Meditation on the go. The art of hurrying slowly

Residents of large cities spend an average of 15 to 40 minutes of daily walking on the streets. Usually, this is a familiar route from home to work and back to the store, to the gym, which pedestrians are automatically engaged in the usual stream of thoughts. Yogasecrets.ru offers a fresh look at the process of walking, making it a dynamic meditation practice.

Meditative walking: traditional and modern

Walking meditation – an ancient technique that came to us from Buddhism. Traditionally, this meditation is done in a quiet safe area when the practitioner does not distracting and annoying. The silence and tranquility allow you to focus on a single object or process (most often it is the movement of the legs – raising and lowering, contact with the ground). Such concentration allows to achieve specific presence status and concentration as when sitting meditation. 

For the modern city dweller traditional walking meditation is hardly feasible, because the metropolis, with its noise, the flow of cars and crowds of pedestrians, full of distractions. Immersed in deep meditation can be not only extremely difficult, but also dangerous on the streets, so the traditional Buddhist meditative walk, designed for quiet gardens near the pagoda, there is need to transform. 

Traffic, pedestrians, require the practitioner’s constant response to an incentive. Under these conditions, mental training can take place, not for stopping mental fluctuations, but how to work with three-dimensional, defocused attention, the state of vigilant presence and monitoring, dynamic kind of vipassana.  

What for?

What effects to expect from the regular practice of meditation while walking?

For people over 40 years old, meditative walks and normalize blood pressure and balance the activity of the cardiovascular system.

Practitioners of all ages will notice as a normal state during the day has become more balanced as increased resistance to stress. Focused and soothing the mind allows the body to let go of many of the usual blocks, and voltage clamp, releasing energy.

accident prevention

Deciding to try meditation practice in select familiar terrain and mentally determine the beginning and end of practice. It is better if the work with attention will be limited to a particular segment of the route “from point A to point B”. Such an installation, first of all, allow better focus on the practice and, secondly, at the end of training, will allow easy to get out of the altered state of consciousness, back to the usual perception.

In the early stages you can have a close companion for added safety and insurance.

Watch and go

Training attention on a city street can be more effective practice of meditation on the nature or in a quiet room. The noise of cars, hurrying pedestrians, uneven paving stones – all these occur continuously stimuli and our responses to them should be subject to a maximum included and yet detached observation.

Good move on to work with attention to the city, having already had a little experience with the mind during meditation home. This will help hold the attention, stopping the usual stream of thoughts.

Switches the desired state

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  To appease the analyzing mind and enter into the presence of the state, before a meditative walk, stop and take a 10-20 quiet deep breaths. This will allow to calm down, turn on the parasympathetic tone and tune for further practice.
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  Give yourself installation practice meditation along the way and finish it, having reached the end point.
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  Try to shift attention to the unusual mode of operation, for example, instead of pedestrians, vehicles and buildings, notice the spaces between them. Let the object of attention will not objects, and emptiness.
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  What help yourself recover elusive account can fold your fingers in any mudra (or other unusual situation). Thus, every time when the mind is carried away by the usual stream of thoughts, losing concentration, the position of the fingers will remind you to get back to work.

Back to the usual activity

If you feel after practicing deep relaxation, but the planned business activity and require concentration, you can put the body in the new regime, ” shake .” Just like the animal shaking off the water after bathing.

Relax and pruzhinte feet stomping the entire body – shoulders, arms, abdomen, thighs. Listen to your feelings and allow the body to move the way it wants. Exercise is carried out from 30 seconds to a minute. If the situation allows, you can pronounce any sounds.

This “shake-up” allows you to quickly and efficiently switch between options activated. This universal exercise is effective not only to improve the tone, awakening energy, but also helps to relieve tension, stress, negative emotions.

Good practice!

Meditate while walking Yogasecrets.ru taught Igor Kazachinsky

Igor Kazachinsky practicing yoga with 1992. Participant of seminars Reinhard Gamenthallera, Sidersky Andrei, Sergei Agapkina, Denis Zikeeva. Certified as a teacher Yoga23 in 2008. Since 2009 teaches art Yoga -Nidry (in Yoga23 version, the classic version Satyananda Swami Saraswati, in the author’s version of ” Yoga Nidra 2.0″). Practicing yoga practitioner since 2013.

Dasha prepared Rolin