When I’m in turmoil, when I can’t think, when I’m exhausted and afraid and feeling very, very alone, I go for walks. It’s just one of those things I do. I walk and I walk and sooner or later something comes to me, something to make me feel less like jumping off a building.”
― Jim Butcher, Storm Front
This was something i did too. The other a day, a friend of mine said try walking with awareness, and not with random thoughts going through your head. Well I have been thinking about that too.
Her point was meditation is a simple way to connect with our spirit and mother earth in a very grounded way.
This was a very interesting way of looking at things, I mean, have been taking the benefits of walking for granted. I realize from walking 7kms to work, the number of steps I take have reduced to seven steps on the stair case. But walking yes does connect us with earth along with connecting us with ourselves and all the other health benefits.
Walking on the concrete does upset because I feel we have imprisoned mother earth, but this friend of mine told me focus on the simpler pleasures when you walked barefoot on the hillside, though it did take a while slowly I began connecting with the earth beneath. The grass erupting on the pavement despite the concrete began smiling at me. the experience was amazing. It was one of existing in this moment, without worrying of a past perceived incompetence or hurt, or planning to optimize my 24 hrs.
Even walking through a city is an experience. To walk is to lack a place. The indefinite process of being absent and in search of a proper. Walking about a city multiplies and concentrates makes the city itself an immense social experience of lacking a place.—an experience that is to be sure, broken up into countless deportations, compensated for by the relationships and intersections of these exoduses that intertwine and create an urban fabric, and placed under the sign of what ought to be, ultimately the place but is only a name, the city… a universe of rented spaces haunted by a nowhere or by dreamed of places.
each step taken either in the urban space, or the woods made me aware of myself and my feelings. Walking slowed me enough to pay attention to where I was in my body and my breathe. I began noticing my breathe as I walked through the inhales and exhales and became more attuned to the way in I breathe was taking a step towards mindfulness. As i became more mindful, my awareness of the environment gradually increased, I began recognizing the normal flow of thoughts and feelings, and recognized they were not always related to where I was at the present moment.
Whether this had anything to do with the earth connect I do not know. But friend says it is she says connecting with earth makes us secure, and this sense of being secure, makes us calm and tranquil. Being in now, fades the troubles of the day.
The simplicity and ease of walking practise allows us to create time and space, it makes us aware of our surroundings and the wonders of that lie within, taking a few moments to walk each day and become more aware our breathe will in turn open the door for the beauty of the world around us to filter in, it would allow us conceive truly great thoughts.
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