Kinhin - Walking Meditation

Buddhists practice a form of walking meditation known as Kinhin Walk and meditate?

Doesn't it sound like an oxymoron? How can someone walk and meditate at the same time?

But that is the joy of meditative practices. It makes you do things that have become alien to us in our everyday lives.

The easiest way to describe it is slowing life down. Allow me to explain.

Growing up, we learned to walk. Stumble, fall, get back up, and then take a step. It is hard to say, but perhaps the child was being mindful. After all, these steps did not come naturally. It required effort.

Soon, though, the brain took over and automated the process. At some point, your brain said, "It looks like she is going to keep doing this. So I better automate the process."

You stopped thinking about the steps and each movement. You stopped experiencing it and simply did it.

Kinhin, then, is the practice of going back.

Going back to the very start, where you take each step mindfully, You slow down, experience the movement of your legs as they lift from the ground, and then you take the next step.

You might ask, Why on earth would you do something like that?

As life unfolds, our lives pick up pace. School, work, family, children, and society. We hustle and bustle as we desperately try to make it through life.

It puts an enormous amount of pressure on us. Most of our energy is focused on the outside world.

If our natural environment was not enough, today we are inundated with demands on our time. Media, social commitments, travel, and more.

Kinhin is the art of looking inward, focusing on the most basic of the basics. Each step and each leg as it lifts off the ground and goes back down.

It is slowing your life down and calming your mind and body. It is often the break your body needs to go back to harmony.

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