HOW TO WALK Archives - Mindful Happiness

October 24, 2015 By Admin

Mindful Walking Meditation

Mindful Walking Meditation:

How to Walk by Thich Nhat Hanh – A Powerful Short Book of Wisdom

In my opinion, Thich Nhat Hanh and The 14th Dalai Lama are the two most important and wise teachers of mindfulness, meditation, compassion, and Buddhism in the 21st century. Below I will offer my interpretation of Thich Nhat Hanh’s new book. At the same time, I will attempt to distill his wise instructions about how to walk. The post will end with a short segment on formal walking meditation. My agenda here, is to write my comments so they may be useful to both lay and Buddhist practitioners.

Part 1: The Basics of Walking with Mindfulness

Here we’ll review instructions on how to make any walk a mindful walk. Settle in and take a few calmer, slower, deeper breaths. Use your intention to prepare yourself for walking. As you lift your foot, inhale; as you place your foot (heal first) on the earth, exhale. Remain silent – just breathe and walk. Deeply appreciate the solid mother earth under you. Focus complete attention on the act of walking, thus relieving your mind of the need to think, evaluate, associate,tell stories, etc. Concentrate fully on the present moment of touching the earth. You arrive with each step. Allow mind to follow body with breath – feel your inner peace and joy. Adding a peaceful smile may improve your experience of “just walking.” Reflect on your gratitude for your moving legs, beating heart, working lungs and being on solid ground. Allow your walking body to liberate your mind from the incessant tangles of daily life. Bring your attention back to focused walking each and every time your mind wonders off into something/somewhere else. Notice your inner peace – feel it gently. Value and respect it. Give great appreciation for your bodhisattva ways (helping others). You may want to imagine that you are walking with the Buddha’s fee – being one with the Buddha. Be one with the peace and joy of walking slowly, effortlessly, lovingly. Walk this way more often at work, at home, outdoors, etc. (See pages 1-50 for more details.)

Part 2: More Details and Depth on How to Walk

Notice great ease as you allow your breath to lead your walking body. Continue to concentrate of how the moving body/legs feel; this will reduce distractions in the mind. You may walk alone, with others, or imagining others are with you (ancestors, friends, people you love, the Buddhas, etc.). Feel their wonderful energies. Walk in honor of them and mother earth, and all those who have walked here before you. Since enlightenment and nirvana cannot be understood as mental concepts or perceptions, just allow the body to walk in mutuality with the breath, the mind, the earth. Bring full mindful attention to the feelings of walking; be the awareness – stay present and return your mindful awareness if/when it moves away. No past, and no future – just the present moment “here now.” Notice internally – there may be subtle or strong feelings of deep peace, compassion, and wisdom – even possibly love. As you walk, observe, feel, and appreciate everything that appears in the present moment of movement. Allow yourself to forget the past and the future – the past cannot be changed, and the future gives you little control over it. While walking adopt the Buddha’s view that practice is non-practice and attainment is non-attainment. Be effortless! Just walk – BE the moving body, the quiet mind, the inner peace, the silent joy. (See pages 51-97 for more details.)

Part 3: More Formal Walking Meditation

Building from the earlier parts of this post, prepare your intention for formal walking meditation practice. Complete a few calm, slow, deep breaths. Place hand/arms in front, behind, or by your sides. Hold your head level and allow a gentle gaze 2-3 feet in front of you. Pay close attention to the feelings in the body – lifting the leg inhale then placing the leg on solid earth exhale. Breathe the movement, peace, and joy – all in unison. If/when your mind distracts or goes elsewhere, gently and lovingly bring your focus back to just walking. No self-criticism. Be silent! Smile! Count your breaths if it helps. It will be more relaxing if you extend the exhalations slightly longer than the inhalations. This will activate your vagal nerve network and bring more calmness. You may want to add a brief mantra to your walking: “May I breathe and walk in peace.” Other phrases may help: “in and out,” “deep and silent,” “I smile and let go,” or “my wonderful present moment.” Make up what you want to say if helpful, or say nothing. Just concentrate on feelings of movement and touching the earth. Slow down; speed up. Walk at the pace you desire. Do what work best for you. Bring breath, mind, body, joy and self together – fully integrated in the act of walking meditation. Take personal refuge in your walking. Attend to the outside, but feel the inside. Be the walking; be the peace; be the joy! Hold strong gratitude for your walk, and appreciate all aspects of this meditation practice.

For best experiences, consider walking meditation outside in the natural environment.

Be like the Taoists; be in nature’s beauty. Enjoy! (See pages 99 – 117) for more details.)

Nhat Hanh, Thich (2015). How to Walk. Berkeley,CA: Parallax Press.

By Anthony R. Quintiliani, PhD., LADC

From the Eleanor R. Liebman Center for Secular Meditation in Monkton, Vermont

Author of Mindful Happiness

CLICK HERE or any image blow to Order

Deepak Chopra Ideas on “The Future of God” – Part 1 Deepak Chopra’s new book, The Future of God… (2014) presents some very challenging perspective on spirituality, atheism, and formal religion. Here I will simply present some paraphrased details and my own ideas on these topics. Basic Foundations Human beings have special talents for searching […]

More on Yoga Nidra Yoga nidra is sometimes called yoga sleep or yoga relaxation. It is a very powerful mindfulness technique that allows one to relax the body and limbic brain area, while holding mental control for deeper relaxation and projective practices without falling asleep. For some it may be like lucid dreaming, but a […]

Mindful Equanimity and Homeostasis Neuroscientist Antonio Demasio’s new book The Strange Order of Things: Life, Feeling, and the Making of Culture. (2018) New York: Pantheon Books notes the very important role homeostasis plays in human life and well being. In some ways homeostasis is about the arising, falling, and balancing out of all things important to human […]

How to Become a Happier Person In our culture high stress is a norm, and we compete as if our lives depended upon it. The norms of pleasant, unpleasant and neutral experiences are realistic as well as Buddhist realities. We have, do, and will suffer. We make an error in thinking that material security or […]

Making the Best of the Holidays Thanks to Sounds True, we have many good suggestions for making the most of the holidays. It is a norm for the holidays to be happy and joyous, and it is a norm for many people for the holidays to be filled with emotional and behavioral challenges. To reduce […]

Meditating in the Gap of Nothingness The Buddha taught about your four best friends, that is how the body changes physiology when you sit, stand, walk/move and every time you are lying down. Modern Western neuroscience now supports this statement of 2500+ years ago. Thich Nhat Hanh added the importance of your breath, walking meditation, […]

Mindfulness Practices for Expanding Acceptance Mindfulness and contemplation can be great allies in our struggle to better understand each other. This is especially true when it comes to matters of interpersonal relationships and highly significant relationships. It is also important in diversity, or as some now refer to it – variation in human beings. Variation may […]

Meditation on Gratitude – Why it is so Important The daily rapid vibrations from our fast-paced and sometimes dangerous world may impact us in ways that make unhealthy norms of being. The struggle to feel good enough, to have enough, to be somebody, to keep up with the raging ads about what you need NOW and […]

A Buddhist Sutta on Your Desires and Suffering This post is about the Buddhist Sutta called The Gilana Sutta (SN 35:74). It is a touching story about a young monk, who became very ill. Another monk informed The Buddha of the young monk’s health conditions. Buddha visited and hoped he had improved and held on to […]

Understanding Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy? Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (or Cognitive-Behavior Therapy, hereafter CBT) has been noted as the most common evidence-based therapy approach used in the United States. That said, the most common “therapy” approach used here remains generic talk therapy with more or less psychodynamic characteristics. Given the absolute limited level of outcome-based evidence for effectiveness of […]

Emptiness – Meditation Practice The Brahma-Viharas (higher abodes) include four powerful meditation practices ( Loving Kindness/Maitri or Metta; Compassion/Karuna; Sympathetic Joy/Mudita; and, Equanimity/Upekkha) that involve boundless radiation outwardly all the way into the infinite universe. These boundless or infinite space meditations, working with deep absorption and projecting kindness outwardly, may lead to positive changes. Experienced […]

Helper Self-Care is Important In the most current issue of The National Psychologist (July-August, 2019) an article linked helper effectiveness, risk management, and clinical outcomes to helper self-care. To make a long story shorter, I will simply paraphrase and re-word the suggestions. These recommendations support YOUR emotional survival and successful risk management as a helper as […]

Being Mindful Of Dr. Wayne W. Dyer Recently I receive a heart-felt tribute dedicated to Dr. Wayne W. Dyer, who died recently. The tribute originated from Louise Hay, a long-time associate, colleague and publisher of Wayne Dyer. To those of us who inhabit the spaciousness of the spiritual world, perhaps, no other person in recent […]

Spirit Wars and “Spiritual Warfare” This post will discuss the topic and personal strategies. Most content will relate to both physical realities and metaphorical meanings and categories. Since a person viewing their self as fighting a spiritual war most likely holds onto certain parts of self in this endeavor, it is highly unlikely that the […]

Three Meditation Practices to Further Your Expansion Based on the ongoing “bad news” about various domestic and world events, and the knowledge that people DO NEED more compassion and self-compassion in their hectic and challenging lives, I am writing three brief meditation practices on different aspects on compassion-wisdom as noted on my site. Hopefully, these […]

Introducing Your Clients to Brief Meditations Psychotherapists often ask about ways to introduce mindfulness and meditation to clients. There are other posts on this Blog that offer basic introductory information on both content and process. Here I will simply introduce you to four brief, basic meditations for clients suffering from anxiety and/or depression, along with […]

Quintiliani’s Brief Life Experience Screening Years ago, when I received a rather large number of managed care referrals for adolescent “treatment failures” and their families, I soon realized that typical screening, assessment and therapy was NOT working well. I tried so, so hard to reach these young people – all experiencing extreme psychological suffering with […]

My third posting on self-medication- Comes from the Eleanor R. Liebman Center for Secular Meditation in Monkton, Vermont. Now we will turn our attention to how people become habituated to self-medication to obtain brief moments of joy and/or to avoid emotional suffering. Recall that self-medication becomes a habit (dopamine released in reward centers of the […]

Self-Care to Reduce Compassion Fatigue First let’s begin with what some people do to counteract the stressors of living in a hurried,“over-technologized” world. Technically, “technologize” is not a popularly accepted word, but it is a sad reality. We live in a time when texting while driving may become the new addiction-based cause for many, many […]

Using Mindful Movement as a Form of Meditation Practice with the Body In Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction practices Hatha Yoga has been used as part of the recovery process from both psychological and physical suffering. In my own clinical use of mindful movement with children, youth and adults, I found that basic Qi Gong/Che Kung, Walking […]