How to meditate while walking and what benefits it has

By meditative walking we understand the exercise that makes walking a spiritual gesture and that provides a deep feeling of peace and inner order.

In both Zen and Western monastic traditions The meditative march occupies an important place. When performing Zen meditation practices, many people are surprised to discover that Between sitting and sitting, a meditation or meditative march is performed.

Is it possible to meditate while walking?

When we talk about meditation we are referring to a state in which the person who meditates puts himself at the service of the essential, it opens internally to contact with what is outside and inside it, without judging it. Meditation is not an intellectual understanding of the world, it is an experience.

If we want to be precise, we cannot talk about «doing meditation». When you practice meditation, you are actually trying to find the conditions that favor contact with what is essential. That contact is meditation. Rather than being carried out through a voluntary act, it is produced.

Meditating is an exercise in personal transformation in which the person opens up internally, finds the way in which that contact occurs, understands which attitudes block it and which favor it.

When you know how to meditate, you can remain in a meditative attitude in different ways; That is, the person is in inner contact with what is essential and with their deep self, whatever they do.

There are some basic techniques for meditation practice that have proven effective for centuriesaccompanying thousands of people on this path of opening to what is essential.

You can meditate in various ways: sitting, standing, walking, performing everyday tasks, running, dancing…

The meditative walk can be done alone or in a group. When you are meditating with the support of a group, walking between two sittings is a special moment in which each person walks for themselves and, at the same time, enters into a group rhythm. It’s a privileged moment of contact with others and union. In this article we show you exercises to practice meditative walking.

Benefits of meditative walking

The meditative march helps mobilize members that during sitting meditation they could have become stagnant, regenerates energy, mobilizes blood and prevents circulatory problems. But meditative walking is much more than a complement to sitting meditation, it constitutes another meditation technique in itself.

The verticality –interpreted as a symbol of contact between heaven and earth–, the rhythm of walking, silence and slowness They lead the practitioner to a state of deep peace of mind that favors experiences of a spiritual nature.

Meditative walking is useful for anyone who wants to do a simple, pleasant, healthy and spiritual exercise. It has no age limits nor does it require any particular physical condition.

With a little training, anyone can improve in your self-observation with this exercise and progress on your personal path in a simple and autonomous way. It allows you to explore yourself internally and learn to adopt ways of being more free and serene.

Meditative walking can be a great exercise for learn to know yourself and function better in the world.

It is a transformation exercisesince practiced consciously and regularly helps bring out the best in ourselves. But walking can still be something deeper. It can become an exercise personal growth and even spiritual experience.

Who has not ever gone out for a walk «clarify ideas»? Maybe you yourself feel from time to time the need to walk aimlessly, alone in the city, on the beach in winter or in the mountains, to feel at peace with yourself.

Aristotle and his disciples walked while he gave them his philosophical speeches (peripatetic school), and it is known that the human brain underwent its greatest transformations when our species adopted an upright posture.

In addition to the feeling of plenitude and well-being that is experienced when walking meditatively, these practices favor the health at all levels:

The journal NeuroReport published an MIT study according to which people who meditated at least six hours a week had greater volume in areas of the cerebral cortex associated with attention, decision making and memory.
Scientists have proven that Meditation causes permanent physiological and neuronal changes. They believe they can affirm that it allows temperaments to develop happier, less anxious or depressed. In the same way, unifying brain, mind and body makes easier to adapt to stressful situations and uncertainty.
Meditating daily can reduce the risk of heart attacks by improving the ability to relax.
He immune system It seems to be strengthening too.
Meditation helps patients with chronic diseases reduce your symptoms and improve your quality of lifeaccording to a study from the Center for Integrative Medicine at T. Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia.
Walking meditation in addition maintains good muscle tone and oxygen muscles and brain.
Stability in movement and relaxation of the muscles. The human being’s center of gravity is between the two feet, in the front part of them, for this reason the body tends to move forward. To prevent you from falling, the antigravity muscles – the gastrocnemius and the spinal cord – contract isometrically. Vertically, for greater balance the center of gravity should be on the belly. If there are tensions, the center of gravity is displaced and so is the balance.

How to practice walking meditation

Some of its principles can be apply during daily walking. For example, you can walk in an internally meditative attitude while you go to get bread or a newspaper, at work or on any other daily trip.

We are going to explain what the exercise that makes walking a meditative act. To do this we will perform three series of exercises and we will give the necessary guidelines.

First exercise: establish a base

Before continuing reading, I suggest that you leave the screen, get up and walk.

But go very very slowly.

If you are in a small space, turn around when you reach the wall and repeat the walk several times.

Observe yourself, feel. Don’t worry about how you’re doing it. Just go and see. The experience can be somewhat disturbing if you feel unbalanced. Don’t worry. It’s common. We’ll meet again in five minutes…

Second exercise: understand the principles of meditation

The walking meditation technique is based on some key principles:

Remain silent. This is an essential point: you must maintain maximum concentration on what you are doing, on what you are feeling. Silence allows you to enter a dimension of yourself that is different from the usual one. It is necessary to remain silent and the mind must also be calmed, so that the cadence of thoughts becomes slower and slower.
Connect fluently. Being silent does not mean that there is isolation from the external world, on the contrary: it must allow us to be attentive to what we hear, the song of a bird, the noise of a motorcycle, the voice of our neighbor… We must let the noises pass, the sounds that come from outside or from our own mind, without offering resistance or becoming «hooked» on them.
Presence in the present moment. With a light, open and relaxed attitude, attention should be focused on each physical sensation. If there is a smell of apple pie, we will feel that smell, if it is cold, we will feel the cold. We must remain present in ourselves and in our context. You can focus your attention on the here and now, on the rhythm, on breathing, on sensations… This calms the mind and emotions.
Posture should be uprightthe position of the back relaxed and extended upwards. You must feel that your head is firmly directed towards the sky. But to do this you should not make a stretching effort, rather you should loosen the lumbar and cervical areas, where a large part of the tensions tend to accumulate. The shoulders should be as loose as possible, without rigidity.
Take off your shoes. It is highly recommended to practice the exercise barefoot. With each step you should feel that the foot is rooted in the ground, that the weight shifts from one side to the other. This gives a feeling of firmness and stability.

feel the weight. The heavier a body is, the more stable it is. When a person is twitched, their weight is the same as without twitching, but the sensation of weight is not. When the weight is not felt, the person has the impression of floating and being unstable, they may even stumble. To feel the weight you have to let go internally. It is an attitude of touching the earth, of truly leaning fully on the ground.
Slowness. This exercise is performed extremely slowly. You walk very slowly at all times.
with eyes open. This, which may seem obvious, is not so obvious, since many people have the tendency to close their eyes during these types of exercises to feel better. The gaze should be directed as far away as possible, as if it could pass through what is in front of us and go even further.
From the center. The impulse to walk arises from hara, Japanese word that indicates the area of the belly and pelvis. It is the center of the person’s stability. Learning to place yourself internally in this area provides a great feeling of physical and emotional anchoring. When walking, you should always feel that you are walking from the haraas if the movements emerged from there.

In daily life, we usually walk quickly and with goals in mind to be able to do everything that needs to be done. Meditative walking, on the other hand, proposes a slow walk that is an exercise in itself.

Walking without wanting to get anywhere. The fundamental thing about this exercise is to walk for the sake of walking. The aim is not to reach any external place, but rather an internal way of being. That is why it is good to start by doing this exercise in a room, in the hallway or any closed place that allows you to concentrate on the walking itself, without purpose.
Present at every step. To walk is to take a step. The next one is of no interest at this time. Every gesture is important, every moment unique.
observing the breath. Without wanting to control it or adapt it to the rhythm of the steps, just observing. Often, as you enter the meditative state, your breathing harmonizes with your steps, but the goal is not to «build» this harmony, but simply to allow yourself to breathe.

Now do the first exercise againincorporating what you just read. Do the exercise for five minutes at least.

Go and observe yourself. Feel the differences with your way of walking before and now.

Third exercise: the subtlety of movement

Let us now see what are the precise principles of walking meditation:

All movement arises from stillness. The meditative walk begins by standing, straight, feeling the weight, feeling the verticality, settling…