walking meditation – Karen's New York Love Affair

Prison guard blues

I taught walking meditation to my two classes at the youth correctional institute on Monday night. The first class consisted of three young men. A male guard was in the room, the library, for the first part of the class, working on the computer. So I introduced the meditation, and as we began slowly walking around the room in a circle, we heard the magical sound of Windows starting.

But actually, this shows me how accustomed I have become to the prison environment. For while this new sound (of Windows starting) seemed intrusive, I didn’t even notice the enormous clanging sound of the heavy prison doors in the hallway outside the room slamming shut repeatedly throughout the class, which had seemed like a shock to my soul-body when I first started teaching there.

We made it one and a half times around the room in the five minutes, and the young men seemed to be in a calm, quiet space after the meditation. The guard left, and the rest of the class was tranquil and flowing. I explained that they could use the walking meditation when they are feeling upset. The focus on the feet, which usually are not upset (unless they happen to be sore or injured), helps the meditator to shift into a more positive state. At least, that’s the theory!

The next class was the young women. This time a female guard came to the class and participated in it too. This is a wonderful development, which, as teachers with Yoga Outreach, we are encouraged to promote. For the guards no doubt can benefit from the yoga as much as the students.

But this time, the presence of the guard presented a new challenge, which I had never encountered before. For she had done yoga before (from a video) and thought it was appropriate to offer corrections to the students during the poses, as well as to give orders to maintain discipline in the class! So during the silent walking meditation she gave orders to the students to be quiet when they were giggling. And it went downhill from there. I totally lost control of the class, and it was a complete disaster! A new learning for me.

A few days after the fact, I can feel some appreciation for the universe bringing me this opportunity to learn new skills as a teacher. I now know that if a guard joins the class, I need to take her aside and lay down the ground rules; she is there as a student only, and must leave the class control to me!

The final straw was when the students and guard were lying in savasana (corpse pose), the final resting pose that is the traditional way to end a yoga class. The guard took a call on her radio headset (which she had been wearing throughout the class and which occasionally emitted noises), and started speaking into it, from her mat. (Rather than leaving the room so as not to disrupt the students who were in a quiet, resting state after being very rambunctious throughout the class.) Then she said to the students, “OK, time to go get your meds.”

At this point my strength arose, and I took back control of the class. I have a strong sense of ritual and there are certain things that MUST be observed, such as ending the class in the traditional way. I said “I am not finished. I am ending the class, and need one more minute.” I gently brought the students out of sivasana, and we closed with the traditional Namaste salutation (which means “the divine light in me greets the divine light in you”). After saying Namaste to the students and thanking them for sharing their practice with me, I turned to the guard (who left the circle and did not participate for the closing) and said Namaste to her. After they all left I put away the equipment and drove home, furious with the guard for undermining my authority in the class, and with myself for not knowing how to handle it.

I must say, I felt much more compassion and understanding for my Diamond Approach teachers, whose classes I have interrupted and disrupted many times. Now the shoe is on the other foot! And walking meditation did not help me to regain my ground. It took a strong talking-to to my superego, who was having a field day with me for not handling the situation well, before I started to calm down.

The joys of being a wild woman and putting myself in situations where the unpredictable can happen! Of course, this is where learning and growth can occur. Even though it didn’t help me right in the moment, I still recommend walking meditation, for it will help us all develop a connection with something that is deeper than our emotional state. And in spite of all the disruption in the class, it was beautiful to see how one of the young women in the class really connected with the earth energy through her feet from doing this meditation.

So keep practicing!

If you are interested in more information about the benefits of teaching yoga and meditation to people in prison, check out this link to the UK organization The Phoenix Prison Trust. Once you’re at the site, click Why we do it.

Delightful feet

Well, how did it go? What did you notice as you did the walking meditation I described yesterday?

I did it in my apartment, and found that in five minutes I just made it from one end of my apartment to the other, and back. I have a small apartment! So that gives you an idea of how slowly I was walking.

I noticed my mind wandering numerous times, mostly with “to do” items. The feeling in my feet was delicious. A warm cozy feeling, in warm socks and slippers. Walking on the carpet added to the feeling of coziness. Some people find they almost lose balance when walking that slowly, and I did notice my gait and balance felt much different than usual. I felt the alignment of the bones in my legs and hips and ankles in a different way than I’m usually aware of. A sense of the weight of my body and how the bones move to support it.

The cushy feeling in my feet is was most delightful. It felt like the earth was a resilient force, receiving and yielding then slightly pushing back. Of course my mind wanted to get involved with theories about connecting with the earth, and how this is a step on the path to connecting with the entire universe. But the actual act of walking has a simple feeling that really felt innocent and delightful.

Now, after the meditation as I write this, I notice my feet feel more open, and I can sense the earth’s energy entering my feet through the soles, where they touch the floor. It seems like a white light entering my body. Wow, the vastness of the earth as a being feels like a huge energy, and as I sense the energy through my feet I start to notice that the energy field of the earth is all around my body too.

This totally blows away my notion of being a small separate self that is completely cut off from everything else and unsupported in the world. My body feels like a permeable spacious entity that is connected with the space and energy around it, so that the energy of the vast earth is through me as well as around me, and I feel a gentle humour and delight in the quality of the vast energy. As I sense into the quality of the energy, my mind activity stills, and I enter into the unknown of what is arising. Blissfulness, pleasure, but there isn’t the usual sense of “I” to experience it.

The usual I has faded more into the background, but I notice she has some fear about being with the unknown. I am part of a much bigger awareness, and my usual I wants to go back to the usual activities of my egoic mind. What will this bigger awareness require of me? What is happening in it? What is it? The collective energy of my neighbourhood? I hear the birds and cars outside, and someone hammering. There is peace in this vastness. An imperturbability, that seems to be reminding me of its truth. The vastness informs me that I can be aware of that imperturbable peace as I deal with a problem I’ve been irritated by since yesterday, that my egoic mind finds annoying. And curiousity can be there too. Hmm, why is this person I’m annoyed with behaving this way, and what is arising out of the vastness through their actions? What boundless generosity the universe has, to not only make me feel supported as part of something much larger than myself, but to also help me with a very minor problem in my life!

So, I am sure your experience of the walking meditation might be different than this. I have had a daily meditation practice pretty steadily for about 10 years, and I use a practice called inquiry to notice my experience and follow it into the depths and breadth of reality. Plus Saturday morning relaxation, tea, and chocolate allow me to shift out of my usual awareness and pay attention to a bigger reality in a way I don’t usually take the time to do.

I invite you to share what your experience was of the walking meditation, and what you were aware of at the end of the meditation. If you don’t want to share it on this blog, maybe you’d like to write about it in your journal or tell a friend what you noticed. I invite you to use this practice every day this week, for 5 or 10 minutes. Keep seeing what you notice. It’s never the same day twice! (Except in Bill Murray’s Groundhog Day, but that’s another story!)

Walk your blues away

You’ve probably heard that walking is good for you. It’s one of the most highly-recommended forms of exercise. It’s gentle on the body, and good for the psyche. The physical activity can get the juices flowing and even create a little endorphin high. Going for a walk is good for clearing the mind, and it’s also a great technique to use for controlling anger. Just being outside for a while and touched by the sky can lift the spirits. But this isn’t the kind of walking I’m talking about.

I’m talking about a simple practice called walking meditation. It’s different from regular walking, in part because the pace is slower. Its benefits are more profound than regular walking. It is a spiritual practice, and like many spiritual practices, the purpose is to support us in a different kind of awareness than our usual consiousness.

Our usual consciousness involves a lot of thinking! It is sometimes called our egoic mind. We use it to function in the world—planning how to talk to a coworker about a problem or new idea, deciding what to make for dinner, remembering a warm moment with a friend. As you can see, the egoic mind is usually oriented towards the past or the future. Don’t get me wrong—the egoic mind is useful, and developing a healthy ego, which includes a sense of being a separate self and other characteristics that ego psychologists have listed, is an important developmental achievement for humans. But it doesn’t stop there!

We are much more than our egoic minds, but unless we are remarkably lucky or have done a lot of inner work, we may not be aware of what that “more” is. Actually, we may not be aware THAT there is more. I believe that the midlife crisis is a waking up moment when we realize that the life of the egoic mind is not entirely satisfying. Perhaps we’ve raised a family or achieved career success. Relationships may have ended or they might be continuing, but somehow didn’t bring all that we hoped for. Maybe there’s a feeling that something is missing. A richness and aliveness that we remember life having when we were children. Or a sense of being at peace. There are many qualities to our being and to the nature of all that is that we might long for and sense are possible, but don’t experience as often as we’d like.

Walking meditation is a way to drop out of the busy thinking activity of the egoic mind and open our awareness to what else is true in the present moment. It can be a doorway into a more expanded awareness of reality. I’ve learned different forms of walking meditation over the years, at Naropa University, at Diamond Approach retreats, and elsewhere. I taught walking meditation as part of a meditation class I taught in Merritt, in which I introduced students to a variety of meditation techniques. I think having a daily meditation practice is very difficult, and also very important for developing our capacity to be aware of more than the egoic mind. I think it is so difficult that without a context such as a spiritual understanding to give meaning to the activity, and without the support of a spiritual community, it is probably not possible. But I could be wrong—if you disagree, or have had a different experience, I’d love to hear about it.

I stopped teaching meditation because I felt that without the support of a spiritual path, people wouldn’t be able to sustain their practice. But on the other hand, even meditating once and never meditating again might have a benefit. So I’ll invite you to try this for yourself, and see what you make of it. Whether or not you have a spiritual practice or want one!

Preparation: Choose a place to walk where you can walk slowly without worrying that people will think you’re weird. This could be in your home, or outside. Decide how long you’re going to walk for; I suggest 5 or 10 minutes the first time.

Let your eyes rest gently on the ground about six to eight feet (two to three metres) in front of you. Soften your gaze so your eyes aren’t focused on the details. Walking at night is good too.
Clasp your hands loosely in front of you, with your arms relaxed and hanging naturally. One way is to insert your right thumb between your left thumb and forefinger, so your left hand clasps your right thumb, and the rest of your right hand clasps your folded left hand.
Bring your awareness down out of your mind and into your feet. Feel your feet. Feel how they feel in your socks and shoes, or sandals, if you’re wearing any. Feel how they feel making contact with the earth.
Begin to walk slowly, keeping your awareness on the sensation in your feet. If your mind wanders, gently bring it back to your feet.
At the end of the time you have set, increase your awareness to include the space in and around your body. Take a few moments to notice what you are aware of.

Blessings on your journey.