Mindful Walking

Mindful walking, is an active practice that requires you to be consciously aware and moving in the environment rather than sitting down with your eyes closed. The practice brings you closer to nature and your body. It also helps strengthen your concentration, makes you more aware, and connects you to the present moment.



Practice Mindful Walking

1. Posture – Stand straight and alert, but not rigidly so. Evenly distribute your weight between your feet. You can relax your arms by your sides or hold them behind your back if they are distracting. Take a moment to feel the weight of your body supported by the ground. Soften and drop your gaze slightly if this helps you focus.

2. Choosing your path – If this is your first time trying mindful walking, you may feel more comfortable if you choose a short path (no longer than 100 feet) and walk back and forth on that path. As you become comfortable with the practice, feel free to choose a more elaborate path or even try walking mindfully as you go about your day.

3. Walking – As you take your first steps, focus your attention on the sensation of your weight shifting on the soles of your feet. If you are barefoot, try noticing the textures of the ground. Maintain a steady rhythm as you walk; it may also be useful to walk a bit slower than you usually would.

4. Staying with the steps – As you fall into rhythm, keep your attention focused on the sensations coming from the soles of your feet. If you catch yourself drifting off, gently guide your attention back to your feet. Once again, the most important aspect of this practice is not how long you stay focused, but rather noticing your mind wandering and then refocusing it.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Paradox of Choice

The Paradox of Choice “After millions of years of survival based on simple distinctions, it may simply be that we are biologically unprepared for the number of choices we face in the modern world” Schwartz, 2004 It’s no secret that as humans we like to exercise our freedom of choice. Having choice is important as it helps us to express our identity and allows us to consume what we like according to our personal preferences. Whether it’s selecting what to wear, deciding what television show to watch, or choosing what to do over the weekend – we strive to be authors of our own destiny. On the flip side, I’m sure you can recall a time when you had too many choices, so many, in fact, that it was almost debilitating. Perhaps you were unsure of what topping to get on your pizza? Or maybe you were so overwhelmed by choice of ice cream flavours that you defaulted to simply vanilla?  Known as the “choice paradox”, this fear of making the ‘wrong choice’ or missing out on the ‘b
Read more

Psychology Symbol

Image
The symbol for psychology represents the penultimate letter of the Greek alphabet, psi, which is also the first letter of the Greek word psuche, meaning mind or soul, from which the term psyche arose; which in turn gave us the name of the discipline psychology which is most commonly defined as study of the mind. The story of the psychology symbol involves some mythology  and the strange evolution of the term “psi” (Ψ). It’s the twenty-third letter in the Greek alphabet, and at some point, the Romans transliterated it to form the word  psyche . It meant butterfly in Latin, but it went on to mean things like  breeze, breath, energy,  and finally  soul . Anyone who’s studied psychology will remember how when they got to college, this strange symbol would show up just about everywhere. Books, professor’s offices, informational notes…  Anyone curious about this branch of science will recognize it too, because it’s become part of a culture of symbols that’s common in a lot of oth
Read more

Gestalt therapy

Image
Gestalt therapy History Precursors The history of Gestalt therapy starts with the professional development of Fritz Perls and the zeitgeist in which he lived. After acquiring the M.D. degree, Perls went to Frankfurt-am-Main in 1926 as an assistant to Kurt Goldstein at the Institute for Brain Damaged Soldiers. Here he was exposed to Professors Goldstein and Adhemar Gelb and he met his future wife, Laura. At that time Frankfurt-am-Main was a center of intellectual ferment and Perls was directly and indirectly exposed to leading Gestalt psychologists, existential philosophers and psychoanalysts. Fritz Perls became a psychoanalyst. He was influenced directly by Karen Horney and Wilhelm Reich, and indirectly by Otto Rank and others. Perls was especially influenced by Wilhelm Reich, who was Perls' analyst in the early 1930s, and "who first directed my attention to a most important aspect of psychosomatic medicine -- to the function of the motoric system as an armor&q
Read more