meditation in motion, walking mindfulness practice

Attention, multitaskers: Want to exercise and meditate at the same time? Try Breathwalk, a form of walking meditation that incorporates pranayama and mantra techniques from the Kundalini Yoga tradition. The late Yogi Bhajan introduced this practice to the West in the early 1970s. Since then, yoga students of all shapes and sizes have used it to improve their cardiovascular health, tone their nervous system, boost their energy, stabilize their moods, quiet mental chatter, and embrace the present moment. In its full form, Breathwalk is a five-step process that can take up to 60 minutes; here’s an abbreviated routine you can do in less than 20. Try it in a meadow, on the beach, in the woods, or, if you’re feeling adventurous, on a city street.

The Practice
Begin walking at a normal pace, observing your bodily sensations. Then tune into your breath. Are you breathing with your chest muscles or with your diaphragm? Is your breath shallow and erratic or smooth and deep? Noisy or quiet? Through your mouth or through your nostrils? Gradually refine your breath so that it becomes nasal, diaphragmatic, and free of noise and irregularities.

Now coordinate your breath with your stride, inhaling for four steps and exhaling for four steps. When this feels comfortable and automatic, begin to practice the following breathing pattern: Keeping your nasal passages and facial muscles relaxed, take four short staccato puffs of air through the nostrils—one puff for each step. (Your breath will be audible now; focus on the sound.) Essentially, you are dividing your inhalation into four segments that are synchronized with four consecutive steps. After the first puff, your lungs should be about one-quarter full; after the second, two-quarters full; after the third, three-quarters full; and after the fourth, four-quarters full.

zen stones

Without pausing, exhale in the same fashion, contracting the abdominal muscles and pushing the navel to the spine for four steps (and four segments of the out-breath), so that the final puff pushes the last quarter of air out of your lungs. Continue this pattern for five minutes, then walk and breathe normally for three minutes. As Gurucharan Singh Khalsa, senior student of Yogi Bhajan and co-author of Breathwalk, says, “It’s not about, ‘How far did I walk, how many calories did I burn, how much effort was expended?’ It’s about synchronizing the body, breath, and mind to the present moment, about experiencing a profound sense of connection with yourself and nature.”

Now, repeat the eight-minute practice. This time, as you synchronize your segmented breath with your stride, mentally say the mantra sa ta na ma—one sound for each step and each segmented breath. Repeat the mantra in coordination with the quartered breath for five minutes, then walk and breathe normally for another three.

“Practice for three days in a row and you’ll feel the energizing, focusing effects immediately,” Khalsa says. “If you do it for 40 days you can get really intimate with the technique. You can slip it into the cracks of your day to support you—that’s its purpose.”

adapted from Yoga International, by Shannon Sexton

Tibetan Meditation Timer with Brass Singing Bowl

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Lake Meditation

Lake Meditation

Move your attention from the mountain to the lake. Crystal-clear, turquoise-hued lakes toward the peak of some mountains in the Himalayas are called “sky lakes” because they so perfectly reflect the sky above. Protected by the higher peaks and trees, the surface of such a lake is smooth and calm. You don’t need to visualize yourself as a lake. Rather, contemplate the lake and its quality of reflectivity. Notice how the water is translucent, allowing you to see into its depths. Notice how it is also as reflective as a mirror, so you can see your face and the sky above on its surface. As you imagine yourself looking into the surface of the water, notice how the water reflects only what is there, neither editing out nor adding in anything. The water reflects the dark, ominous storm clouds and the fluffy white clouds equally. When birds fly overhead, the water reflects them; yet once they are gone from the sky, it shows no trace of them.

When the waves (vritti) are calmed, the mind (citta) has this dual ability of the lake to be both translucent and reflective. Once your mind is stabilized, you can turn your attention to it. Imagining your mind to be as translucent and reflective as the sky lake may bring forth thoughts, feelings, and emotions, but you can simply reflect what arises without judging or comparing, and without editing out anything through aversion or denial. Perceptions of sound, smell, or touch may arise, and, free of grasping and pushing away, you can simply reflect. In this way, destructive or unwholesome patterns can be seen, so that their power over you is lessened. Attachments are loosened. Breathing in, see yourself as the water of the sky lake; breathing out, reflect.

adapted from Yoga Journal, by Frank Jude Boccio

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Silk Lavender Eye Pillows

Creating Eye Pillows:

Summer holidays are perfect times for craft projects. Here’s one you can do in an hour and use right away. Eye pillows are handy for traveling and for relaxing in Savasana.

Materials You’ll Need (makes one eye pillow)

For the pillow
1/2 yard of fabric that has been washed, dried, and ironed

For the filling
1/2 cup dried beans or flax seeds
1/2 cup dried rice, lentils, or buckwheat
1/2 cup dried lavender or chamomile

When selecting the filling consider the recipient’s scent preferences and any potential allergies. Mix together three or all of the above items. You’ll need 1 1/2 cups total.

creating beautiful eye pillows

Make the Pillow

Step 1 Cut the fabric

Using a ruler and pencil, mark two 4 1/2-by-10-inch rectangles on the wrong (nonprinted) side of the fabric. With a pair of scissors, cut along the marks to create the two panels needed for the pillow.

Step 2 Sew the seams

Place the two panels’ right (printed) sides together, with the raw edges aligned. Stitch a 1/2-inch seam around the raw edges, backstitching (sewing first in reverse, then forward over the same stitches) at each end. Leave one of the 4-inch sides open, so you can later add the filling. Stitch a 3/8-inch reinforcement seam around the raw edges, leaving the same 4-inch opening. This reinforcement will ensure that the mixture doesn’t leak out of the pillow after you’ve filled it.

With your scissors, cut two 1/4-inch notches in each seam allowance (the area between the stitching and the raw, cut edge of the fabric), one on either side of each of the four corners, making sure not to clip the stitching. Turn the eye pillow right side out for the next step.

Step 3 Fill the pillow

Spoon 1 1/2 cups of filling into the pillow’s open seam.

Step 4 Close the final seam

Fold each side of the remaining 4-inch seam 1/2 inch toward the inside of the pillow, and pin the opening closed. Either by hand or with a sewing machine, stitch a seam across the folded edges to close the 4-inch opening, then try out the pillow: Set your Zen Meditation Timer to 5 minutes, lie down, put it over your eyes, and treat yourself to 5 minutes of deep relaxation.

adapted from Yoga Journal, by Victoria Everman

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yoga, sooth frazzled nerves pose

Friday:  Soothe Frazzled Nerves

As another hectic workweek slows to a close, it’s time to downshift — and ramp up your self-care.

Friday’s pose quiets your mind and nervous system, restoring your inner resources so that you can fully enjoy the weekend ahead.

Supported Child’s Pose
What It Does
Releases the muscles in the back, gently opens the hips, boosts your energy.

How to Do It
Set your Zen Timepiece to gong after 5 minutes.  Sit back on your heels with your legs folded under you and the tops of your feet on the floor. Open the knees wide and bend forward at the hips.

Rest your forehead (or your chest) on a pillow or blanket and keep your arms slightly bent. If your buttocks don’t reach your heels, place a blanket under your thighs. Relax and breathe deeply for  5 minutes, until your Zen Yoga Timer gongs.

adapted from Body + Soul, 2010

Zen Timepiece with brass singing bowl, a yoga timer

When you apply a few simple techniques, you can turn your daily walk into a rewarding practice.

Hasui-b, Meguro Fudo

What is mindful walking? It’s a technique that uses awareness of the mind/body connection to improve the quality of your walking experience on all levels. By approaching a walk in a mindful way, you make it a practice like yoga, meditation, or tai chi; every session brings new insights and challenges. As in yoga, you think about your body position, breathing, movements, and awareness, turning inward and outward at the same time. You’re working to get fit, and to improve your life as a whole. Treat walking as a practice, and it will become not only something you do with your legs but also a way to bring your mind, body, and spirit into balance.

Five Steps to Make Walking a Mindful Practice

• Identify your intention. The key to any mindful activity, intention provides focus and motivation, elevating your practice from routine to ritual. What is your intention? To walk for an hour every day? To develop a sense of centeredness and calm? To reduce stress? Your goals and intentions will evolve as you evolve. Let them, as long as they keep you in line with your higher sense of purpose — and keep you moving forward.
• Be consistent. A true practice requires ongoing attention. Of course, it’s natural to feel resistant at times, no matter what kind of activity you do. Your mind will create a thousand excuses not to walk today. Don’t let these passing thoughts distract you from your deeper intention. Get moving; start walking around your office or home, or wherever you are. You can quiet the mind by moving your body and get yourself back on track.
• Train your mind to focus. The mind loves — and craves — engagement. Without something to focus on, it will tend to wander, taking your practice with it. By learning to focus, you will be able to walk more efficiently.
• Listen to your body. As with any relationship, the connection between mind and body depends on how well one listens to the other. Our tendency is to try to rule the body with the brain; however, they are more like equal partners, offering feedback and direction as you go. Listen to what your body is trying to tell you by noticing any sensations that come up while you’re walking. You may feel energized as your leg muscles engage or relaxed as your breathing deepens. If you detect any complaint from your body, such as pain or discomfort, identify the source. Then make small adjustments in your technique and see whether the sensation lessens.
• Embrace the process. Goals provide a greater context for your practice. But building patient awareness of the process is even more important. Sometimes walking will feel easy and rewarding; other times, more like a chore. As part of a mindful practice, you accept the challenge as part of the process and continue to stick with it. My tai chi master sees difficulty as an opportunity — a lesson to be learned. Accepting all of these parts of the process lies at the heart of making walking a mindful exercise.

adapted from Body + Soul April/May 2006

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plum blossoms with moon

The power of intention can be used to heal and promote good health, improve performance in many areas and even affect the future.

To be most effective, an intention should be a highly specific aim or goal, which you should visualize in your mind’s eye as having already occurred, while you are in a state of concentrated focus and hyper-awareness.  When you imagine this future event, hold a mental picture of it as if it were occurring to you at that moment.  Engage all five senses to visualize it in detail. 

The centerpiece of this mental picture should be the moment you achieve the goal.
We might also improve the quality of our daily lives just by carrying out detailed mental rehearsals.  At home, we might be able to send intentions to our children to perform better at school or to allow us to be more loving to friends and family.  Human intention might be powerful enough to affect every element of our lives.

Shunsui Katsu-Miyagawa

All of these possibilities suggest that we have an awesome level of responsibility when generating our thoughts.  Each of us is a potential Frankenstein, with extraordinary power to affect the living world around us.  How many of us, after all, are sending out mostly positive thoughts?

Bamboo Zen Clocks, progressive chime clock and timer

Adapted from Ode Magazine, Jan/Feb 2007 by Lynne McTaggart (The Intention Experiment: Using Your Thoughts to Change Your Life and the World, Free Press 2007)

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Kasamori Osen Ippitsusai Buncho

SleepwalkingWhat causes it?

Sleepwalking is most common in children, who usually grow out of it.  It’s a psychological issue, and when it continues into adulthood there’s typically two factors involved. “There tends to be some sort of hereditary component – it runs in families to some extent.  And for people who are more susceptible to sleepwalking, times of stress bring it on,” says Professor Jim Horne, Director of the Sleep Research Centre at Loughborough University.

Zen Alarm Clock

How to beat it
When sleepwalking, nobody talks – they just babble incoherently.  But in order to stifle your somnambulism, a long chat is the best medicine.  “Try to get at the underlying cause,” says Horne. “It’s a simple case of talking to someone close to you about what’s on your mind.  Just be matter-of-fact about it and take it from there.”  Still find yourself stalking the corridors by night? A ccording to a study in the Annals of Neurology, sleep deprivation significantly increases the number of sleepwalking episodes experienced by predisposed individuals.  Staying up past midnight stopped being cool long ago.  Get your eight hours in.

adapted from Men’s Health,  Ed Vanstone

Full Moon Sumida River, Hiroshige Ukiyo-e

while I walk on
the moon keeps pace beside me
friend in the water

-Masahide-

Bamboo Digital Chime Clock, a meditation timer and alarm clock

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