A Method of Walking Meditation
Most writing about meditation narrowly focuses on sitting. I’ve always struggled to understand why this is. Meditation does not require sitting to do and some forms of meditation are impaired by sitting (while others are aided by it). I’ve been practicing walking meditation for many years now. I thought maybe it would be a good idea to write about it a little, in case others might want to know more about what I’ve learned.
Posture
In general there are 4 body postures one can engage in while meditating. They are: lying down, sitting, standing, and walking. Each of these postures can be done correctly or incorrectly, where correct is defined with a handful of functional criteria.
For example, it’s correct to sit with one’s legs folded comfortably with the knees resting below the level of the hips, and the back straight. It’s incorrect to sit with one’s legs splayed outward and a hunched back. The reasons for this are primarily physiological. Correct posture minimizes the risk of discomfort or injury and removes distraction from fidgeting to get comfortable. There are many published guides for correct sitting posture in meditation.
There are (as far as I know) close to zero published guides for correct posture for walking meditation. That seems like a reasonable place to start. Correct walking posture has similar goals to correct sitting posture: minimize risk of injury and remove distraction from discomfort. It also has a goal not shared by correct sitting posture, which is to enable fluid mobility during the meditation. Walking means moving. Otherwise it would be standing.
The correct posture for walking meditation has the following elements:
Correct posture of the feet
Correct posture of the knees and hips
Correct posture of the back and shoulders
Correct posture of the neck and head and eyes
Correct gait and pace
The feet should be either bare or extremely comfortable shoes should be worn. I do most of my walking outdoors, so I wear very comfortable boots that fit my feet well without chafing or compressing. Flat (or nearly flat) bottomed shoes are necessary. Lifted heels will be a problem for most people in most circumstances.
The knees and hips should be kept very loose and wiggly. There’s huge range of variation based on individual anatomy here, but the general principle is to not lock your joints or walk stiffly. Keep everything loose.
The back and shoulders should be kept upright and square. You should feel “tall” when doing walking meditation. It’s particularly important to keep the shoulders square with the spine, in order to form a solid base for the neck and head.
The neck and head should be relaxed and allowed to move freely. It’s particularly important to be able to move one’s eyes as well as one’s neck freely in order to maximize the viewport of the visual field while walking. Being able to shift the viewport without repositioning your legs or twisting your torso is very important. The eyes should be kept wide open and fully attentive. You will need to see where you’re walking to avoid obstacles, walk safely, and make directional choices. It’s very useful to be able to fluidly shift visual attention from near distance to far distance and back without missing a beat.
There is no single correct gait and pace. This varies based on individual anatomy as well as the circumstances of the walk, especially the terrain. In general though, I advise to avoid a stiff or shuffling gait. Walk with the entire leg (the foot, ankle, knee, and hip all move with each step). Walk at an appropriate pace for the environment as well as for the mental activity done while walking. Apologies that this is vague. Hopefully it will become more clear later.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, is that walking should feel natural and comfortable. My descriptions of “correct” here should not be taken as prescriptive or normative. They’re my best effort to describe physically sustainable walking for people with typical anatomy. Your body might be different. If these descriptions are out of alignment with your body, then please discard them, and work from the general principle that correct walking posture should be comfortable, fluid, and efficient.
Route and Direction
I strongly recommend a circuitous route (ending where one began). It’s not strictly necessary but it’s worked better for me than trying to meditate while walking to somewhere. Better to not be going anywhere at all. The act of walking is the vehicle for meditation here, and the goal to “arrive” at a destination is a distraction from that.
There are many possibilities for how to choose a circuitous route. At the most minimal, this can be simply walking in a circle around a room. I have a strong preference to walk outdoors though and I recommend it because of the opportunity to engage with the senses more. Walking in a circle indoors is monotonous and monotony can be discouraging and aversive, which will interfere with enjoyment and lead to reluctance to engage in the practice.
Routes should be chosen that are safe and accessible, up to a point. It’s probably not possible to engage in the intended mental activity while one is anxious and feeling unsafe, so it’s probably not a good idea to choose a route that provokes anxiety. On the other hand, there are circumstances where engaging with the feeling of unsafeness can be beneficial and walking through an anxiety provoking place can aid this practice. You’ll have to use your judgment. Most important is to distinguish between actually dangerous and places that merely provoke anxiety without being actually dangerous. Please stay safe. This isn’t about being a daring hero.
I want to clarify what I mean by choosing a route. It’s not helpful to plan every turn at every intersection. This will interfere with the intended mental activity and sensory engagement. Instead, a route should be an approximate path, at the level of neighborhood or geographic landmark, rather than turn-by-turn instructions. “Walk along the creek” is appropriately high-level. “Walk to Canyon Blvd., then take a right turn onto 4th St., then take a left turn onto Arapahoe Ave.” is too specific and low-level.
Direction is critically important and the way we engage with direction while doing walking meditation is a central part of the practice. For this reason I find very constrained versions of the practice (such as walking in a circle in a room) to be diminished versions of the practice.
Normally, we choose our direction intentionally in a goal-oriented way. We might choose where to walk on the basis of ease, efficiency, pleasantness, or other criteria (perhaps we prefer a challenge, as in a hike). Walking meditation should dispense with intentional, goal-oriented directional choices. Changes in direction should emerge fluidly and organically during this practice, in an unconscious way.
When coming to a cross-roads, I recommend choosing your turn nearly randomly (eliminating clearly inaccessible or dangerous routes, but randomly choosing between any other available turn). Just don’t think about it. Feel into it. Allow for attraction to pull you towards something, or repulsion to push you away from something. Flow like water, which doesn’t choose it’s route, but simply flows in the direction of least resistance. Walking along a watercourse is a very easy way to achieve this and I recommend it.
Alternatively, especially in urban environments, simply relax and follow your fascination. There doesn’t need to be a reason for any choice of direction, and the more “choiceless” it feels the better. If it feels fascinating to walk uphill or across rough terrain, then do so. The instruction here is not to avoid difficulty or resistance, but rather, to avoid deliberately choosing difficulty for some other reason besides fascination with it (such as for the physical exercise value of it).
Breathing
Most of the styles of breathing that are effective in sitting meditation are also effective in walking meditation. However, because walking is an aerobic activity that places the body in motion, it is more important to breathe automatically and not use breathing as a scaffold or focus of attention. Breath counting or other explicit forms of attending to the breath are counterproductive in walking meditation.
Another difference is that, because of the aerobic activity, maintaining a very even and steady breathing rhythm is not always possible while walking. It is natural and correct to breathe more heavily when walking uphill than while walking on a flatland. Just breathe in whatever way your body needs.
DON’T HOLD YOUR BREATH. If you notice that you’ve been holding your breath for whatever reason, that’s a good cue to pause your walking and re-regulate your breathing while standing still. Once you’re breathing automatically and rhythmically again, resume walking.
Sensory Engagement and Mental Activity
A large point of distinction between sitting practice and walking practice is in the domain of sensory engagement. While sitting, we generally constrain our sensory engagement by a large amount. Many sitting meditation postures also include instruction to keep the eyes nearly closed (“slit”) or fixed upon a focal point (a blank wall, a candle flame, etc.). Out of necessity this is impossible while walking, so we must be able to engage with visual information without becoming preoccupied with it.
Vision is the most important sense for navigation, but all of the senses should be treated in the same way here. We are aiming to admit the sense input and engage with it fully without getting stuck on it. If you find yourself lingering on a sensation for more than a few seconds, this is a cue to either drop it and move on, or to move into mental activity engaging with the sensation. In either case the aim is maintain intentionality with sensory engagement.
One of the benefits of walking outside is that the sensory environment is extremely varied and fascinating. This experience of fascination is a tool with incredible leverage for engaging in specific kinds of mental activity. In general, the objective of this mental activity is not preoccupation or fixation, but rather is to find the presence of awareness in the push and pull of sensations. When done correctly, the fascination is experienced energetically not intellectually. If the fascination is giving rise to loud streams of discursive thought, this is a clue that the fascination is residing in the intellect. If you get stuck in a discursive thought, my best advice is to just drop it and drop your engagement with the sensation that gave rise to it, and keep walking. The movement of the body and breath while walking is a very effective way to avoid getting stuck in a discursive thought.
To experience fascination on the energetic level means that one is able to engage with the sensations in a highly fluid way, with a kind of automaticity to it. You may find yourself walking nearer to an object in sight, and then carefully inspecting it with your eyes and hands (and maybe nose and ears too, depending on the object). Immersion within the fascination presents an opportunity to find the presence of awareness in the sensation of and interaction with the object. This is the heart of the practice. Do as much of this as you can manage without it degrading into discursive thought. When I do this practice, I notice that there are nearly zero words or phrases in my mind, and that my entire awareness is experienced as sensation and somatic reaction to sensation. It’s typical for me to experience sensory “weirdness” while doing this, including synaesthesia, tingling, energetic surges, and intensification of emotional somatic feedback. I’m often moved to tears during this kind of practice.
Important, though, is to not get stuck on any one fascination for too long. Allow it to flow through you. Spend no more than a couple of minutes on each one, then move along the route until the next fascination presents itself. The principle here is that of fluidity and movement. Stagnation will degrade the practice.
After completing an engagement with a point of fascination, awareness should return to the method of walking. I find it especially useful to reposition my visual viewport to be front and center on the path I’m walking along and then to move my focus to the distant horizon. This should have the effect of causing the path to resolve as coherent object again, and for the nearby objects to recede into the background again. It’s important to approximately stay on the path and the route. Meandering is expected and good, but the meandering shouldn’t go too far astray. If you find yourself wandering too far off the path, drop it and return to the path, just as you would do if you needed to correct your breathing. In my experience, the rhythm of breathing is a very good indicator of whether or not we’ve gone off the path. When I notice that I’ve started to hold my breath, it almost always means that I’ve also become stuck in discursive thought, and also that I’ve wandered off my route. This just happens and doesn’t mean you’re “doing it wrong”. It means it’s time to return to the path.