Om at Home

Enlarge Image Image Gallery Richard Freeman, director of the Yoga Workshop in Boulder, Colorado, has created a sacred area for his meditation space. Photo by Povy Kendal Atchison

Our favorite meditation experts and yogis offer advice on creating sacred space, a place to practice stillness.

From maharishis to Madonna, meditation’s popularity has spanned the ages. While there’s plenty of information on why and how you should meditate, there’s less guidance on exactly where you should commune with your inner self. Can you carve out a meditation space in a corner of your bedroom, or do you need an entirely separate room? If your meditation area faces north, will a cold wind blow through your soul? Are white walls and bare floors truly Zen? Will you ever achieve nirvana without the right wall hangings?

We asked meditation and yoga experts for tips on how they created meditation areas in their homes. Here’s what they had to say.

Richard Freeman

Freeman melds his decades of study of various yoga practices—Zen and Vipassana Buddhism, Sufism, and Western philosophy—into a unique teaching style. His videos and tapes on ashtanga yoga and yoga breathing are bestsellers. He’s director of the Yoga Workshop in Boulder, Colorado.

“A meditation room can be sanctified through prayer or chant to mark it as a sacred space,” Freeman says. “In the same way that you create a sacred space, you can create a sacred time for meditation by beginning and ending with a chant or bow. This ritual, done as you enter and leave your space, encourages a fresh look at the thoughts and feelings that arise within it.”

“Everyone has something that’s special— a picture of a child, an old teddy bear, an old shirt, even a picture of Elvis,” Yee says. “Put whatever’s extremely individual in your meditation place—whatever draws you into a place of healing. I know one woman who collected dirt from every place she traveled and put it in a bowl in her meditation room. Center yourself in a place you’ve made your own.”

Rodney Yee

With more than twenty yoga videos to his credit, Yee has helped bring yoga out of the studio and into the living room. A former professional ballet dancer and philosophy student, he’s codirector of Piedmont Yoga Studio in Oakland, California.

What the Pros Know

• It doesn’t really matter where your meditation space is located in your house, although Rodney Yee says the Balinese consider the northeast corner culturally and religiously auspicious. Tias Little likes the southeast corner because it captures morning light for early meditation. Basically, says Yee, pick a space where you feel relaxed and comfortable. “I think everybody has a special little place where they go to be quiet—just like a cat that searches until it finds the right spot to sleep.”
• You can think big thoughts in any size space. Your meditation area can be as expansive as Richard Freeman’s, a room “at the very top of the house, encompassed by a big maple tree,” or simply a spare closet or an empty corner. Rainbeau Mars likes a window for fresh air as long as it’s not distracting, but Little says a semi-enclosed space can give a “really spectacular feeling, like a little womb.” You might consider creating a six- or seven-foot-square adobe “cell” addition to your house or yard.
• “Anyone can use [a meditation space], but only for meditation,” Deepak Chopra says. Freeman says to minimize distraction, you should choose a location that’s as isolated as possible from the traffic flow in your house, and it shouldn’t be in an area where you’re more tempted to sleep than meditate. If you share your space, each person should have his or her own chair, cushion, zabuton mat, or zafu pillow, “something that sanctifies this is my space,” Mars says. Sit on it only when you meditate. That helps create a ritual conducive to meditation, Judith Hanson Lasater says.
• Tatami mats or bare wood floors are a better, cleaner option than rugs or carpets, and they create a more spacious feeling, Little says.
• An altar is a good idea. “When you set it up, the space begins to get that special feeling,” Yee says. An altar makes it clear the space is reserved for meditation and serves as a repository for your sacred objects and decorations. It needn’t be elaborate: Little has seen window sills used as altars. Yee’s altar is a small, low table covered with a Balinese cloth; Freeman’s is a stone slab.
• If you do yoga in your meditation space, store props such as mats, blocks, and straps in a chest. Leaving them out creates distracting clutter.
• Avoid bright overhead lighting, or use a dimmer switch. Lamps or sconces are best because they combine illumination with warmth.
• Include a timer. Meditation is all about discipline and consistency, and meditating a set amount of time each day can help achieve that, Lasater says.
• Even experts disagree on how to decorate your space. Most are minimalists. “It needs to be elegant in its simplicity and with very little clutter,” Chopra says. His recommended decorations include candles, books, and symbolic representations of archetypal figures such as gods, goddesses, angels, flowers, incense, and pastel colors. “You should not include anything that symbolically represents violence,” he adds. Yet not everyone finds minimalism calming, points out Freeman. “Some people display every saint they’ve ever heard of; some people may have only one. Others might light a candle; others prefer nothing. It’s whatever makes you want to sit there and do nothing.”