How to Find Peace & Quiet?

[m18pak]

Okay, so basically I am a poor student (18 years old) who has a problem that I can't seem to solve: background noise.

I want to be able to visualize & meditate etc but there's always noise in the background so that I can't concentrate. I can't afford to rent a house all by myself, but it's getting to the point where I can't stand living with others anymore.

I have thought about getting a studio/flat etc, but even then I still wouldn't be able to get the quiet that I need because of the fact that I'll have people living right next to me so that I'll hear them through the wall.

So can you help me out here and give me some ideas? I am literally at my wits' end. If I have to stop a visualization one more time after just getting started because of somebody turning on the TV or walking past my door I swear to God...

And yes, I have tried getting up very early in the morning to do this, but I want to be able to do this in the afternoon and evening as well. I basically want to be able to do this when I want to, not when everybody else is out, like I'm living my life by reacting to others.

Please give me some ideas. The only one I've come up with so far is to wear earmuffs, and that just won't work while meditating will it?

PS. By quiet I'm talking about the level of noise that you would find in a library, a good one, where there are no noises to distract you.

[LightWork]

Obvious suggestion, but try your library? I've genuinely done this before.

I don't know your exact situation, but I'm on a campus and I have a rather large field next to me. This is quiet alot of the day - people are never within 100m of one another when walking dogs or whatnot. Perfect for peace and quiet. We also have a lake (well, it's a pond) with similar effects. Are there any places like this close by?

Another alternative is to get some music you're 'in tune' to (classical, new age, whatever, just no lyrics and not heavy) and play this to eliminate background noise in your room. My hi fi system surround me with it, which is helpful.

Or: earplugs, earmuffs...Work with varying success

[n_vizion]

You can try meditating in the middle of the day in a room with other people but will it be as effective? Whenever you hear advice about meditation or visualization, the consensus is to do them in the early morning or late at night because that is when you can really get enough quite time to concentrate. It may be hard to quiet the mind with so many distractions to break your concentration.

If I visualize in the mid day when people are up and doing things around the house, I go into a room, shut the door, and put on a meditation cd to help cloud out the noise. Other times I leave the house and go to a park. If there is too many people there to concentrate, I just sit in my car and visualize, meditate, pray, etc.

[Ohabu]

I think music is your best bet with your current situation. Get some sound-proof earpieces and find some fitting music. Fitting music would be either a special meditational compilation or simply (calm) music you love that you have already listened to so many times you don't really hear it anymore.

For my case, a collection of Simon & Garfunkel's slower hits would be good.

[Phoenixrising777]

They make these new earphones that block noise...Sony makes a good one. Place them in without music. It makes your breath seem really loud...but if you add counting breaths to you meditation it works well.

I used to do this at work in my car during lunch breaks off of a busy street.

[Kaspian]

With practice, the hum of activity around you can become less of a distraction. As I understand meditation, part of the process is choosing not to get attached to your thoughts. That idea can apply to noises, too; when you hear something that grabs your attention—a dog barking, a song playing, the TV, a conversation in the next room, or whatever—simply let it (your attention to the noise) go. You might be surprised at the power of making many small, simple choices.

[m18pak]

Look, guys, when I said peace & quiet I meant QUIET, as in no noises whatsoever, so please don't tell me to play my own music or to learn to just ignore it, because none of that will help me.

Any more ideas??? Anybody?

[Sunnybayes]

Look, guys, when I said peace & quiet I meant QUIET, as in no noises whatsoever, so please don't tell me to play my own music or to learn to just ignore it, because none of that will help me.

Any more ideas??? Anybody?

Maybe perfect quiet is impossible ( I could think of going in your car and driving out into the country). I find that I am still distracted by music, and earplugs help, but they still aren't perfect, and they look goofy if you wear them out somewhere public.

I will tell you the trick that I use to get good concentation where ever I am at.

Block out the distracting noise by blocking it out with consistent noise. A sound is distracting if it unpredictable, but if a constant sound is played then it masks out the distracting noises.

I use brown noise to do this. I made myself a 10 minute mp3 of brown noise that I carry around on my MP3 player so that I can get qualilty concentration done virtually anywhere requardless how noisy it is. I even use it to fall alseep when my roomate is loudly playing the drums on the video game Rock Band in the living room with his friends. It blocks out extraneous noises better than foam earplugs, much cheaper than noise cancelling earphoes, and looks less dorky too.

Brown noise is simular to the more familiar white noise which sounds like TV static, but brown noise is more soothing and calm on the ears, sounds more like rain and a slumber thunder rolling in the distance, and blocks out more noise for the same volume. It has less intense high frequencies and louder lower frequencies.

You can turn it up just as much as needed to mask out distracting sounds, and then because the sound is so predictable, your mind easily blocks the brown noise out, therefore you can put your full attention to where ever you like. Even when I need to turn it up relativly loud, I can still fall asleep.

Brown noise is short for Brownian noise, based on a concept called Brownian motion.

I did a quick google search and found:

Brownian noise - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Here is a 5 second sample from here:

Brown Noise

The way I made the 10 minute sample of brownnoise was by downloading the 5 second sample and then importing it into Audacity (it's freeware) and then just copying and pasting until its was 10 minutes. I did this instead of setting it on loop because I found the skip when it resests every 5 seconds still distracting, whereas a skip every 10 minutes is not so bad.

Anyone who reads this, I can email you my mp3 file if you don't want to go through the effort to make the file, just private message me. If there is enough demand then maybe someone can tell me a good place to post the file on the net.

[missing]

Originally Posted by m18pak

Look, guys, when I said peace & quiet I meant QUIET, as in no noises whatsoever, so please don't tell me to play my own music or to learn to just ignore it, because none of that will help me.

Any more ideas??? Anybody?

you can kill everybody? nuclear war? I don't know, the people above my apartment have been "moving in" the past 10 days it seems with no end in sight. It's the worst kind of noise, consistent banging and vibrations. It sucks. I could complain, or tell them to quiet down but I don't care enough. I guess that's my solution to small problems. Stop caring. Probably not the answer you are looking for. You could head to the wilderness but then you have pesky crickets and wind and what not. How about looking into a sensory deprivation chamber? Maybe build a sound proof house? Sure it will cost you bigtime $$$ but you could always rob a bank or something.

ah noise, what a pain.

[Stephen]

Peace and Quiet?

Easy.

Head for the hills. Hillwalking and generally enjoying a human free environment for a time, is one of the best ways to think, meditate, clear the head. (before you come back down)

[Sunnybayes]

Originally Posted by Sunnybayes

...
I use brown noise to do this. I made myself a 10 minute mp3 of brown noise that I carry around on my MP3 player so that I can get qualilty concentration done virtually anywhere requardless how noisy it is. I even use it to fall alseep when my roomate is loudly playing the drums on the video game Rock Band in the living room with his friends. It blocks out extraneous noises better than foam earplugs, much cheaper than noise cancelling earphoes, and looks less dorky too.

I had someone ask me for the link to this file. In another post I posted the link, but for completeness here is the download link too.