Walking Meditation

Like many (all?) of us, there are some things I wish I had figured out a long time ago. But here I am just now getting around to learning new and life-changing habits. Walking, as both a physical and mental exercise, is one of those activities that has taken me what seems like forever to wrap my head around, but it finally is one of those indispensable things in my life. And still, it has taken me years to allow it to become a habit.

I've always liked being outdoors, but in previous lifetimes, my outdoor activities essentially boiled down to work: I have skied (in bounds and back country), backpacked, ice climbed, rock climbed, approach hiked, ran trails, mountain biked, mountain climbed and hiked, all with a destination or mileage in mind, and with the intention of "feeling it" at the end of the day. After having kids and staying at home, life slowed down, a different sort of exhaustion set in, and frankly, little kids make it damn hard to enjoy doing those things in the same way. Additionally, the dog has gotten a lot older; he's no longer able to keep up on longer, more intense outings. I've had to adjust.

As I said, it's taken me years, but I've finally reached a point when going for a simple walk is  fantastic use of my time. After these years of practice, I finally figured out that walking for me is more of a mental activity than a physical one, and thus I value it more and more. I am never plugged in (music, etc., and usually don't even carry my phone), and mostly walk with only the dog because conversation impedes my brain's ability to wander, muse, solve problems and relax. I often find it difficult to relax at home because there are so many tasks needing to be done, but out on a walk with the dog, I can leave all that behind and tackle the big conundrums.

My walking meditations are active, which is different than the more Zen Buddhist approach I've seen, in which a walking a meditation practitioner walks veeery s l o w l y and intentionally, and attempts to empty the mind. The dog and I walk on trails near my home, and my walking meditation practice is much faster (I might as well get some exercise while I'm out there), my mind full of thoughts and ideas. I've solved many of my most distressing problems while out on a walk. (And I'll be honest, I've solved a lot of problems for other people, too, but no matter how badly I sometimes want to, I won't be telling them I've got it all figured out; they need to do that on their own. Maybe they should start walking!)

There's also the obvious enjoyment of noticing and participating in the beautiful weather, the changing seasons, the amazing views where we live, the New Mexico sunshine, and discovering the little things like shadows and the footprints of other animals also out on a walk (bird, bunny, and dog above).

And if anyone needs another reason to walk... here are a few more:

See you soon– out on a walk!

Leaf Greeting

A while ago– I'm embarrassed to say I think it was 3 months ago– I got a card from a cousin who had gotten married. She and her new hubby eloped (to Hawaii, the lucky lovers) so I didn't miss the wedding, but it's taken me till now to get a card of congratulations back to them. It's not much, but since I don't like buying cards, my turn-around time can sometimes be rather slow.

 

And the matching envelope:

Congratulations, Katie and Mark!

 

OD

I drew this little 4-inch card a couple of days ago, thinking it would be a header for Opposite Day, concentrating on the simplicity of just black and white opposing shapes around the initials OD. Seemed pretty straightforward.

Until it wasn't.

As I worked, I realized that Over Dose might be a more applicable sign. Or Over Drive. My idea had been to make it simple looking so that I could complete it fairly quickly (who has the time for these sorts of things? I had other stuff to be working on!). But the more time I spent meditating on other meanings for the letters, the more I realized how backwards my original idea was. The spiraling craziness is not simple; maybe it's a bottomless vortex instead. And since when is drawing something I didn't have time for?

The recognition that I've got too much on my plate means I need to let go of some things, so out the door they go.

My favorite quote right now:




I took this directly from http://eliseblaha.typepad.com/golden/2015/01/weekend-links-48.html because it is beautiful. Her enJOY blog has a lot of great ideas too, although I don't read all the personal stuff about the baby.

Opposite Day

Yesterday was opposite day at our house.

A had proposed it earlier in the week, and kept talking about it as if it were going to happen, so when I woke up yesterday morning, it seemed just natural to go with it. In an odd twist, my husband had to go to work for a deadline and then work on a wonky toilet at the rental house, so it was opposite for him, too, since he was working on a Sunday.

We had decided beforehand that Opposite Day would include things like eating dinner for breakfast and breakfast for dinner, and wearing pajamas all day instead of getting dressed. Thus, pad thai was our breakfast, and we had bacon, eggs, and pancakes for dinner. It's the little things that can thrill a 5-year old and an 8-year old! I feel slovenly if I wear pjs all day, so I did put on clothes, though not until 11 in the morning.

We ordinarily strive for Unplugged Sunday, but yesterday we plugged in, baby! The day before we made a big leap into the 21st century and bought ourselves a streaming Blu-ray player, so we watched a Netflix movie in the middle of the day– Spy Kids, if you're interested, because A is planning to become a spy when she grows up. I also worked on this blog post throughout the day, which meant I didn't have to do it all after the kids went to bed, since on Unplugged Sunday we usually play the honorable parents and keep to either sneakily checking email when the kids aren't around, or occasionally saying we're "working" if we have the computer on (what liars we sometimes are... I should add we actually do try to be unplugged mostly on Sundays).

It was interesting to observe that it seemed more special to watch a movie in the middle of a Sunday because we so rarely do. And I felt myself feeling a little like typing away on the laptop throughout the day was taking away from enjoying and doing all the other unplugged things I could have been doing. It's always good to shake up the routine every once in a while as a reminder that there are many choices we've made that are worth sticking to.

There were, of course, many things we did that weren't opposite, like creating. We often find ourselves making, drawing, painting and building in either my studio or the garage on those Unplugged Sundays. And that's how we spent many hours yesterday, too. As I worked on this blog and did some drawing of my own, I was watching the creativity flow across the studio as the kids made a coral reef out of junk building materials.

One task we had decided on a week ago was that the kids' rooms needed some deep cleaning this weekend. R proposed that since we had been planning to clean, perhaps since it was opposite day, we should not clean. We countered that since the state of their rooms is generally like a post-hurricane disaster, bringing their rooms up to a respectable level of organized cleanliness was what would be opposite of the usual. I was relieved that the cleaning wasn't that bad, either; we've worked hard to not be overstocked with kids' stuff, so picking up the rooms mostly involved putting things back in the bins where they belonged. And vacuuming.

In the end, I surprised myself by enjoying it. We did just enough to satisfy A that we were indeed doing things opposite of the usual, but not so many things that it was a pain for me to participate. We may do it again sometime!