Benefits of Travel: Time Slowing Down, Meditation Detachment, etc.

[Winston]

Here is a great blog post by Johnny1975 about the personal benefits you can derive from traveling a lot.

http://leagueofhustlers.blogspot.com/20 ... ravel.html

I concur with it. But I would like to add a few benefits I experienced of my own.

- Slowing down of time: If you live a life of routine where you do the same thing everyday, like most Americans and Asians do, there are no special memories or new experiences. So time moves faster and you remember nothing because there are no meaningful memories to retain. But when you travel or have new experiences, each moment is new and you have to pay attention and be mindful of it. As a result, time goes slow because each moment triggers your focused awareness. When you see new things, you are more focused and sharp too. You also have to think on your toes and figure things out in a new culture or country. It's kind of like when you spend all day at Disneyland experiencing new rides as a kid, if you remember, that day felt like a long day, because the rides and attractions were exciting and every moment you were seeing and experiencing something. At the end of the day you were exhausted and it felt like a very long day. That's what travel is like too. It slows down time so you experience time more like you did when you were a kid. So if you feel that time is moving too fast, or your routine has no memories or experiences, then traveling more long term will help slow down time and make each moment more meaningful and memorable. As the greatest mythologist Joseph Campbell said: "I don't believe people are looking for the meaning of life as much as they are looking for the experience of being alive."

- Meditation benefit. As you know, one of the goals of meditation is to help your mind detach from desire and ego, so you suffer less. That's a central aim of Buddhism and Zen. Traveling long term helps you do that too, because as you move from one place to another, you jettison the people, places and things there, to move on to the next location. Once you get used to that, jettisoning things from your mind gets easier and easier. Thus it becomes easier for you to let go and detach from your environment when you need to. This gives you GREATER CONTROL over your mind so that when you need to detach your mind from something bad or toxic, it becomes easier to do so once you've been used to your travel mode. I discovered this benefit after traveling in Russia a lot.

- Also when you are outside your country, like America for example, you can see it a lot clearer and more objectively than when you are in it. This increases your understanding of America too, so you can see through its delusions and illusions and false teachings.

Hope that helps inspire you to travel.

[Winston]

Interesting book about how travel transforms you and changes your self-identity and perception of yourself.



https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01M03V3BU/

Travel As Transformation: Conquer the Limits of Culture to Discover Your Own Identity

When you travel to a foreign land, do you experience this new place as your old self? Or do you become a new version of you?

From living in a van in San Diego to growing chocolate with indigenous tribes in Central America, to teaching in the Middle East and volunteering in Africa, Gregory V. Diehl has spent his entire adult life discovering the world and himself. Leaving his California home shortly after his 18th birthday, he went on to live and work in 45 countries across the globe by age 28.

By recounting the existential lessons from his journey, Diehl challenges the reader to question how their identity has been shaped by the culture and lifestyle they know. He argues, compellingly, that travel can transform your perception of yourself along with the world. By losing your comfortable sense of self, you learn to examine your life through the structure of everything it can become.

To travel solo a truly open mind is to forget who you were when you started. It is to be constantly born anew, to discover your strengths and find your path in life. Travel As Transformation will give you the wisdom, the inspiration, and the resources to conquer the limitations placed by your arbitrary past. Whether traveler or non-traveler, its lessons about approaching the uncomfortable and unfamiliar apply to everyone.

[Winston]

Wow. 8 Health benefits of travel!

https://mobilityjungle.com/blogs/infogr ... -traveling

[rabbithabit]

i like travel to meet new people (mostly guys) of different cultures and customs and view locations only available in that country. international travel is very exciting to me.

[Winston]

This validates what I said before that when you travel to exotic interesting places and have special memories, time goes slower because the time is more memorable. But if you live a life of routine where everyday is the same, like when you're in a rut, then nothing interesting happens and time goes faster.



Time is fleeting and finite, but recent studies by David Eagleman have shown that controlling the speed of its flow isn't just science fiction fantasy. By understanding the way your brain perceives time… both in the moment and in retrospect… it’s possible to live your life in a fulfilling way that feels longer.

Video Transcript:

What if we had the power to SLOW time down?

According to the research of neuroscientist David Eagleman, this isn't just science fiction fantasy. This power is real, and it's found in the difference between "clock time" and "brain time."

"Clock time" exists outside of us. It's constant, and maddeningly indifferent to you.

But "brain time" is shaped by our perceptions. Brain time can fly by, or drag on and on and on.

See, your brain records the events of your life, laying down data on a memory track as you experience things in the moment.

Here's a car crash, a kiss, a raise. These moments pass in an INSTANT, but because they're memorable, your brain captures volumes of footage.

Meanwhile, here's waiting in line, updating your phone, inane chit-chat. Your brain has nothing to do but notice the passage of time, making it draaaggg.
Not much to capture here.

To understand brain time more deeply, Eagleman ran an experiment, where he dropped his subjects 100 feet... into a net, don't worry... and made them guess how long their falls took. The fall guys all believed they were falling for much longer than they actually were.

What this experiment revealed is that we experience time differently in the moment, from how we experience time retrospectively. And THIS is the secret to slowing time down.

See, when we look back, our memories expand and contract.

The eventful times with a lot of footage, the ones that felt like a blink of an eye in the moment, unfurl and feel longer when we remember them and our brain forms the story.

But the times that felt so long in the moment are then compressed away...the worst of both worlds.

Another one of Eagleman's experiements showed that repetitive patterns cause brain activity to fall, while novelty causes it to spike.

So the core of harnessing brain time is this: if you want to slow time down and make your life last longer, fill your days with as many novel and memorable experiences as you can. Give your brain a reason to pay attention.

The changes don't all have to be big. Learn something new. Take a different route to work. Put down the phone and pick up a deck of cards.

It's possible to look back on a life where you accumulated several lifetimes worth of experiences and memories...just by avoiding the routine and monotony.

If Eagleman's research is true, then variety isn't just the spice of life... it's the secret to making it longer.

At least, in our heads.

[Winston]

Here are 3 simple ways to slow time and experience the meaning, magic and beauty of life:

1. Heighten your senses.
When you are being more aware and present to the moment, it can feel like time s-l-o-w-s down. Do you remember times when moments seemed to slow down? That first kiss. Seeing your child graduate. An incredible meal or celebration that seemed to last forever.
These things seem to move in slow motion because the moment meant something to you and thus your awareness was heightened. To slow time, then, train yourself to heighten your senses. Breath more slowly and deeply. Pay more attention to the sounds and sights all around you. Broaden your awareness and take in more of your experience. These things help you slow time down and really experience life again.

2. Minimize the number of things you pay attention to.
Get rid of distractions and don’t pay attention to so many things. The more you multitask, the less you do things with excellence, the less fulfilled you feel and the less capable you become. Learn to say no more and take on fewer things. Evaluate your opportunities and pay attention to only those things that matter. For example, when your loved ones come home, meet them at the door and have a moment where there is nothing else but them. Make that moment all there is. Make it a moment of real connection. In these singular moments of focus time slows down and becomes more meaningful.

3. Focus on heightening your feelings.
Sometimes when we are overwhelmed, we numb out. When life is going so fast, a lot of people don’t feel…anything. We kiss our loved ones and we don’t even feel it because we are not there in the moment. But the more moments you create by feeling the emotions of others and tuning back into your emotions with greater depth, the more you will notice your days start to count.

Over time as you do these things, you won’t feel so distracted or stressed. You will sense more slow, emotional moments that you will enjoy and remember with fondness. You will start to feel life again, and you will start to experience what we call The Charged Life!

[Winston]

Another way to slow down time: Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute. Then you will see how long a minute is. lol

You can slow down time if you travel to exotic interesting places, and see new things every minute. That will make you feel like a child and every moment will be interesting and the day will feel longer. It's when you live a routine life where everyday is the same that time goes faster.