MEDITATIONS

Walking Meditation by Jon Kabat Zinn from his book: Wherever You Go, There You Are. "In traditional monastic settings, periods of sitting meditation are interspersed with periods of walking meditation. They are the same practice. The walking is just as good as the sitting. What is important is how you keep your mind. In formal walking meditation you attend to the walking itself. You can focus on the footfall as a whole or isolated segments of the motions such as shifting, moving, placing, shifting, or on the whole body moving. You can couple an awareness of walking with an awareness of breathing. In walking meditation, you are not walking to get any place, Usually it is just back and forth in a lane, or round and round in a loop. Literally having no place to go makes it easier to be where you are. What's the point of trying to be somewhere else on your walking path when it really is all the same? The challenge is, can you be fully with this breath? With this step? Walking meditation can be practiced at any pace, from ultra slow to very brisk. How much of the foot cyclce you can attend to will depend on the speed. The practice is to take each step as it comes and to be fully present with it. This means feeling the very sensations of walking in your feet, in your legs, in your carriage and gate. As always, it is moment by moment and in this case, step by step as well. You might call it watching your step, pun intended, an inner watching, you're not looking at your feet,just as in the sitting meditation, things will come up which will pull your attention away from the bare experience of walking. we work with those perceptions, thoughts, feelings and impulses, memories and anticipations that come up during the walking in the very same way that we do in sitting meditation. Ultimately walking is stillness in motion, flowing mindfulness. It's best to do formal walking meditation in a place where you won't become a spectacle to other people, especially if you are going to do it very slowly. Good places are your living room, fields, or a clearing in the woods. Isolated beaches are good too. Push a shopping card in front of you though a supermarket and you can walk as slowly as you like. You can practice walking meditation informally anywhere. Informal walking meditation doesn't involve pacing back and forth, or going around a loop, but just walking normally. You can walk mindfully along a sidewalk, down a corridor at work, going for a hike, walking your dog, walking with children, it involves recalling that you are here in your body. You simple remind yourself to be in this moment, taking each step as it comes, accepting each moment as it comes. If you find yourself rushing or becoming impatient, slowing the pace can help take the pace off your rushing, and remind you that you are here now and when you get there, you'll be there. If you miss the here, you are likely also to miss the there. If your mind is not centered here, it's likely not to be centered just because you arrive somewhere else. Try bringing awareness to walking wherever you find yourself. Slow it down a bit. Center yourself in your body and in the present moment. Appreciate the fact that you are able to walk which many people can't. Perceive how miraculous it is and for a moment don't take for granted that your body works so wonderfully. Know that you are ambulating upright on the face of Mother Earth. Walk with dignity and confidence, and as the Navajo saying goes, walk in beauty, wherever you are. Try walking formally as well. Before or after you sit, try a period of walking meditation. Keep a continuity of mindfulness between the walking and the sitting. Ten minutes is good or half an hour. Remember once again that it is not clock time we are concerned with here. But you will learn more and understand walking meditation more deeply, if you challenge yourself to keep at it past your first or second impulse to stop. "

Standing Meditation: by Jon Kabat Zinn from his book, Wherever You Go, There You Are "Standing meditation is best learned from trees. Stand close to one or better still, in a stand of trees and just peer out in one direction. Feel your feet developing roots into the ground. Feel your body sway gently as it always will just as trees do in a breeze staying put in touch with your breathing, drink in what's in front of you. Or keep your eyes closed and sense your surroundings. Sense the tree closest to you. Listen to it. Feel its presence. touch it with your mind and body. Use your breath to help you stay in the moment, feeling your own body, standing breathing, being, moment by moment. When mind or body first signals that perhaps it is time to move on, stay with the standing a while longer remembering a tree stands still for years, occassionally lifetimes if they are fortunate. See if they don't have something to teach you about stillness and about being in touch. Afterall, they are touching the ground with roots and trunk, air with trunk and branches, sunlight and the wind with their leaves. Everything about a standing tree speaks of being in touch. Experiment with standing this way yourself even for short periods of time. Work at being in touch with the air on your skin, the feel of the feel in contact with the ground, the sounds of the world, the dance of light, color and shadow, the dance of the mind. Try standing like this, everywhere that you find yourself, in the woods, in the mountains, by a river, in your living room, or just waiting for the bus. When you are alone, you might try opening your palms to the sky, holding your arms out in various positions, like branches and leaves, supple, open, receptive, patient."