walking meditation

Using Bodily Sensations as an Anchor for Mindful Walking

Diana Winston, Director of UCLA Mindful, introduced the idea of bodily sensations as an anchor in meditation. As she was specifically explaining standing and walking meditations (in lieu of sitting meditation), she focused on the sensations in our hands, our legs and our feet.

Diana’s guided meditation podcast was one of the free, weekly podcasts offered by meditation teachers at UCLA Mindful. At the outset, she explained the concept of an anchor in meditation.

Diana asked us to envisage a ship’s anchor keeping a ship in place despite being buffeted by winds and tidal surges. The analogy means that a “meditation anchor” serves to help us maintain our focus despite being “buffeted” by our thoughts and emotions. Just as a ship is surrounded by water, we are immersed in our thoughts and emotions – a fact of life that is inescapable.

The secret power of meditation is the capacity to constantly return to our focus despite ongoing distractions and our anchor supports this process. Over time this capacity builds concentration and resilience as we develop the ability to deal with “negative self-talk”, difficult emotions and the vicissitudes of the human condition.

A standing meditation

Diana suggested that we explore a standing meditation by slowly shifting our weight from one foot to the other. She pointed out that a lot of our functions such as standing and walking are performed unconsciously. Meditation involves paying attention to specific functions/activities as they occur and, in the process, exploring the bodily sensations that occur with a sense of curiosity and openness. It also involves accepting things as they are, e.g. accepting an inability to stand for longer than two minutes or unevenness of our posture due to a spinal injury.

As we shifted from one foot to the other, Diana asked us to pay attention to the sensations in our legs and feet. We can notice the added pressure on one foot as we move our weight from the other foot. We can notice tightening of the muscles in the weight-bearing leg . As part of the process of a standing meditation, we can effect a progressive focus on each of the muscles in our leg and then focus on the sensations in our foot. There could even be the experience of muscle spasms or cramping. Diana encourages us to undertake the standing meditation being conscious of our physical limitations, e.g. if we are unable to stand without pian, then a sitting meditation is a better option.

A walking meditation

A walking meditation involves walking slowly while being conscious of the physical sensations as we raise and lower our feet. It takes considerable discipline to slow down enough in our hectic world to pay attention to minute bodily sensations. However, the act of mindful walking can create a sense of calm and peace if we maintain the focus on our anchor.

We can also add surrounding sounds as an additional focus. On my morning walks in another area, I used to listen to the call of birds that were in bushes above, below and beyond me. This focus enhanced the practice of mindful walking for me.

In previous posts I have detailed approaches to mindful walking inside and mindful walking outside. The latter approach can incorporate awareness of all the senses, a form of natural awareness.

Reflection

Through much of life we hasten to get somewhere or to achieve a goal, e.g. a fitness goal as we walk or run at pace over a specified distance. Mindful walking helps us to become more conscious of our surrounds and our bodily sensations. The process enables us to slow down, detach from our goal-oriented behaviour and build our capacity for natural awareness, being in nature with curiosity and wonder.

As we grow in mindfulness, we can enhance our self-awareness, build our concentration and capacity to focus, develop emotional regulation and experience equanimity. The following reflective poem, that I wrote as I developed this post, communicates something of the magic of mindful walking:

Mindful Walking

Slowly walking seeing what surrounds us,
Sounds surfacing from hidden spaces near and far,
Sensations seeping into our consciousness.

Anchored in our body,
Mindful of our sensations,
Calm and peace pervade.

____________________________________

Image by 춘성 강 from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield- Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution-Non-Commercial -No Derivatives.

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Barriers Experienced During Walking Meditation

Jack Kornfield and Tara Brach, in the Power of Awareness Meditation Training Course, identified a number of barriers that you could experience during a walking meditation. These relate to your internal thoughts and feelings and your physical balance.

I discuss three of these barriers below and offer some suggested strategies to overcome them:

Loss of balance – you can experience a loss of balance because of the unusual slowness of the practice of walking meditation. The way around this barrier is to go a little faster until you find a speed that enables you to walk with ease and maintain your balance. Over time and with further practice, you will be able to walk more slowly without losing your balance.
Invading thoughts – despite your intention to still your mind and the incessant internal chatter, you may find that, since you have stopped rushing to go somewhere, your mind will become hyper-active. You could be invaded with all kinds of thoughts, e.g. thoughts related to planning, negative self-evaluation, problem solving, or anticipation of a future event. The secret here is not to entertain these thoughts but let them float by and bring yourself back to your focus on your bodily sensations. This serves as good training for any form of meditation. In terms of negative self-evaluation, it is important to remember that there is no right way as far as walking meditation goes. You have to find the approach and location to suit yourself. The main thing to achieve is slowing down with a focus on bodily sensations.
Strong emotions – sometimes when you slow down your pace of life through a walking meditation, some deep feelings emerge. They could be feelings of anger, grief, disgust or any other strong feeling. It is as if the hectic pace of life has enabled you to hide away from these feelings and avoid noticing them and naming your feelings. The feelings refuse to stay submerged when your focus turns from rushing to meet external expectations to focusing on you internal state, both physical and emotional. In this scenario, it is possible to stop walking and begin a standing meditation where you pay attention to the strong feeling, accept its existence, investigate its impact on your body and nurture yourself by drawing on your internal resources – a process we discussed as R.A.I.N meditation. When you have the strong feelings under control, you can resume your walking meditation.

As you grow in mindfulness through standing and walking meditations, you will develop strategies to overcome the barriers to your focus and, in the process, acquire a core skill that will positively impact other forms of meditation and your daily life. Focus is the foundation for awareness, productivity, creativity and social skills.

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Image source: courtesy of Skitterphoto on Pixabay

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Standing and Walking Meditation

Standing and walking meditations have the common aims of helping us to get in touch with our bodies, to become grounded, to slow down the pace of our lives and to clear our minds of constant chatter. I have previously written about mindful walking and here I want to talk about using standing and walking meditations together.

Standing meditation

The idea in the combination approach is to use standing meditations as bookends for a walking meditation – that is, as you complete each forward and return leg of a walking meditation, you stop and complete a standing meditation.

The standing meditation begins with being aware of the feel of your feet on the floor, then being conscious of the muscles that support your upright position. You can hold your arms in any number of ways – with your hands loosely in front of you, your arms hanging loosely beside your body or joined loosely behind your back. I find that with my arms hanging loosely beside my body, I almost immediately find the tension draining out of my arms and hands.

The standing meditation can involve mindful breathing, body scan, inner awareness or open awareness – taking in sounds, sights, and smells. The key aim is to be present in the moment, in touch with your inner and outer reality.

There are many forms of walking meditation and what I will cover here is an approach that is used in combination with standing meditations. Walking meditations are valuable because we spend so much of our day moving around, typically racing from one place to another in pursuit of our time-poor way of life. All the time as we move, our minds are also racing – we become caught up in thinking about what needs to be done, planning our actions or feeling concerned about possible undesirable outcomes.

Walking meditation enables us to get in touch with our body and at the same time to notice what thoughts are continuously preoccupying us. I found for instance that the thoughts that continually invaded my consciousness as I was doing a walking meditation all related to some form of planning or other related thinking activity – planning for the things that needed to be done after the meditation or the following days.

Tara Brach suggests that if you walk indoors, it is useful to have a walking space that is 15 to 30 steps in length. This means, in effect, that there is no end goal in terms of where you are trying to get to physically – which counters our daily habit of being goal directed in every movement. Instead, with the walking meditation we are very present to each step, each movement forward – not pursuing an end goal. It also provides the opportunity to undertake a standing meditation at each end of the walking space to add increased stillness and serenity to our mindful walking practice.

The idea is to start to walk a little bit more slowly than you usually walk and, at the same time, to pay attention to the sensations in parts of your body, e.g. your feet, lower legs, arms, chest and thighs. In contrast to your standing or sitting meditation, your breathing will tend to be in the background and your bodily sensations in the foreground.

The basic idea is to become conscious of lifting your feet, stepping out and landing your feet in front of you. The standing meditation at the end of each leg of the walking space involves pausing and stillness and thus deepening your grounding and your awareness of the present moment.

As we grow in mindfulness through combining standing and walking meditations, we become more grounded, more conscious of our bodily sensations and tensions, more in tune with our present reality and better able to be still and silent and to open ourselves to the richness within and without.

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Image source: courtesy of Skitterphoto on Pixabay

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.

Research Study on Mindfulness for Postnatal Depression

The incidence of postpartum depression in Iran is reported to be in the range 30-40 percent of women giving birth to a child. One suggested factor is the early age that Iranian girls become married and have children – understandably, placing them in a position where they are both physically and mentally under-prepared for the exhausting physical and emotional demands of birthing and for the care of their new-born babies.

Four researchers, motivated by these alarming statistics, established a research project with first-time mothers in Iran to explore the effectiveness of mindfulness in reducing the incidence of postpartum depression. The researchers – Hajieh Sheydaei, Azizreza Ghasemzadeh, Amir Lashkari and Parvaneh Ghorbani Kajani – published their results in an article titled, The effectiveness of mindfulness training on reducing the symptoms of postpartum depression.

Their research established that “mindfulness training was effective in reducing postpartum depression symptoms in new mothers”. The researchers describe some of the symptoms of postnatal depression as:

…increase in appetite and overweightness. Irritability, aggressive behavior, panic attacks, seclusion, and uncontrolled crying … Maternity blues are the most outstanding symptom of postpartum depression which is considered the direct result of mothers’ anger and irritation.

The research group of new mothers who undertook the mindfulness training were exposed to a course involving 8 sessions and based on Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) – which entails combining mindfulness practices with cognitive therapy. They were exposed to a range of mindfulness practices such as mindful eating, mindful breathing, sitting and walking meditations. Some of the exercises were designed to challenge their negative thinking and emotions and to develop strategies to cope with the challenges of motherhood, while caring for themselves.

The MBCT approach helped the participating mothers to grow in self-awareness. They were also able to enhance their self-management skills through an increased ability to identify the links between their thoughts and mood disorders and to develop new ways to deal with them (rather than the former strategies such as isolation, aggression and irritability).

As new mothers grow in mindfulness through meditative practices and exercises based on cognitive therapy, they can develop a different level of emotional intelligence which will equip them to deal with the challenges of motherhood and reduce symptoms of postnatal depression.

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Image source: courtesy of Mysticsartdesign on Pixabay

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.