mindful walking

When you apply a few simple techniques, you can turn your daily walk into a rewarding practice.

What is mindful walking? It’s a technique that uses awareness of the mind/body connection to improve the quality of your walking experience on all levels. By approaching a walk in a mindful way, you make it a practice like yoga, meditation, or tai chi; every session brings new insights and challenges. As in yoga, you think about your body position, breathing, movements, and awareness, turning inward and outward at the same time. You’re working to get fit, and to improve your life as a whole. Treat walking as a practice, and it will become not only something you do with your legs but also a way to bring your mind, body, and spirit into balance.

Five Steps to Make Walking a Mindful Practice

Identify your intention. The key to any mindful activity, intention provides focus and motivation, elevating your practice from routine to ritual. What is your intention? To walk for an hour every day? To develop a sense of centeredness and calm? To reduce stress? Your goals and intentions will evolve as you evolve. Let them, as long as they keep you in line with your higher sense of purpose — and keep you moving forward.

Be consistent. A true practice requires ongoing attention. Of course, it’s natural to feel resistant at times, no matter what kind of activity you do. Your mind will create a thousand excuses not to walk today. Don’t let these passing thoughts distract you from your deeper intention. Get moving; start walking around your office or home, or wherever you are. You can quiet the mind by moving your body and get yourself back on track.

train your mind to focus

Train your mind to focus. The mind loves — and craves — engagement. Without something to focus on, it will tend to wander, taking your practice with it. By learning to focus, you will be able to walk more efficiently.

Listen to your body. As with any relationship, the connection between mind and body depends on how well one listens to the other. Our tendency is to try to rule the body with the brain; however, they are more like equal partners, offering feedback and direction as you go. Listen to what your body is trying to tell you by noticing any sensations that come up while you’re walking. You may feel energized as your leg muscles engage or relaxed as your breathing deepens. If you detect any complaint from your body, such as pain or discomfort, identify the source. Then make small adjustments in your technique and see whether the sensation lessens.

Embrace the process. Goals provide a greater context for your practice. But building patient awareness of the process is even more important. Sometimes walking will feel easy and rewarding; other times, more like a chore. As part of a mindful practice, you accept the challenge as part of the process and continue to stick with it. My tai chi master sees difficulty as an opportunity — a lesson to be learned. Accepting all of these parts of the process lies at the heart of making walking a mindful exercise.

adapted from Body + Soul Magazine, April/May 2006

Meditation Timer, The Digital Zen Alarm Clock in Solid Walnut

Now & Zen

1638 Pearl Street

Boulder, CO 80302

(800) 779-6383

Honey Japanese Maple Leaves Zen Alarm Clock, calming alarm clock useful for remembering one's dreams

Steve McIntosh is one of those spiritually driven achievers whom marketers define as part of the “cultural creatives” demographic group. He doesn’t shy away from that label; in fact, he believes that group is on the cultural frontier, making changes in their own lives that will influence our future.

It’s a movement that is going beyond materialism, but still expresses itself with certain material goods. “I want to be part of that culture. I want to express an aesthetic that would capture the mood of the time like the Tiffany lamp expressed the Art Nouveau culture prior to World War I,” McIntosh said.

The former investment banker and lawyer headed the Celestial Seasonings tea company, where, he said, he saw “how a brand can affect American culture.”

In the mid- 1990s, McIntosh was ready to set out on his own. “I wanted to create a line of consumer electronics that would use natural sounds, acoustic sounds that were housed in wood cases rather than plastic,” he said.

In 1996 in Boulder, Colo., he began his company Now & Zen, making the Zen Alarm Clock, (shown below, $119.95) a clock that emits chimes at intervals, and more recently introducing the Tibetan Phone Bell (shown above, $119) on the same principle — that sound should be beautiful and gentle.

His products “exemplify an aesthetic that combines elements of Zen, sacred geometry, classical Greece,” he said.

zen

The clock wakes the sleeper up with an initial chime, followed in 3 1/2 minutes by another, then in smaller intervals until it sounds each four seconds. That interval allows the sleeper to conclude a dream before waking, according to Now & Zen literature.

“Instead of jerking, you get this buffer between sleeping and waking that gives you your consciousness,” he said.

The Tibetan Phone Bell, which features a brass bowl from Asia, “replaces the artificial sound of a phone ringing,” McIntosh said. “Those electric sounds cause stress.”

The sounds of both products are based on an esoteric tradition that dictates what frequencies are most soothing to humans, he said.

Hardcore materialists may laugh, he said, but many people find the Zen Alarm Clock and the Phone Bell pleasant.

“You don’t have to be a Buddhist to appreciate an esthetically beautiful phone,” he said.

Zen Alarm Clock in Maple Finish, Japanese Leaves Dial Face, harmony in design

Now & Zen products are available at the Elephant Pharmacy in Berkeley; Planet Weavers Treasure, Zen Center Book Shop, Walden’s and the Tibet Shop in San Francisco; Body Wise and Siamese Dream in San Rafael; and Milk & Honey in Sebastopol or online at www.now-zen.com.
Excerpted from San Francisco Chronicle, March 2004 by Laura Thomas

Now & Zen

1638 Pearl Street

Boulder, CO  80302