Walk back and forth on a cleared path, as the forest monks do

Walk slowly on a short path in both directions, determined to walk, and let the walking be the whole of your attention for a while.

Por qué funciona

In the Thai Forest monasteries, walking meditation is done on cleared paths under the trees. Ajahn Chah describes beginning with doubt: he walked from one tree to another, back and forth, and thought, “what am I walking for?” before he came to see its value. His instruction is that when you walk in meditation you should “really determine to walk,” and when you sit, concentrate on sitting. Walking gives the mind a moving body to attend to, which is harder to drift away from than a single posture held still, and the repetition gives attention a steady rhythm.

Cómo hacerlo

1. Find a path of about ten to twenty steps, or a room if there is no path, and mark the two ends.
2. Stand at one end for a moment, and decide that for this period you will walk and only walk.
3. Walk slowly from one end to the other, feeling the lift, the forward movement and the contact with the ground at each step.
4. At each turn, pause and turn deliberately, then walk back, keeping the attention on the feet and the body as they move.
5. When the mind wanders into thought, return to the next step. Continue for ten or fifteen minutes, then sit briefly and notice what carried over.

Evidencia

The instructions come from Ajahn Chah’s talks Right Restraint and Maintaining the Standard, and his biography describes walking meditation on cleared paths under the trees at the monasteries. A study of healthy adults compared a 90-minute walk in a natural setting with a walk in an urban setting and found that the nature walk reduced self-reported rumination and activity in the subgenual prefrontal cortex. That study tested a long walk through nature, not repeated back-and-forth walking meditation, so it bears on the setting rather than on the method. (mechanistic)

The walking practice itself has not been tested in a controlled trial. The Bratman study concerns a ninety-minute walk in a natural setting in healthy participants and is not a test of cankama or of Thai Forest practice.

Fuentes

• Ajahn Chah. Right Restraint (Dhamma talk). In The Teachings of Ajahn Chah. Wat Nong Pah Pong.
• Ajahn Chah. Maintaining the Standard (Dhamma talk). In The Teachings of Ajahn Chah. Wat Nong Pah Pong.
• Ajahn Chah. Living in the World with Dhamma (Dhamma talk). In The Teachings of Ajahn Chah. Wat Nong Pah Pong.
• Biography of Ajahn Chah. The Teachings of Ajahn Chah. Wat Nong Pah Pong.
• Bratman, G. N., Hamilton, J. P., Hahn, K. S., Daily, G. C., & Gross, J. J. (2015). Nature experience reduces rumination and subgenual prefrontal cortex activation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Error común

Taking the walking itself as the whole practice. Ajahn Chah warns in Maintaining the Standard that “if you don’t abide with the practice, the walking and sitting meditation, there’s nothing more than just traveling around,” and that people “get lost in externals.” Walk, and then notice what the walking brings up in the mind.