Walking meditation promotes mindful movement and body awareness. Sitting meditation promotes stillness, relaxation, and deep introspection. Each enhance mindfulness and concentration. Integrating both practices provide a well-rounded meditation routine that combines gentle physical activity and inner calm.
Sitting meditation allows you to be still, focusing on your breath and thoughts. During this practice, your body remains stationary, promoting a sense of relaxation and calmness. On the other hand, walking meditation (including moving with a wheelchair) involves physical movement, where you mindfully walk in a specific place, paying attention to each step or turn and the sensations they generate in your body. This form of meditation cultivates body awareness (enteroception) and a feeling for our personal psychophysiological space (proprioception). As you become more attuned to the sensation of rhythmic movement and comfortably sense your location in time and space, you are able to enter a “zone” of peaceful and purposeful activity. You will sense your self-actualization as an exercise of your personal will (introspection). Mindful movement and stillness meditation are complementary and may both fit into different parts of your daily routine. There is no real need to choose, but there is a need to match a practice with the time, space, and situations that exist around you. If you find it challenging to sit still for long periods (that is 10 to 30 minutes), walking meditation might provide you with both modest exercise along with meditation benefits. These principles are central to the Asian walking practice of “forest bathing” (shinrin-yoku).
You may recognize that the calm, stillness that is needed for sitting meditation is in increasingly small supply in our modern surroundings. Walking meditation can provide both a reprieve from ambient static noise and an alternative for mechanical physical action. If you want more formality than walking itself, yoga and Tai Chi (when practiced with quiet intentionality) may provide you with effective introspective movement and mindful exercises. And if you want a more ritualized walking experience, try a walking meditative labyrinth. The labyrinth will frame your walking ritual in time and space providing you a reliably consistent meditation.
The clinical perspective on walking meditation includes:
1. Walking meditation helps because it shifts your pre-frontal cortical activity from self-referential rumination to a focus on your body’s movements—the rhythm of your steps, the feeling of the ground beneath your feet, and the sensation of your breath. This shift makes it easier to break free from overthinking and stay present.
2. Walking meditation helps build a stronger connection between the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for impulse control and rational decision-making. This this creates a psychological space that enhances emotional regulation.
3. Walking meditation trains your brain to move between internal awareness and external surroundings and adaptably integrate thoughts and physical action.
4. Walking meditation helps develop interoception, which is your ability to sense internal bodily states like muscle tension, heart rate, or even hunger which can help you recognize stress before it escalates.
5. The bilateral sensation created with walking, including rhythmic movement of legs, arms, and visual gaze, parallels EMDR, a clinical method for providing relief for trauma sufferers. Vagal tone is enriched with these rhythmic movements and eases the shift from stress to calm.
6. Walking meditation offers a gently sustainable “runner’s high” by increasing serotonin and dopamine, which are further amplified when you are walking in natural environments.
7. Walking meditation helps improve focus by increasing alpha brain waves, which are associated with a relaxed but alert state of mind for enhanced concentration and clearing mental fog.
8. Unlike seated meditation, which requires setting aside dedicated time and appropriate space, walking meditation can fit more easily into daily routines given any quiet, naturally comfortable walking space.
Turning walking meditation from a calming experience into a healthy habit can benefit from some training and some coaching. Start small. Identify a short, quiet path. Set aside 5 to 10 minutes to repetitively walk that path. First stand, pause, and set your intention for what you want from your walk. Start slowly. Scan your sensations as you walk. Can you feel your posture? Can you feel your ankle? Can you feel the surface beneath your feet? Can you feel your breath? Walk slowly. Fast walking can contribute to shallow breaths which are harder to sense. Focus your thoughts on only the next six feet in front of you. If your mind wanders, gently lead it back to sensing the experience of your walk. There are many helpful audio tracks which can enhance your walking experience.
SELECTED RECENT REFEENCES
Lynn, Sarah, and Julia C Basso (2023) Effects of a Neuroscience-Based Mindfulness Meditation Program on Psychological Health: Pilot Randomized Controlled Trial. JMIR formative research 7
Jung, Mijung, and Mikyoung Lee (2021) The Effect of a Mindfulness-Based Education Program on Brain Waves and the Autonomic Nervous System in University Students. Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) 9(11):1606
