{"id":1002,"date":"2016-08-02T15:26:41","date_gmt":"2016-08-02T22:26:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/meditation\/?p=1002"},"modified":"2016-08-02T15:27:54","modified_gmt":"2016-08-02T22:27:54","slug":"from-here-to-there-suggestions-for-walking-meditation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/meditation\/2016\/08\/02\/from-here-to-there-suggestions-for-walking-meditation\/","title":{"rendered":"From Here to There – Suggestions for Walking Meditation"},"content":{"rendered":"

You probably\u00a0know that I’m a big fan of walking meditation<\/a>. Walking was the ‘gate’ that I had to pass through before I could manage to\u00a0sit. I bought a CD of walking meditation instructions (“gently lift your left foot…”) and I practiced only silent walking for weeks.<\/p>\n

I still practice\u00a0walking meditation regularly. The\u00a0steady movement, the changing visual background, the sounds of the outdoors (I practice on sidewalks and in parks), help me bring awareness to all facets of my life. So I was pretty excited today when Tricycle magazine<\/strong>\u00a0sent me an article (“Walking: Meditation on the move<\/a>“, Summer 1996) that gathers short instructions for\u00a0walking meditation from several teachers, ranging from Thich Nhat Hanh<\/strong> to Henry David Thoreau<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Below is an excerpt of Jon Kabat-Zinn’s<\/a> instructions taken from his\u00a0book “Wherever You Go There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life.”<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In formal walking meditation, you attend to the walking itself. You can focus on the footfall …\u00a0the whole body moving. You can couple an awareness of walking with an awareness of breathing.<\/p>\n

In [formal] walking meditation, you are not walking to get anyplace. Usually it is just back and forth in a lane, or round and round in a loop.\u00a0…<\/p>\n

[Formal] walking meditation can be practiced at any pace, from ultra-slow to very brisk. How much …\u00a0you can attend to will depend on the speed. …\u00a0take each step as it comes … be fully present with it. This means feeling<\/em> the very sensations of walking\u2014in your feet, in your legs, in your carriage and gait, as always, moment by moment, and in this case, step by step as well.\u00a0…<\/p>\n

Just as in sitting meditation, things will come up which will pull your attention away from the bare experience of walking. We work with those perceptions, thoughts, feelings and impulses, memories and anticipations, that come up during the walking in the very same way that we do in sitting meditation.\u00a0…<\/p>\n

You can practice walking meditation informally anywhere. Informal walking meditation doesn\u2019t involve pacing back and forth or going around a loop, but just walking normally. … along a sidewalk, down a corridor at work, going for a hike, walking your dog, walking with children. It involves recalling that you are here in your body. …\u00a0slowing the pace can help take the edge off your rushing and remind you that you are here now, and that when you get there, you will be there. If you miss the here<\/em>, you are likely also to miss the there<\/em>. – Jon Kabat-Zinn, “Wherever You Go There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You probably\u00a0know that I’m a big fan of walking meditation. Walking was the ‘gate’ that I had to pass through before I could manage to\u00a0sit. I bought a CD of walking meditation instructions (“gently lift your left foot…”) and I practiced only silent walking for weeks. I still practice\u00a0walking meditation regularly. The\u00a0steady movement, the changing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":55,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[18,6],"class_list":["post-1002","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-instructions","tag-walking"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1002","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/55"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1002"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1002\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1007,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1002\/revisions\/1007"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}