Walking Meditation: Dissolving Tensions

Some people find that sitting for meditation is difficult. It may be that you have a scattered busy mind, or back-pain. Some people would advise you to push through it, but perhaps, sitting just isn’t for you, perhaps walking meditation would work better. I have a lot of experience at this kind of meditation; I do it every day. The difference between regular walking and meditative walking is that with the latter you drop your thoughts and let your mind go flat, you focus on awareness.

If you have found your truth within yourself there is nothing more in this whole existence to find. Truth is functioning through you. When you open your eyes, it is truth opening his eyes. When you close your eyes, it is truth who is closing its eyes. This is a tremendous meditation. If you can simply understand the device, you don’t have to do anything; whatever you are doing is being done by truth. You are walking, it is truth; you are sleeping, it is truth resting; you are speaking, it is truth speaking; you are silent, it is truth that is silent. – Osho

Walk where you feel the safest, the calmest. My preference is the clearest possible horizon lines, for water. Walk where there are the fewest distractions for you. If it helps, wear headphones, play ambient music. If not, listen to the music of the universe in that moment.

Tune into your body

Feel it out

Focus – awareness – on any tensions

Where are they?
What shape are they?

See what comes up.

Just observe.

Do they connect to parts of your body? Parts of your life? your chakras/transits/career/home…
family/public recognition, to shame/embarassment, to childhood pain?

When you find tension – hold it.
Do not push or pull.
Allow it to be.

Deepen your awareness

Walk with this tension

Let it be

And through the movement and regular breathing cultivate stillness of mind
Stillness is deeply transformative

Some people find archetypes emerging from this kind of observation. Some people find psychic splinters that can be removed or emotional wounds that can be cleansed and untangled and allowed to heal. Whatever you find, let it be gentle. Be gentle with yourself.

One thing: you have to walk, and create the way by your walking; you will not find a ready-made path. It is not so cheap, to reach to the ultimate realization of truth. You will have to create the path by walking yourself; the path is not ready-made, lying there and waiting for you. It is just like the sky: the birds fly, but they don’t leave any footprints. You cannot follow them; there are no footprints left behind. ― Osho

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3 thoughts on “Walking Meditation: Dissolving Tensions

    • Not necessarily the speed, but probably the rhythm. When my mind begins to think too much I sometimes slow down or walk and breathe unevenly. When I notice this I tend to walk faster and more evenly deliberately to calm my mind.

  1. Mmm, lovely. I walk daily, too, (or ‘saunter’ as Henry David Thoreau called it!) and sometimes weave prayer or mantra as I walk. It’s a powerful practice. This is a good suggestion (and Osho quote) that you’re sharing, for dissolving tensions with walking meditation. Thanks, Isa.

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