In the weekly Mindfulness for Moms class I’m enjoying, we practiced a walking meditation. To do this, you walk as deliberately as you can, noticing every sensation in your body. The weight being transferred from the heel of your foot to the ball of your foot. Your balance. The forward motion. The way your hips sway. Each step brings forth more sensation and you notice something new.
We did that very slowly, but I have noticed that even in my morning exercise walk I enjoy the repetitive pace and the feelings in my legs as I am moving. I often don’t want to listen to music because I prefer tuning in to these sensations.
Fast forward to last night, when my sweet girl and I were talking about the need our bodies have for slowing down sometimes. She pointed out that I walk quickly all the time, even just to the door to check the mailbox. I realized she is right.
“Our children can lead us into authenticity because they instinctively know how to BE. They intuitively know how to live within their body and respond to their spirit. They are fully aware of the need to meet reality as it presents itself and are able to respond in a manner that we adults often aren’t. This is why it’s from our children that we can learn how to really LIVE.” ~ Dr. Shefali Tsabary, PhD, The Conscious Parent: Transforming Ourselves, Empowering Our Children
I am uncomfortable with walking slowly myself, though I am by no means the speedster I was in my youth. I want to get to my destination posthaste and get rapidly bored by walking with no goal to get to. (This has not been good for my health; I get bored to tears during exercise.)
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Naomi, Your Mindfulness for Moms class sounds wonderful. I love the comment about long legs vs. short legs & I am in agreement with Deborah’s comment about 15 minutes a day. I am practicing awareness, also . . . you are not alone!
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My mother was and is a fast walker….I still remember, as a child, being dragged through various stores. So when I became a mother I made sure I s-l-o-w-e-d down to my son’s pace. I remember going to the grocery once with my husband, said child was visiting grandma, and as we walked across the parking lot he turned and said, “come on MOM…stop walking the toddler walk and get a move on!”. But ya know…the world goes by fast enough with out us all ‘running’ through it. So, yes….I still walk that ‘toddler walk’ and it is amazing what I now see in the world around me.
It will be interesting Naomi to see if you can carry some of that slowness from your walking meditation into your more “regular” life as an awareness practice. I suspect even 15 minutes of deliberate slowness would offer profound shifts given that your natural inclination is both moving quickly and maintaining a very busy schedule. This might be a helpful way to give yourself some space.
Deborah Weber recently posted…Eclipse, Geese, and Oracle Cards
Had to laugh with this one. All of my life I have walked slowly. Truth is, I also gawk a lot which tends to slow me down. Sometimes friends ask me to go for walks with them and even though I would like that, I say no because they walk so much faster than I do. I wonder how they would react if I just walked my normal pace and then tried to slow down to “keep up” with me?
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We’ve talked about our inability to just “be” a time or two before. I really suck at it. On our recent vacation I had the opportunity in the last 2 weeks to slow it way down, and it drove me nuts, to the point where I was ready to come home rather than endure the slow pace. “I’ll rest when I’m dead” has been my guiding motto my whole life, if memory serves me correctly. I don’t know if slowing down is something I “want” to do, or something I feel like I “should” do. Now that I’m back home and the speed of life has increased again, I’m sorta wishing I had thought to address the issue when I REALLY had the time to think about it!
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lol she might think you walk fast because her legs are shorter than yours 😉 i actually find that i walk fast because i’m usually running late for something. i used to be so good at being on time, but for some reason lately–that is my middle name–lately! my husband says it’s because i try to fit too much in. but i feel like it’s because i’m always taking too much time on things. a snail’s life for me!!