Mindful Walking
A moving version of the same practice. You walk, slowly, and let the feeling of walking be the thing your attention rests on.
Walking meditation is practised across many traditions and is part of secular programs like MBSR. Nothing here is original except the plain instructions.
How to do it
- 1
Find a short stretch of ground, indoors or out, where you can walk slowly without needing to get anywhere.
- 2
Walk more slowly than usual. Feel the weight shift from one foot to the other, the lift, the step, the contact with the ground.
- 3
Let that feeling of walking be where your attention rests.
- 4
When your mind wanders, and it will, notice, and bring it back to the feeling of the feet.
- 5
The walk has no destination. When the time is up, come to a stop.
Sit with it
Use the timer if it helps, or ignore it and just sit. There's nothing magic about any length, and there is no streak to keep.
What this is not
- It is not exercise. You're not trying to cover distance or raise your heart rate.
- It is not about walking in a special or correct way. Ordinary walking, slowed down and attended to, is all it is.
- It is not about getting somewhere, in either sense.
Sources & notes
Where this essay makes a factual claim, here is what it rests on, and what that evidence does and doesn't settle. Contemplative teachings and our own interpretations are labelled as such, not dressed up as science.
- The present-moment, non-striving orientation this practice uses.Teaching
Jon Kabat-Zinn, Wherever You Go, There You Are (Hyperion, 1994).
A contemplative teaching, not an empirical claim.
- On going gently.Our synthesis
Attention Science note.
A gentle, low-risk way into practice for people who find sitting still difficult. If balance or mobility is a concern, adapt it however you need to, or do it seated.
The thinking behind it
What Is Mindfulness? (And What It Isn't)9 min