Atimeless nonplace, the airport concentrates individuals in transition: between one place and another, between one time zone and another, some travelers temporarily professional sprinters, others seeking alternative activities.
One wanders absentmindedly between clandestine sprays of perfume at duty free under the eyes of not always compliant sales clerks, complaining about how much a small bottle of water costs at the bar in front of the boarding gate. Between announcements and passport checks, neighbors are being monitored to see if that vocally growing child will sit in the neighboring seat.
The need for silence is a heartfelt theme: at the last edition of the London Design Biennial (londondesignbiennale.com), Nathalie Harb proposed an urban installation, a refuge against noise, while in Milan, Stanze del Silenzio(comune.milano.it), places to be able to tune in to one’s inner self, will open. Along with silence, a useful state for travelers is stillness, a state of mind that one can learn to achieve. Those in the trade and traveling in economy roll out, where ever they happen to be, their yoga mat and set up their meditation cushion to achieve suspension of the agitations of the mind, the goal of the practice according to the ancient text on yoga, Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra. For business travelers, another way opens up, that of accessing Cathay Pacific’s Business Class louge The Pier(cathaypacific.com) in Hong Kong airport to enter a space called
The Sanctuary by Pure Yoga
, 700 square meters of parallel world. Divided into two zones, The Body Sanctuary, welcomes those who practice yoga and in this space through work presented in a series of videos on postures that improve circulation and joint mobility and restore balance at the energetic level, while The Mind Sanctuary, is dedicated to the practice of free or guided meditation in headphones.
If the techniques work on the ground, they are effective in the air and, in overcoming the not always smooth walking up and down the aisles, aboard flights Cathay Pacific, in the program Travel well with Yoga, you can watch video lectures given by Patrick Gulman and Almen Wong of Pure Yoga (pure-yoga.com ). With the practice, those parts of the body that remain passive for long hours are relaxed and stretched, but the benefits develop to that at the psychic level, with a lightening of the mind. Body positions, short meditations and breathing exercises can make a long move, an inner journey.
For those who prefer, however, a more traditional on-the-ground relaxation in the SPA of airports you can experience various possibilities, from classic defatiguing massages to counter jet lag to the Fish SPA, the original exfoliation to care for feet immersed in pools of water fine-tuned by the Garra Rufa minnows, to be tried at the spa in Terminal 1 of the Singapore Changi Airport.
