Teach Yourself Walking Meditation (video)

Carole Fogarty (thehealthylivinglounge.com) and Wisdom Quarterly

“Make the effort to let go of your worries” - Thay (Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh, Walking Meditation DVD/CD-ROM).

Walking meditation is the perfect alternative if body and mind are too restless to sit and rest in stillness. Its also a lovely change from the usual, less active meditation practices. No great skill or understanding is required. Simply give attention to (just knowing, not evaluating or thinking about) the breath, foot steps, or the ground. Adjust to a slow, gentle pace. Wherever one can walk, one can meditate along the way.

Healing

• Body and mind become one (united by breath).
• Calm strong emotions by living in the present moment(rather than reflecting on the past or worrying about possible futures).
• Focus on the internal world in the senses of the body rather than the outer.
• Draw excess energy and emotions (stray thoughts upsetting the heart/mind) out of the head down into the body.

“Live your daily life in a way that you never lose yourself. When you are carried away with your worries, fears, cravings, anger, and desire, you run away from yourself and you lose yourself. The practice is always to go back to oneself.” - Thay

(SoundsTrueVideos) Free weekly wisdom. From Walking Meditation: What if every step taken deepened our connection with all life and imprinted peace, joy, and serenity on Earth?

Deepen the practice with the highly recommend book Walking Meditation by Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh and his student Nguyen Anh-Huong. It is short, simple, and very easy to read with super clear instructions and an added bonus -- an instructional DVD and a CD that includes 5 walking meditations. Remember, there is no goal to walking meditation. The destination is here and now...one breath at a time.

“Walking meditation is meditation while walking.” - Thay

4 Key Steps

1. Breathing - stay aware of what is happening now. What is happening? Breathing. Breathe using a gentle, full belly (not a full chest) to calm thoughts, relaxing the hips, elbows, muscles, legs, face, eyes, ears, and brain. Maybe place hands on the belly to feel the rise and fall (optional). Breath in “resting,” breath out “softening.”
2. Walking - with soft eyes, moving slowly and gently. Feel the sensation of each foot as it presses down on the earth. Notice it as it lifts up, touches the ground, and is lifted up again. Follow every foot step with mind and breath.
3. Counting - if staying focused on each step is a struggle, count the number of steps to each inhale and each exhale. This encourages attention (discourages distraction).
4. Smiling - smiles, half smiles, upside down frowns, grins... It is said a smile brings lightness to the feet, inviting the body to relax, helping us settle more easily into walking meditation.
   

“Don’t bring anxiety and stress to the ground with your feet.” - Thay

(Ven. Yuttadhammo) This is the third in a series of six videos on how to practice meditation without religious dogma or spiritual mumbo-jumbo.

• The Zens (jhanas) of Buddhist meditation
• The Benefits of Walking Meditation (Ven. U Silananda)
• Cankama: Walking Meditation (Buddha Space Blog)

My Meditation Spaceship (Tent)

Ashley Wells, Seven, CC Liu

"Inhale, Exhale, Hike" backpacking yoga trip, Canyonlands Nat'l Park (zozi.com)

Mornings of backyard relaxation or epic hiking and yoga woven around reconnecting to living in the moment? Both are available. An awe inspiring adventure trip offers days of backpacking, yoga, and travel through the red-hued rocks of Canyonlands. The same level of adventure is possible in the backyard, awakening to a morning practice in the cool outdoor air at home. Meditation means getting grounded in the moment. But "all space is here, all time is now" as Wendy Rule sings. So a tent can be a spaceship to travel anywhere in a relaxed and imaginative state. No practice? No problem. Now is the time to learn.



Learn Meditation from Wildmind

• Our posture workshop is where we suggest you start if you don't already have a meditation practice (and perhaps even if you do). We'll take you step-by-step through the process of setting up a meditation posture that will allow you to be both alert and relaxed.
• The mindfulness of breathing is a fundamental meditation practice that everyone should know. The benefits? You'll find that this practice helps you to calm your mind so that there's less inner chatter (especially the stuff that makes you unhappy). You'll find also that you're less distractable and better able to pay attention.
  
  
• The development of loving-kindness (metta) works directly on our emotional habits, helping us to become more emotionally positive. You'll learn to be kinder to yourself: more patient, more understanding. You'll find that you're more considerate to others and that it's easier to forgive. You may even find (as others have) that others around you mysteriously become easier to be around. Hmm... wonder why that is?
  
  
• Walking meditation is a great way to bring more meditation into your daily life; it's a practice that can be done even in a busy city street. In this form of practice we develop greater mindfulness of the body, but we also become more aware of our thought patterns, our emotions, and even of the outside world. It's a calming practice. Walking meditation can also be a loving-kindness practice, especially when you're walking in a public place.
  
  
• Our mantra meditation section is the most popular destination for our visitors. Mantras are simply phrases that we repeat (usually internally, but they can also be chanted out loud). As well as occupying the mind and thus calming it by preventing it from getting up to the usual mischief that causes us pain, mantras also have a symbolic value that evokes spiritual qualities.
  
  
• The six element practice is a profound reflection on interconnectedness and impermanence. It's a very beautiful form of meditation. It not only helps us to calm the mind and give us a reassuring sense of our place in the great scheme of things, it can be unsettling and challenging as well. Yes, I know. Reassuring and unsettling, that's Buddhist practice for ya!
  
  

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