Sunday, October 15, 2006

Walking Meditation

"You may also want to bring the practice of wogging into your life.
Half slow walking (going uphill) and freely surrendered, speedy
jogging (going downhill), it may become your preferred meditation
posture or form of dance. The goal of the practice is not to condition
the body aerobically; that happens as a natural byproduct. The goal
of the practice is to open to and merge with the breath, letting your
natural, surrendered breath determine how fast or slow your body
moves, to stay as loose and relaxed as possible, to let every part of
the body move as fluidly as possible, to surrender to the sensation
and energies of the body as you keep playing with balance, to keep
emptying the mind and staying in clear perception of vision and sound.
Full-bodied breath comes easier during a wog than during any other
activity. Sensations can be felt through the entire body. Vision can
become very clear, and the mind can stay very empty."
- Will Johnson, Yoga of the Mahamudra, 2005, p. 134

"The rhythm of walking generates a kind of rhythm of thinking, and
the passage through a landscape echoes or stimulates the passage
through a series of thoughts. The creates an odd consonance between
internal and external passage, one that suggests that the mind is
also a landscape of sorts and that walking is one way to traverse it.
A new thought often seems like a feature of the landscape that was
there all along, as though thinking were traveling rather than making."
- Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust: A History of Walking, p. 5.

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