Walking a labyrinth is a wonderful way to meditate and move, if sitting still does not work for you.
There are a number of labyrinths nearby, some near or inside churches or schools, some in fields, some available as mobile canvas paintings.
So, if sitting still to meditate is hard for you, try walking a labyrinth. You can, of course, also let your fingers do the walking with this online labyrinth.
Showing posts with label walking. Show all posts
Showing posts with label walking. Show all posts
Thursday, September 13, 2007
Mindfulness: your walking rhythm
Try this Walking rhythm exercise from The Listening Book p. 46-7.
W. A. Mathieu writes:
I learned about rhythm and meter on late-afternoon walks home from school. … Walking gives permission. When you are walking, the lid is off: the ridiculous boils off into the sublime. It's OK to hum, whistle, sing and shout, clap, snap, beat your body, squint your eyes, dance, jive, swing and sway. Dancers need music, but walkers are their own music.
People walk approximately two steps per second, about 120 steps per minute. Music played at this "walking temp" makes you feel as though you are walking even if you are sitting down. It resonates with the shape and function of your body. A little faster tempo, a few more beats per minute—say, 130—feels like a brisk walk, pushing it, maybe. Slightly fewer beats per minute—say, 108—feels like a lazy amble, maybe too slow. We are so sensitive to the precise center of this range that conductors use it as a reference point in memorizing various tempi. Everyone knows the feeling of this center; when you know you know it, magic happens.
Take a walk. Enter the rhythm your body gives you. Sing anything. Make up a tuneless tune, or a new language (Legs-mouth). Listen to what you are saying in this language; it is a key to your own music. Feel how your breathing and your walking and the sounds you are making modulate one another.
Walking wisdom is natural and lets you learn complex things easily. While keeping your stride free and even, start saying "left, right, left, right" in time with your legs. Then, without altering your gait, accent every third word: "left, right, left, right, left, right, left, right, left, right, left, right." This is a basic way of crossing rhythms that has fascinated us unwaveringly for millennia. You'll never get tired of it. Guaranteed. It gives more energy than it takes. You are waltzing and marching simultaneously, balanced between two qualities.
W. A. Mathieu writes:
I learned about rhythm and meter on late-afternoon walks home from school. … Walking gives permission. When you are walking, the lid is off: the ridiculous boils off into the sublime. It's OK to hum, whistle, sing and shout, clap, snap, beat your body, squint your eyes, dance, jive, swing and sway. Dancers need music, but walkers are their own music.
People walk approximately two steps per second, about 120 steps per minute. Music played at this "walking temp" makes you feel as though you are walking even if you are sitting down. It resonates with the shape and function of your body. A little faster tempo, a few more beats per minute—say, 130—feels like a brisk walk, pushing it, maybe. Slightly fewer beats per minute—say, 108—feels like a lazy amble, maybe too slow. We are so sensitive to the precise center of this range that conductors use it as a reference point in memorizing various tempi. Everyone knows the feeling of this center; when you know you know it, magic happens.
Take a walk. Enter the rhythm your body gives you. Sing anything. Make up a tuneless tune, or a new language (Legs-mouth). Listen to what you are saying in this language; it is a key to your own music. Feel how your breathing and your walking and the sounds you are making modulate one another.
Walking wisdom is natural and lets you learn complex things easily. While keeping your stride free and even, start saying "left, right, left, right" in time with your legs. Then, without altering your gait, accent every third word: "left, right, left, right, left, right, left, right, left, right, left, right." This is a basic way of crossing rhythms that has fascinated us unwaveringly for millennia. You'll never get tired of it. Guaranteed. It gives more energy than it takes. You are waltzing and marching simultaneously, balanced between two qualities.
Mindfulness: Walking awareness
Walking with ease: from hips to spine to arms
Josef DellaGrotte writes:
Walking upright requires an alignment with central gravity that is unique to humans. This connecting link starts from the hips, the strong bony structure and articulations of the pelvis generate three actions which are essential to getting lift and forward power. The hips have to rotate laterally bend and extend and flex. That power is then transmitted to the spine and the ribs, which need to be in the best alignment to transmit the vectors of force. So what if it isn’t in the best alignment? First, Imagine a car trying to up hill in high gear. There is not enough power, the engine over heat and damage soon occurs. It is the same in a human body. If the hips are not generating the “horse power” because of restrictions in action, then you walk harder using the legs. The legs become stressed often manifesting this stress as knee problems. Second, The hips are doing okay but the spine is curved either in a lower back lordosis or mid back kyphosis. Problem: The vector force has to travel through mobile moving joints of the spine. If it can’t the hips work harder carrying the load of the upper body on them. This is not good. Does this sound discouraging? Look at it this way, if you recognize you are working too hard to walk, it is only matter of some learning upgrade to get the system functioning the way it was designed to do.
Try this Exercise
1. Face a door or wall. Place your fingers on it and organize yourself to be standing close and in the vertical plane. Avoid any leaning forward or putting pressure on your fingers.
2. Now stand on one leg. Keep that leg straight and push through that leg as if you were pressing into the ground and generating a ground forces, a spring like action that runs up your spine and gives you the feeling of uplift (getting taller).
3. Think of directing the force through your body and notice how the body starts to turn. While you are doing this your other leg should have no weight on it. It can be touching the ground with the toes with the heel lifted to maintain your balance. Practice this activity on one leg, rest, and then do it with your other leg.
The key to this exercise is trial by experiment in order to sense differences and notice connections. Simply by doing and noticing, you start to activate your innate ability to feel the connection between pushing through a straightened leg and following that force as it travels through your body. It will probably rotate you slightly through the left if you are standing on your right leg or to the right if you are standing on your left leg.
Follow the force of this thrusting until you are clear where the end point is. Simply by doing this exercise you are already developing awareness through movement, (Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais-based principles and process) of sensing limbs, joint actions, resonant motion, lengthening and strengthening in an interconnected way. Once you start to cultivate the sensing of such connections, your walking will improve automatically.
The benefits: Walking provides much needed "resonant movement" through many of the axial joints. It is essential in maintaining spinal flexibility and upright posture. Walking provides needed elongation to the spine, plus strengthening, endurance, relaxation and perhaps most important, confidence building. Walking is the basic foundation of fitness. Walking is known to reduce cardiac problems, stroke, and arthritic conditions with a host of other benefits to the entire body.
Josef DellaGrotte writes:
Walking upright requires an alignment with central gravity that is unique to humans. This connecting link starts from the hips, the strong bony structure and articulations of the pelvis generate three actions which are essential to getting lift and forward power. The hips have to rotate laterally bend and extend and flex. That power is then transmitted to the spine and the ribs, which need to be in the best alignment to transmit the vectors of force. So what if it isn’t in the best alignment? First, Imagine a car trying to up hill in high gear. There is not enough power, the engine over heat and damage soon occurs. It is the same in a human body. If the hips are not generating the “horse power” because of restrictions in action, then you walk harder using the legs. The legs become stressed often manifesting this stress as knee problems. Second, The hips are doing okay but the spine is curved either in a lower back lordosis or mid back kyphosis. Problem: The vector force has to travel through mobile moving joints of the spine. If it can’t the hips work harder carrying the load of the upper body on them. This is not good. Does this sound discouraging? Look at it this way, if you recognize you are working too hard to walk, it is only matter of some learning upgrade to get the system functioning the way it was designed to do.
Try this Exercise
1. Face a door or wall. Place your fingers on it and organize yourself to be standing close and in the vertical plane. Avoid any leaning forward or putting pressure on your fingers.
2. Now stand on one leg. Keep that leg straight and push through that leg as if you were pressing into the ground and generating a ground forces, a spring like action that runs up your spine and gives you the feeling of uplift (getting taller).
3. Think of directing the force through your body and notice how the body starts to turn. While you are doing this your other leg should have no weight on it. It can be touching the ground with the toes with the heel lifted to maintain your balance. Practice this activity on one leg, rest, and then do it with your other leg.
The key to this exercise is trial by experiment in order to sense differences and notice connections. Simply by doing and noticing, you start to activate your innate ability to feel the connection between pushing through a straightened leg and following that force as it travels through your body. It will probably rotate you slightly through the left if you are standing on your right leg or to the right if you are standing on your left leg.
Follow the force of this thrusting until you are clear where the end point is. Simply by doing this exercise you are already developing awareness through movement, (Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais-based principles and process) of sensing limbs, joint actions, resonant motion, lengthening and strengthening in an interconnected way. Once you start to cultivate the sensing of such connections, your walking will improve automatically.
The benefits: Walking provides much needed "resonant movement" through many of the axial joints. It is essential in maintaining spinal flexibility and upright posture. Walking provides needed elongation to the spine, plus strengthening, endurance, relaxation and perhaps most important, confidence building. Walking is the basic foundation of fitness. Walking is known to reduce cardiac problems, stroke, and arthritic conditions with a host of other benefits to the entire body.
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
Music to remind us to breathe, listen, walk
Of course, there are songs and hymns that remind us to breathe as well:
Breathe on me, breath of God
"Let it breathe on me, let it breathe on me, let the breath of the Spirit breathe on me." (See this Bread for the Journey blog entry.)
"Speak, Lord, in the stillness, while I wait on thee. Hushed my heart to listen in expectancy..."
"O Happy Day" that talks about learning to walk... (from one of my favorite movies).
What other songs or hymns can you think of?
Breathe on me, breath of God
"Let it breathe on me, let it breathe on me, let the breath of the Spirit breathe on me." (See this Bread for the Journey blog entry.)
"Speak, Lord, in the stillness, while I wait on thee. Hushed my heart to listen in expectancy..."
"O Happy Day" that talks about learning to walk... (from one of my favorite movies).
What other songs or hymns can you think of?
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
Mindfulness: a search through the Bible
Mindfulness is awareness.
"A good place to start cultivating mindfulness is in the body." Jon Kabat-Zinn
We will start with some physical practices and exercises: breathing, listening, walking, and other aspects of daily life.
While we have talked about Buddhist tradition and here in the U.S. we often think of Buddhism when we think of meditation, I offer the following reflection and selections from the Bible on breath and breathing, listening and walking and mindfulness. We start with breath because that's where God started in Genesis 2:7 "then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being."
Job 33:4, The spirit of God has made me, and the breath of the Almighty gives me life.
Listening is used often in the Bible especially by the prophets, to call people to attention to what is going on in the world: Isaiah 18:3, All you inhabitants of the world, you who live on the earth, when a signal is raised on the mountains, look! When a trumpet is blown, listen! Isaiah 55:3 Incline your ear, and come to me; listen, so that you may live. Matthew 11:15 Let anyone with ears listen! Acts 28: 26-27 'Go to this people and say, You will indeed listen, but never understand, and you will indeed look, but never perceive. For this people’s heart has grown dull, and their ears are hard of hearing, and they have shut their eyes; so that they might not look with their eyes, and listen with their ears, and understand with their heart and turn—and I would heal them.' Our exercises in listening address the kinds of issues that these scriptures describe.
Walking also starts early on with God: Genesis 3:8, They heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.
The central tenet and prayer of Judaism regards walking as essential: Deuteronomy 10:12, So now, O Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you? Only to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to keep the commandments of the Lord your God and his decrees that I am commanding you today, for your own well-being.
Walking indeed is part of the Christian faith: 2 Corinthians 5:5-7 He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who has given us the Spirit as a guarantee. So we are always confident; even though we know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord— for we walk by faith, not by sight.
In fact, mindfulness starts with God's work of creation as described by the Psalmist: Psalm 8:3-4 When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established; what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?
God is mindful of us, and we are created in the image of God, so that we too may be mindful of all of creation, ourselves included.
"A good place to start cultivating mindfulness is in the body." Jon Kabat-Zinn
We will start with some physical practices and exercises: breathing, listening, walking, and other aspects of daily life.
While we have talked about Buddhist tradition and here in the U.S. we often think of Buddhism when we think of meditation, I offer the following reflection and selections from the Bible on breath and breathing, listening and walking and mindfulness. We start with breath because that's where God started in Genesis 2:7 "then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being."
Job 33:4, The spirit of God has made me, and the breath of the Almighty gives me life.
Listening is used often in the Bible especially by the prophets, to call people to attention to what is going on in the world: Isaiah 18:3, All you inhabitants of the world, you who live on the earth, when a signal is raised on the mountains, look! When a trumpet is blown, listen! Isaiah 55:3 Incline your ear, and come to me; listen, so that you may live. Matthew 11:15 Let anyone with ears listen! Acts 28: 26-27 'Go to this people and say, You will indeed listen, but never understand, and you will indeed look, but never perceive. For this people’s heart has grown dull, and their ears are hard of hearing, and they have shut their eyes; so that they might not look with their eyes, and listen with their ears, and understand with their heart and turn—and I would heal them.' Our exercises in listening address the kinds of issues that these scriptures describe.
Walking also starts early on with God: Genesis 3:8, They heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.
The central tenet and prayer of Judaism regards walking as essential: Deuteronomy 10:12, So now, O Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you? Only to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to keep the commandments of the Lord your God and his decrees that I am commanding you today, for your own well-being.
Walking indeed is part of the Christian faith: 2 Corinthians 5:5-7 He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who has given us the Spirit as a guarantee. So we are always confident; even though we know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord— for we walk by faith, not by sight.
In fact, mindfulness starts with God's work of creation as described by the Psalmist: Psalm 8:3-4 When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established; what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?
God is mindful of us, and we are created in the image of God, so that we too may be mindful of all of creation, ourselves included.
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