This is a mindful walking meditation.
It can be very handy if you want to integrate a little mindfulness into your day and you gotta get somewhere as well.
So many times if I'm doing a formal walking meditation I do choose a space that's about the length of a yoga mat,
Maybe a little longer,
And I just slowly walk until I reach the end of the space.
I shift my weight and turn around,
Walk in the other direction.
It can be short,
Just a couple of minutes,
Or it can be longer.
You could do a half an hour or even an hour.
I'm going to do it quite slowly at first just to give you the instructions so that you have a core understanding of how it works.
Once you know how to do mindful walking you can do it anytime you happen to be walking.
In order to start this formally,
Getting yourself into a standing position,
Having your feet standing underneath you,
Maybe taking a moment to just feel how your body feels.
One thing that's part of walking is balance,
So maybe letting your weight shift from left to right,
Letting things go a little bit towards the right foot,
And then letting them go a little bit towards the left foot,
And just feeling the balancing act of that.
And as you're feeling what it's like to just inhabit your body,
You might bend a knee,
You might move a hip.
The idea is that normally we do a lot of walking without thinking about it much.
We're coming back to basics of really inhabiting the skeleton,
Really inhabiting what's going on inside our skin.
You can have your hands in any position you want.
A lot of times I just put my hands in my pocket.
And walking might not be a thing that you put a lot of thought into before,
But for most of us the weight shifts to one side.
So let's see,
I just shifted my weight to my right foot and my left heel lifted.
There was a slight balancing act as the left foot comes forward,
And then a shift of my weight over towards my left side.
And now I'm standing more on my left foot.
My right heel is lifted.
I lift it up and bring it forward.
And in this way,
Right when we're formally practicing right now,
You might go quite slowly.
If your eyes have closed,
You might want to open them just because that can help with your balance.
You can meditate with your eyes open,
That's fine.
And as you shift weight,
Lift the heel,
Bring the foot forward,
Shift weight.
There's a lot of nuances.
There's a lot of things going on right now.
If you've walked a few steps and you have limited space,
Maybe you're on a yoga mat like I am.
As I'm walking along this yoga mat,
Once I get to the end of the space,
In a way where I'm paying a lot of attention to details,
I simply figure out how I'm gonna turn.
So one foot turns,
I feel the rotation in my ankle,
The other foot follows suit along.
In many ways my body knows how to do this and so I have some freedom to simply observe what's really happening for me.
As I'm slowly walking along this yoga mat back and forth,
Simply being present.
Perhaps there's something going on as the knee bends and straightens.
Maybe there's something going on in the hips.
If the breath has stopped,
That's interesting to note.
And during a mindful walking experiment,
It's a really good idea to continue to breathe.
So if you have stopped breathing,
Consciously making the breath happen again.
But it's a good thing to know.
If the breath stops when you're concentrating,
One more good thing to know about yourself.
Tuning into the nuances of what it means to be inside your own body and how it feels to move the different parts of yourself.
But if you're not doing a formal practice like that and you're just trying to walk yourself down to the subway or something,
You might go at a quicker pace.
And yet a lot of the same things can apply.
You can still feel the nuances as your feet are inside your shoes.
You can still feel the bending and straightening of your knees.
You can feel if your arms are swinging or not.
You can feel if your head is moving from left to right or forward and back.
There's a lot of sounds.
There's a lot to just simply be with,
To pay attention to,
No matter what pace you're going at as you're moving through your day.
