Guide: Walking
| Guide: Walking | |
| Guide: Walking | |
|---|---|
| Landmarks | Simple Mindfulness While Walking Perceiving Parts as a Whole Explore Presence While Walking Try Headlessness While Walking |
The Concept
Walking is kind of unique, in that it offers a variety of opportunities to exercise your awareness and perception.
Landmark: Simple Mindfulness While Walking
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| Landmark: Simple Mindfulness While Walking | |
|---|---|
| Beacons | Attention |
| Realms | Enrollment |
| Lenses | Mindfulness |
| Guides | Walking |
The Landmark of Simple Mindfulness While Walking is a good place to start practicing Mindfulness throughout your day. You should be able to be mindful anytime at all, and working on micro-meditative practices can be done in many different ways and places. This Landmark is within the Realm of Enrollment, and is part of the Beacon of Attention, more specifically the Lens of Mindfulness.
Review these Lookouts to see what you may have learned at this Landmark.
Landmark Lookouts:
- Simple Mindfulness: Can you shift into a calm, attentive state where you are paying attention to what is around you?
- Mindful Walking: Can you experience a Mindful state, or Mindful qualities while walking or going about your day?
Wherever will be walking next should be a great time to be Mindful. Practice these types of steps.
- Try to just simply be as mindful as you know how, and be attentive to the walk, bringing your attention back to whatever feels pleasant, rather than allowing thoughts to distract you.
- Be aware of the sky and consider it as a ceiling or dome enclosing you in an area. Feel the quality of this area and how you are walking through it. Rest in this area and sense that it is the only place that exists in The Now.
- Whenever you notice your mind wandering, don't worry about that, and simply enjoy any mindful strategy for your current walk
- Your feet are walking - notice the sound of your feet, the feeling of the steps
- Your face - wind and sun create sensations on your face
- Noises - what are the most pleasant and calming noises?
- The Now - remember that you are "here" and it is the perfect place to be right now.
Once you've experimented with this example, double check your progress with the Landmark Lookouts above.
Other Exercises to Do While Walking - Beginner
- Walking is an opportunity to observe and experience some types of Special Composition
- Depending on where you are, you may try out the Fences and Walls exercises
- No matter where you walk, you can do many of the general sound exercises
Movement - Intermediate
- Conveyor belt - Shift your perception to the sense that you are standing still, and the world is moving. Perhaps the world is a treadmill, and you are merely "keeping up" with its motion. Or perhaps you are standing still and the world is morphing or warping in a way that brings things closer to you or farther from you.
- Timeless walking - Notice a fixed marker such as a light pole, and as you walk towards it, shift your perception to the sense that you are in fact not walking at all, because without any "time" beyond the now, you will simply always be as close to that marker as you are, and there is no change in that distance, because each moment exists independently, and each "new now" simply exists with its own facts about reality.
- Stairs - do the same exercise when on stairs, as it is even easier. Whenever you take a step, pause for just a split second with one foot on the new step and one foot on the previous step. Notice that you have arrived at this location, and this is the present moment. After each step note that you are in the present moment. There is no journey, just present moments. Once you've learned to see this, learn to see it without any mental or actual pauses in your steps.
Headlessness - Intermediate
Walking is a perfect time to perform Headless Exercises. Try the following types of things.
- Become headless (if you don't know about this, follow the links)
- Become aware of your surroundings in an open, spacious way, noticing how that space includes the location where your head should be
- Expand your headless awareness to your whole body, letting go of the sense of self, ultimately feeling the flow of your walking as a property of The Now, rather than something You are doing or experiencing.