Mindfulness Movement Meditation

Many different kinds of breathing exercises are used in mindful movement. Breathing exercises for mindfulness involve changing the breath consciously and observing effects and sensations. Changing the breath can mean shortening or lengthening the in-breath or out-breath, or both.

Consciously changing the breath has powerful effects on the body. Depending on which types of changes we explore, we will experience changed sensations in the body, typically either energizing or calming, and always rebalancing and nourishing.

Mindful Walking is a mindfulness movement meditation practice that uses walking as the primary movement and object of meditative awareness.

In walking meditation, we walk without a goal in mind, to experience the physical sensations of walking rather than to arrive at a destination. During the walking, we practice placing full focus on our body sensations as they come and go.

The experiences of breath, shifting of weight, and how the ground feels under our feet are the objects of awareness.

Mindful walking offers the benefits of bilateral stimulation of the brain, which results in sedative, calming effects through regulation and balancing of the nervous system. Combined with conscious centering of one’s attention in the now moment, mindful walking is a powerful tool for grounding and experiencing the riches of now-moment-anchored awareness.

Yoga incorporates mindful awareness as a part of its theory and practice. It is encouraged while taking a pose to center one’s awareness on the arising sensations, including the ways that breath is changed. Awareness is lent to the varying effects of twists, tension, and stretching of muscles.

Yoga poses are designed to change the ways that body sensations arise, flow, and fall away in the body experience.

One can also use stretches that aren’t part of a formal yoga practice, with the intention of placing consciousness focus on sensations.

Mindful stretching and yoga have many benefits related to the release of tension, stiffness, emotions, and toxins, alongside the benefits of mindful, now-based body awareness itself.

It is beneficial to apply mindful awareness to sensations arising in the body during physical exertion brought about through rigorous exercise.

Mindfully working out, observing the body as it discharges energy through intense activation and releases of energy, has many positive effects on the physical body and the mind and emotions as well.

The benefits of mindful exercise come through endorphin release associated with physical exercise, paired with the regulating and centering effects of mindfulness.

Decide that your movement practice is for developing your ability to be in the moment. Intentions are powerful. When you dedicate your physical exercise, walking, dancing, or yoga practice to getting better at mindful self-awareness, the way that you move will shift gently around this core purpose.

If you exercise out in nature, this vastly enhances mindfulness, as nature’s effects on the nervous system and brain tend towards entrainment to states of peace and presence. Even if you are indoors, however, you can make the objects in your environment, colors, shapes, and people around you, part of your soft focus of awareness.

Exercising without the use of music greatly supports mindful moving, as most music is distracting and/or conducive to certain states of mind and body. In silence, we are practicing more purely and will be better supported to focus on the body sensations alone, as well as the effects and variations in states of being induced through movements. Rising and falling of energies, rhythms of the body, tensions and release, effort, and ease, are all more easily noticed in presence when we move silently.

During vigorous movement, the breath becomes shorter and more intense. During stretching, breath may be constricted. During releases, we may naturally sigh and breathe deeply.

Staying mindfully centered on the breath and how it changes shape, frequency, and quality as we move helps strongly anchor us into mindful awareness of movement and its impacts on our consciousness.

Staying connected to the sensations we experience as we breathe in shorter, faster, deeper, or shallower ways, as gasps or sighs, we are also closer to the physical sensations in the body, and the ebbs and flows of body activation and gradual harmonization.

Many of us approached exercise in the past with some kind of aggression towards ourselves, as though beating ourselves into shape. Therefore it can be a very important shift in attitude to deliberately choose to be loving and kind.

Kindly witnessing all sensations, including resistance, fatigue, any pain that may come up, shortness of breath, and not wanting to continue an effortful motion, can all be kindly rather than harshly witnessed. Every aspect of the experience of moving should be folded lovingly into your self-awareness and accepted as neither good nor bad, just what it is.

As you take in the full-body experience of movement, make sure your attention touches on every body part and what it is experiencing. Our feet, calves, knees, legs, hips, abdomen, back, chest, neck, head, and even the muscles in our face, can be visited with our mindful awareness as we shift focus gently throughout the course of the movement.

As our workouts, dances, and hikes may incorporate different kinds of movement, we can choose to place our awareness temporarily on a specific portion, such as a cycle of movement or a series of steps.

After spending some time mindfully centering on a set of sensations, we can switch it up and choose to place awareness on another portion of the movement, such as what’s going on in our lungs and heart. Through deliberately choosing and changing anchors of awareness, we strengthen our ability to focus on portions of body awareness.

Whatever our reasons for exercising mindfully, it helps to remind ourselves from time to time throughout the mindful movement. Moving while consciously thinking to ourselves, “I am moving mindfully because…” is a powerfully anchoring method that boosts motivation and brings our joy to the surface.