Learn To Meditate While Walking And Achieve Mindfulness
There are people who never learn to meditate. Their mind does not understand motionless calm while practicing mindfulness, or while getting ready to move into a deep stage of calm and silence. However, something as easy as starting to walk can turn your life around.
We have already talked on this blog about how therapeutic exercises, such as mindfulness and meditating , may not be useful for everyone. Teenagers or even people with a high level of anxiety who suffer from some form of trauma cannot achieve the perfect relaxation point by learning to be more aware of their inner world through relaxation.
“It’s worth going, even if you fall.”
-Eduardo Galeano-
If the mind shouts when we have neurotic thoughts, there is a strategy that almost never fails: to go. In fact, there is something magical in just walking. The motion of the body is like the stroke of a moving metronome. A perfect rhythm that sooner or later tunes our minds into a single whole. A unique melody.
With each step, the heart expands, the breathing becomes deeper, more resounding. The brain gets lots of oxygen. Our being is made bigger with the repetitive movements until it finds its zero point, all the while taking control of our own lives through a combination of exercising and meditating.
Meditating as we go: a satisfying step on the way to the goal
When a psychologist decides to integrate mindfulness into psychotherapy, he / she does not seek to transform his / her patient into a skilled spiritual meditator. He / she does not want to convince them to spend their weekends on a Buddhist silence retreat. Not at all. It is a step towards the goal. A tool they can use to live their lives in balance and with a more clarified consciousness.
Meditation requires accountability and willpower. If it is already not easy to isolate the sound of our surroundings and the noise from the cities, it is even harder to get peace of mind. That is why the use of this new path today can be shortened down to a single illustrative word in Sanskrit “ apranihita ”, which means to walk without getting anywhere. Starting to walk without having a particular destination allows us to really enjoy the simple movement. We go for the very pleasure of walking.
The human mind is like a restless monkey, constantly jumping from branch to branch in a chaotic, nervous and unproductive journey. Almost without knowing how, we end up getting lost in our own maze. Nevertheless, if we can come to calm our nervousness through the rhythm of our legs and a breathing pattern marked by the pace of each step, it is possible to control our thoughts consciously.
How to learn to meditate while walking
We should walk daily, no more than half an hour. It is important to walk in nature, in a quiet area. With comfortable footwear and clothing.
Start walking at a normal pace. Quiet and calm you will find the rhythm more relaxing, cleansing and liberating. There are people who go at a slow pace and others who decide to go faster.
Focus your attention on something. Visualize your mind as a flashlight moving its ray of light from one concrete place to another. First to your breathing, then to the feeling in your feet as they touch the ground and then the wind which touches your skin. Focus your attention on those places, first one place and then the other.
Little by little, you realize that you no longer need to focus your attention on any of the places on your body. After a few days, the focus of your flashlight will be very wide. You will perceive everything at once.
Your consciousness has expanded so much that your whole being will feel perfect, in total peace and harmony.
Walking in a maze: the magic of concentration
Let’s go a little further. Imagine that in your case it will distract you to get away from home and go without a specific destination. It will split your mind, even if you do not find the zero point, your center point, your calm.
The mind can go past thousands of addresses. But on this beautiful path, I walk in peace. For every step, a gentle breeze blows. For every step, a flower opens.
In this case, we can immerse ourselves in an interesting and prehistoric exercise, which is practiced in many cultures. We’re talking here about exploring a maze. This ancient exercise is similar to visualizing every problem tattooed in the ground. We’re going to walk over them step by step as we find our way out. Some of the earliest labyrinths have been found in Greece. Their main purpose was to find the meaning of life through the spiral chains.
It was another form of meditation that is still practiced in many countries to this day. In the maze, there is not just one way out. And there is no reward in finding the way out of it. The reward is the journey itself. What we get out of it as we move.
The goal is to “calm the mind and open the heart” through the exercise itself. As you walk through a maze, stop and reflect. Think about what you need to get rid of before embarking on the concentric journey. Focus on the present.
Go quietly. Put one foot in front of the other. Always focus your gaze on the shape of the lines and on the road.
When one finds his center or labyrinth, which is called the “rosette”, the person should rest and meditate for a few minutes on the journey itself. The goal of this exercise is not to find the way out of all our problems, but to come out with renewed strength and knowledge that is acquired through this process.
