Neo meditation: Chant ‘Om’ on the go in New York

New York: Imagine meditating on the streets of the world’s most busiest city, New York. It is difficult. Right?… wrong!

Meditation studios on the wheels are finding their way in the city which never sleeps and helping New Yorkers with relaxing their mind.

These vans, inspired from the concept of food trucks, offer patrons a quiet environment where they can pay to collect their thoughts for 10 to 20 minutes, according to an article published on cnbc.com.

Carla Hammond, who left her stressful job, owns one such mobile meditation studio called Be Time.

The interior of soundproof studio is adorned with over 15,000 LED lights that changes in harmony with the soothing music, which plays in the background.

“It’s a little spaceship of calm,” the CNBC quoted Hammond as saying.

Kristin Westbrook is another such practioner who runs a meditation truck, Calm City, in the New York.

“I wanted something where people could pop in during lunch,” said Westbrook, who left her job in New York’s Rockefeller Center to pursue her calling.

In addition to New York city, studios like these have started running in Detroit and the San Francisco Bay Area too, and they have been plying on the roads since 2015.

The common rationale behind all these studios popping up on the roads is helping “time starved” Americans to de-stress.

“At the root of this is the inability to manage stress,” said Joanne Leider, who operates Meditation Works in Detroit metro area.

Their concerns are not unfounded.

According to an American Psychological Association study, nearly one-third, or 29 percent, of respondents in 2017 said their stress levels have increased in the past year.

“I thought, if we built a meditation studio and put it in a food truck, people would use it if we brought it to work,” Leider told the CNBC.

Now, her company runs two such mobile studios and teaches meditation to employees of 16 different companies . (ANI)