Today is day one of my latest fitness challenge which is 10-days of walking meditation. During my walk, I heard a plane fly over and I stopped to take a photo, and what I captured was pretty amazing considering that the spirit of this latest fitness challenge is more about spiritual and mental fitness versus physical fitness. The sun burst was a cool way of the universe giving me a sign that I'm walking my lightworker path.
Last week, I was hankering to embark on a new fitness challenge, but drew a complete blank. When blankness like this happens, I let the intention sit, and then wait for the universe to bring me an idea. Without fail, the universe delivers...every time.
I love Sundays on OWN because of Super Soul Sunday, and Master's Class. Yesterday, Oprah interviewed Thich Nhat Hanh, a Buddhist monk whose teachings I have read on and off for years. Following the interview was a broadcast of the documentary, The Dhamma Brothers which was about a prison in Alabama that brought in the practice of Vipassana meditation to help with the inmates.
The interview and documentary blew my mind. If you get the OWN channel, I recommend watching this episode of Super Soul Sunday. As a preview, here's a clip of Thich Nhat Hanh sharing wisdom about the four mantras of relationships.
Thich Nhat Hanh spoke of walking meditation. I had never heard of that before, and was fascinated. He also spoke of mindfulness and that subject is something that has been really strong in me lately, being mindful. Scattered energy is one of my issues I've been wanting to work on. Since moving from Phoenix back to the Bay Area to do my mobile health apps startup, I've been loving the energy and excitement of Silicon Valley, but the energy here is intense, fast-paced, and somewhat scattered. There are plenty of people with tiny attention spans here which is scattered energy, and being around that makes me scattered.
I like the idea of how meditation can help me get focused and present, and even better, I love the idea of combining fitness with meditation. I've been doing some high mileage running this past month and my right knee was starting to irritate me which means it's time for a break. So, Thich Nhat Hanh was the inspiration for my latest fitness challenge of walking meditation. I chose 10-days because in The Dhamma Brothers their Vipassana meditation program was 10-days, which is short but long enough to make some impact and see results.
So how exactly do you do walking meditation?
I Googled walking meditation and found all sorts of information which was a bit much for a Sunday night. The gist of what I picked up was to walk at a slow pace, clear your mind, and focus on your breathing and posture. Normally in meditation, you are sitting or laying down with eyes closed but with walking meditation, you must keep your eyes open so you can see where you are going. The other challenge is to somehow block out the sounds and focus your attention inwards.
I always run with music. I find it hard to run in silence, so my first challenge was going to be walking with no music. I would only have the sounds around me and inside me. The idea of mostly silence was already making me jittery. Right away, I see that one of my beliefs is that I cannot work out without music.
The first 5 minutes of my walk to be honest was torture. After one minute, I desperately wanted to run. I was getting frustrated with the slowness. My back started to ache because I was now paying attention to my posture and realizing I have bad posture. I was irritated I couldn't check my RunKeeper app to see how far I had gone and at what pace.
The point of walking meditation is to have no goals like distance and pace. There is no "power" walking or working to your target heart rate. The point is to center and focus inward, to "be" with yourself as you walk at a meditative pace.
OMG! I wanted to scream. I was going nuts in only 5 minutes. Already, these 10-days are feeling like it's going to be 100 days.
The one quantitative exception I made with this 10-day walking meditation challenge was to use my RunKeeper pedometer app on my iPhone to document each walk. I turned off all the audio prompts and the only time I can look at the app is at the end of my walk to stop the app.
Day One outcome
I walked 1 hour and 15 minutes over 2.78 miles. I'd like to say that my first walk was mystical and restorative, but no it was not. The dominate feelings were annoyance, frustration, and even hate. The hate part was about a person back in Phoenix whom I apparently still have issues with.
Meditation brings you face to face with your internal noise, disaster, and darkness, so having an awful first day is actually normal. In the Dhamma Brothers, a couple of the inmates spoke of their initial experience, and yeah it was unpleasant, awkward, and painful. Knowing that helped put perspective on my walk today because I know it will get better.
I've spent the last 10 years doing plenty of spiritual and personal growth work, and thought doing this walking meditation would be easy for me, but I got a good ego reality check today. Walking meditation is harder than it appears.
On the upside, I felt good to get fresh air and sunshine in the 70 degrees, and I am glad that I stayed focus on walking at a meditative pace. At least five times, I was about to say screw this, and just run. I am learning discipline, and knowing that I am publicly sharing this experience helps me keep in check.
Overall feeling: Frustrated but hopeful
