Walking meditation gets you present, grounded, rooted, in your body. It brings the energy down your chakras. Today many of us call chakras energy centers. For your energy to flow smoothly through your energy centers you have to be rooted, which means present in your first Energy Center and connected to the earth on an energetic level. A truly flowing first energy center requires being home in your body.
How many of you run from activity to activity like dropping the children off at school, driving to work, picking children up from school, going home, eating and only notice yourself when you get to sit down before you go to sleep. Perhaps you are ill also. You try to manage your day and keep your life in order. You lose touch with yourself because you are so busy attending to the details of your daily existence.
One way to check in to see if you are grounded is to use walking meditation. Through walking meditation you are bringing awareness to each step you take. Gradually, you increase your awareness to how each part of your foot and leg moves and connects in each part of your steps. It's hard not to be present if you are focusing that much attention on each partial movement you make just to walk. Watch though by focusing that much of your attention it may be a little harder to keep your balance. This can change with practice.
Who would have ever thought to put that much emphasis on each slight movement just to walk?
Perhaps an astronaut. Well, an astronaut is just floating around.
Maybe a dancer performing. That's practice of micro-movements. With so much practice a dance move becomes automatic and precise.
A baby learning to walk. A baby pays attention, falls but keeps trying. Sooner or later through the baby’s attempts, like practicing, the baby learns to walk. A baby becomes aware of lifting itself up, making that first uncertain movement, falls, tries again. She then places her foot, lifts up and makes the next movement. When that baby is learning to walk she keeps testing and trying. One day the movements and steps come together and she's walking. Babies are learning to be grounded just like in walking meditation.
Become more grounded, present in the now of each day in each micro-movement of every micro-moment through walking meditation.
