I’ve adapted this one from an exercise in The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Meditation.

What I’ve found over the years of introducing my student’s to meditation is that a lot of people simply can’t sit still for a given length of time. This does not mean that you should give up on meditation as this exercise will show.

This week, try to do a walking meditation every day. If possible, make one of your walks somewhere beautiful in nature – in the mountains, on the beach, even in your local nursery (for want of a better connection with nature). For the rest of your walks, your general neighbourhood or the city around your work will do.

Ok, so firstly, you’re not going to close your eyes for this one, particularly for the city walks! The idea really is to bring awareness to every step that you take, to absorb everything around you without thinking about or judging it, to simply walk for the sake of walking and not to get somewhere or achieve something (this is not a fitness exercise!).

Start by bringing attention to your breath and try to walk in a rhythm that works with your breathing. Whenever your mind wanders, bring it back to the breath. Then, simply look around. Look at the sky – notice its colour and the presence or absence of clouds. Look at the houses and people that you pass or the trees, animals, birds. Notice the small details – the plant pushing through the sidewalk, the peeling paint, the interesting doorknob, the bee on the pot plant. Feel how your body feels as you move – which muscles are you using, how does the ground feel beneath your feet, what is the feeling of your arms swinging at your sides? Listen to the sounds around you. Try to listen to the stillness underneath the sounds, the silence out of which all sounds are born. Feel the air, the wind, the heat, the cold. Again, try not to think about, analyse or judge whatever you perceive. If you do, simply note your judgement and how often this comes up, and how spontaneously you resort back to thought. Then bring your awareness back to your breathing. Try also not to name the things around you, but simply to observe them.

If you really can’t get out this week (perhaps you’re snowed in, literally?!) then try applying the exercise to a walk around your own home. See if you can walk around your house/flat/apartment for 20 minutes without a thought or judgement about whatever you hear/see/feel. You might be surprised by the sounds, colours, smells (remember, we’re trying not to judge here!) and objects that you may not have previously noticed.

Take your time and enjoy the walk – life is in the small details.

This week’s exercise is based on Aldous Huxley’s last book, “Island”. The book is about a journalist who gets shipwrecked on the fictional island of Pala. The island is inhabited by highly evolved / enlightened people and one of the things they use to keep them in the present are parrots trained to say things like “Attention Here and Now” at regular intervals.

This week’s exercise is to find your own ‘parrots’ to remind you to stay in the now. Decide on a sound that you will hear regularly throughout the day (the phone ringing, the kids screaming, cars hooting, alarms etc – the more annoying the sound, the more likely it is to draw you out from whatever you’re busy with!) or program something into your phone or computer to go off regularly. If you have one of those phones where you can record your own voice as the ringtone, then record yourself saying something like ‘attention here and now’. Whatever sound you use, make it a reminder to pull yourself out from the grips of any past and future imaginings going on in your head and simply focus on what is going on in the present. Take a moment just to see how wrapped up you get in your mind and to remove yourself from that (even if only for a few seconds) to wallow in the simplicity of just being.

Here are two excerpts from the book (thanks to Wikipedia) to inspire you...

    “Nobody needs to go anywhere else. We are all, if we only knew it, already there. If I only knew who in fact I am, I should cease to behave as what I think I am; and if I stopped behaving as what I think I am, I should know who I am. What in fact I am, if only the Manichee I think I am would allow me to know it, is the reconciliation of yes and no lived out in total acceptance and the blessed experience of Not-Two. In religion all words are dirty words. Anybody who gets eloquent about Buddha, or God, or Christ, ought to have his mouth washed out with carbolic soap.”

    “Good Being is knowing who in fact we are; and in order to know who in fact we are, we must first know, moment by moment, who we think we are and what this bad habit of thought compels us to feel and do. A moment of clear and complete knowledge of what we think we are, but in fact are not, puts a stop, for the moment, to the Manichean charade. If we renew, until they become a continuity, these moments of the knowledge of what we are not, we may find ourselves all of a sudden, knowing who in fact we are.”

Wishing you an attentive week!