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How to Meditate: Meditation 101 for Beginners
10 Science-Backed Benefits of Meditation
What is Meditation?
How to Meditate: Meditation 101 for Beginners
10 Science-Backed Benefits of Meditation
What is Meditation?
Benefits of Mindfulness: Mindful Living Can Change Your Life
Mindfulness 101: A Beginner's Guide
We know that both mindfulness and walking are good for our mental, emotional, and physical health. The practice of walking meditation combines the two activities in a user-friendly way that appeals to beginners and experienced meditators alike.
As a gentle form of physical exercise, walking meditation counters the impact of our largely sedentary lifestyles, supporting heart health, digestion, mobility, and much more.
Through the cultivation of present-moment awareness, it promotes better mood, decreases stress and anxiety, and cultivates a greater feeling of connection with others and with the environment around us and an overall sense of peace and well-being.
And did we mention how easy it is to do? If you find sitting in meditation too challenging, or when you simply feel like moving your body or changing things up, walking meditation offers a highly relaxing and accessible way to cultivate mindfulness.
Read on to learn more.
Walking meditation is a practice that pairs mindfulness meditation with slow, deliberate walking along a predetermined path in a place where you can walk silently and won’t be disturbed.
The physical motion of walking becomes an anchor, or focus, for your meditation, allowing you to easily pay attention to bodily sensations as you move, one step at a time, along your chosen path while keeping your awareness in the present moment.
In some Buddhist traditions, such as the Japanese Zen tradition, walking meditation, or kinhin, offers an adjunct form of meditation practice that’s particularly beneficial after sitting for long periods of time.
The influential Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh, who extolled walking meditation outdoors as an important mindfulness activity in itself and felt it was essential for connecting more deeply with the environment, described it as walking “in such a way that we know we are walking.”
But you don’t have to ascribe to any specific belief to benefit from walking as meditation. Strengthening your mindfulness skills with mindful walking or walking meditation will reap physical and mental benefits even greater than either walking or meditating alone.
Before you begin a walking meditation, make sure that you’re choosing a path where you won’t be disturbed or encounter any obstacles. For example, a busy city center might not be the ideal place for walking in a meditative state, but a quiet section of a nearby park could be perfect.
Unlike mindful walking, where you might walk freely, meditative walking is typically done in a contained area, where you can feel comfortable and safe to completely pay attention to how your body feels in the present moment, and observe specific stimuli in the environment around you.
Some Buddhist traditions practice walking in a straight line, for 10-20 paces, and then turning and walking back along the same path. You continue like this, back and forth, for the entire length of the meditation session. The path itself and the slow rhythm of your walking become like mantras to hold your focus.
It's a popular nonsecular contemplative practice, in the circular maze-like patterns often found outdoors in public gardens or indoors at spiritual centers. To do it, you might hold a question in your mind, repeat a mantra or prayer, or simply walk in a meditative state along the winding path until you reach the center of the labyrinth. Once there, you might pause, take a few moments to check in with yourself, formulate a new question or mantra, and then return to the path and, continuing your meditative walk, follow it back out to the beginning.
It can achieve a similar effect: You walk slowly and deliberately in one direction, paying attention to the sensations of walking or to your mantra, and then when you complete the circle or a set number of rotations, you simply notice, turn, and continue in the opposite direction.
While you don’t need special gear to walk and meditate, you should feel comfortable and be dressed appropriately for the temperature, whether indoors or out.
That’s it! The accessibility of meditative walking is just one of the many benefits. Why not try it for yourself?
So much of our stress comes from being caught in our thoughts and ideas. In this meditation, we'll drop from our head to our body, the one place that is always present.
Play NowA simple and universal practice for developing embodied awareness. You can do this walking meditation no matter where you are.
Play NowWhile walking meditation and sitting meditation share similar techniques and benefits, the difference between the two is the introduction of movement.
Like a seated meditation practice, walking meditation employs an anchor to help hold your attention in the present moment instead of letting it drift off into thought. You gently bring your awareness back to that anchor whenever it strays.
But walking meditation also uses bodily sensations to help anchor your awareness. The press of your foot into the ground, engagement of your leg muscles—these physical sensations become part of the mindfulness experience.
Walking meditation can be added to a regular meditation practice or done instead of sitting meditation. It can also be helpful when you have a lot of excess energy and sitting feels challenging. Most meditation experts recommend making seated meditation the primary practice, and using walking meditation as an adjunct.
Enjoy these articles, stories, and guided practices for incorporating mindfulness into every day.
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