in mosques. Candles or a lamp of eternal flame or even a bowl of fruit might represent Judaism to some. So you want to use landscapes for serenity of trees, oceans, lakes, rivers, flowers, or preferably a serene beach and ocean scene for calmness.

Keep the motifs representing nature, but without animals and people for those whose faiths don't allow representations of animals, dolls, or people. You might have an art gallery representing beach scenes or how light plays on the water and sand, or rocks and mountains--basically nature motifs.

Some art galleries will be happy to hang the paintings of their artists in meditation rooms or provide stained glass windows with nature scenes such as trees and rolling hills, water, oceans, and peaceful landscapes. You might hang paintings of a bridge crossing a river that symbolizes healing on the other side.

For those who do pray in meditation rooms, perhaps a prayer bowl can stand in a place where those in the meditation room write down their prayers and place the papers in the bowl. For people that request prayer rugs or mats, have them available. You might also have a prayer wheel available for those that request it.

The idea for organizing a meditation room is to have diversity. Basically, you can open your own business if you're an interior decorator or designer or would like to specializing in organizing meditation rooms for public spaces. How about organizing meditation rooms at airports?

If you want to open a business organizing and putting in or expanding meditation rooms, think of all the places for your business--prisons, bus terminals, train stations, airports, universities, and maybe private or public schools. The private schools will be easier to reach because public property is another hurdle when it comes to establishing a meditation room instead of a time-out room. But you might try the preschools.

Basically, you'd be designing and organizing a quiet room. It doesn't really have to focus on a religion. It's more than a chapel that in past history focused on spirituality. It's a quiet room for those who hear the word meditation and think it's too new age or new thought. No, it's just simply a quiet room for introspection, reflection, and weighing the pros and cons before making a decision in a quiet place without distractions.

In an airport, people might go to a meditation or quiet room to relax and lose some of their anxiety about flying. Hospitals usually have meditation rooms. Why would you want to organize meditation rooms anywhere, especially in medical settings? Because a quiet room is a healing tool to support the mind and body, for those who believe that room also supports the spirit, the room is an integrating experience.

That means the mind, body, and spirit integrates to make a decision without conflicts between different parts of the brain. The new trend says it plainly, you can start a business organizing meditation or quiet rooms in public spaces from hospitals to hotels.