How Walking Can Become Your Spiritual Practice

Explore how something as simple as walking can become a deeply meaningful spiritual practice. Through insights and lived experience (I share this talk while I'm walking), you will discover how presence, awareness, and connection can unfold with each step. This is an invitation to slow down, step outside, and let the outdoors become a place of grounding, clarity, and transformation.

Transcript

I'd like to talk today about how walking has become my spiritual practice and I'm doing this primarily to hopefully encourage you the listener to either walk as well and jump on board knowing that that's not really possible for everyone depending on where they live and their physical circumstances so at the same time just to consider what you love doing and do that and make that your spiritual practice and hopefully that even spills over into life because ultimately I think our lives can be our spiritual practice and can be our prayer I'm walking right now so you might hear some crunching in the background I'll try to edit that out a little bit but yeah I'm on my normal walk right now I recognize that I recognize ahead of time that this talk is going to be a little bit rough around the edges and I'm okay with that because I find that that's the way this type of meditation and walk is and I'm okay with it because that's sort of the way that nature is as well nature is in one sense a mess but at the same time it's whole you know it's it's perfect just as it is and just to let you know how it all started and again hopefully you might be able to relate to some of this I was practicing centering prayer many many years ago probably 20 years ago I think I was learning centering prayer and I started doing it outdoors and I was seeing a spiritual director and my spiritual director just said do more of that do more walking do more praying outdoors if that's what you love to do and essentially I've been doing it ever since and this practice has evolved over time now it's funny but initially I didn't really look at this as I didn't really look at this as a spiritual practice it's only it really dawned on me in the last few months okay this is my spiritual practice like so it started out as walking and really a combination of desire to get some exercise and to pray at the same time sort of killing two birds with one stone I would say eight years ago I live here in Vancouver it's actually raining a little bit right now as I speak and it was just raining constantly until June and I was happy to be working out in the in a gym at the time and I really wanted to be outside my love of the outdoors had really grown and we live in a beautiful area and I look out the window every day at the coastal mountains and the the ocean and I wanted to I wanted to spend more time out there and yeah so there was just one day where it was raining and I just thought oh man enough is enough I'm gonna get out there yeah I made that commitment actually that day to just no matter what I'm gonna get outside and I'm going to to walk and you know a part of it has been to take pictures I love taking pictures and it's such a beautiful spot here there's sometimes there's whales there's seals there's salmon spawning there's hummingbirds I'm right near Heron nesting place there's like 17 to 20 different nests close by along this trail and just so much more and so it's a great place to take out take pictures also that's been part of it is to take pictures and to look at them later and try to just capture those moments that really stand out you know sort of those magical moments and try and capture them via via a camera so I think I think it was Wendell Berry who said encourage people to just walk and be present and not hike and so that's something that I consider and try to remember as I'm out here is to take a break from time to time if something catches my attention I'll stop and be with it like this morning there was there was birdsong and so I stopped and was with the birdsong for a while which was so so beautiful and sometimes I'll notice the how calm the water is and often when I start I would on my walk I'll just to run through my senses real quick what do I see and what do I hear what do I smell and what do I feel that's sort of a regular practice as well something that sort of became a practice quite naturally without even noticing it on my walks was on the way out I'll notice that I'm quite naturally really in my head and then I think something happens both psychologically and physiologically where the different endorphins and stuff get going and the happy chemicals and it's it's much easier to just as I go along to just be present and thoughts seem to the volume of thoughts seems to naturally fade and diminish and so the way out is often just sometimes just thinking and participating in thought as well as I'm often quite conscious of wanting to be present on the way out and then on the way back it's definitely at some point I'll enter into just simply being and will remind myself to just be and it's interesting I think some of the things that I see along the way on my walk remind me to just be another thing that I'm thinking of is I have put together a practice in the past where just walking without an agenda so just going out and just noticing whatever catches your eye and being willing to stop and be with that thing I'm now walking up a hill without analyzing it yeah without critiquing it just be with whatever comes to mind and catches your attention another lesson that I am reminded of while I'm out here is just community I have a communities developed when you walk in the same place for eight years roughly at the same time you see many of the same people every day and I'm just walking away actually from a couple lovely conversations that I had this morning and it's super interesting that we maybe don't think of nature as being a community and but it is and we are welcomed into it you know we have learned scientifically how trees support each other for example and you know I think about out here there's communities of Canadian geese and there's bobblehead ducks right now out on the water and they're a whole community and for a while while they were out here there's a log boom out here in a sawmill and the seals used to sit on top of the logs and so there was like a community of seals and there's crows there's often like a they call them a murder right there's a murder of crows that show up here and pass by through here and yeah there's community in nature and I think it's just a reminder that we all need each other and that we're also part of this community that we are connected and I think that's one of the great lessons I've learned being out here and I have actually sort of had a major spiritual experience at one point where I had this epiphany that we're all connected and in a sense all things are one that's the word that I attached to that and I call it my oneness experience and that's been very life-changing and very helpful to have the mystery of that concept and to continually be reminded of it to practice it more than anything and to learn about it and unpack it as we go along but yeah so oneness and connection and community have you know that's one of the lessons that I've learned and continue to learn while I'm out here and participate in it like I have today take good care