We all know that walking is a great way to exercise your body and help keep it in shape. But did you know that, by integrating the techniques of mindfulness meditation, walking can become be a powerful tool for developing self awareness? Mindful walking helps you to be more in touch with yourself and improves the quality of your life.
Mindfulness meditation, a discipline that has been developed over many centuries by the Buddhist tradition in the Far East, can be described as the art of paying attention. The techniques of mindfulness meditation help your mind become more calm and focused, so that you’re able to be fully present in each moment. In this way, your life becomes vivid and fulfilling. Instead of feeling that your life is rushing by with no time for you to enjoy any of it, you’re able to experience joy and peace of mind through your everyday experiences.
So how do you apply this to walking? By simply learning to pay attention as you’re doing it. While that may sound simple, in reality it requires quite a bit of practice to train your mind to focus for any length of time. With the fast pace of today’s society, our minds are so used to jumping from one thing to the next that most of us have never had the experience of focusing our mind.
This is where mindful walking comes in. When you’re ready to try mindful walking, you first need to forget anything that you know about walking and approach it with a completely open mind. Otherwise, your mind isn’t fully paying attention – it’s partially focused on what you think you already know.
Find a quiet place where you won’t be disturbed. Stand up straight and just focus on being aware of your body. As you slowly lift your right leg to take a step, simply be aware of how it feels to make that motion. Notice your body shift your weight to your left foot and gently propel your right foot forward, and then carefully place it on the ground. Remember, you’re not trying to go anywhere – you’re just experiencing what it feels like to walk. As you gently place your right foot on the ground, pay attention to how it feels as your body now shifts your weight to your right foot and propels your left foot forward. Keep paying attention as you go through about five to ten steps. Once you try this exercise, you’ll realize that it’s a challenge to keep your attention focused. With some practice, however, you should be able to do mindful walking for longer periods.
Of course, you don’t normally walk like this. The point of mindful walking is to learn to pay attention. Generally, we don’t give any thought to walking – we just do it. Once you learn how to be mindful, however, you realize that walking is actually a highly choreographed sequence that you were never even aware of. By doing mindful walking on a regular basis, you train your mind to pay attention more. Eventually, you come to realize that there’s a lot of beauty in our everyday experiences – all you need to do to find it is pay attention. Being mindful makes your life more fulfilling and leads to greater peace of mind and well-being.
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