Simply Walk

Walking is a complex activity yet one we have become so accustomed to, we often have little conscious engagement in. For many, this is an oversight.

With each step we transfer our full body weight, lose and recover balance, coordinate opposite limbs, adapt to the surface, avoid obstacles and revise direction. Most of this happens without conscious planning.

The previous practices began in relative stillness: standing, sensing the feet, softening the knees, noticing breath, releasing the jaw and widening vision. Walking tests whether that awareness can remain while the body moves naturally.

With this practice, we are not seeking to perfect walking, the placing of the feet or the limb coordination. Excessive monitoring initially can make movement self-conscious and stiff.

Instead, let walking continue to organise itself while you remain present enough to receive it.

Feel one step become the next.

Notice how the ground continually changes beneath you, and how the body adjusts without waiting for conscious analysis.

Choose a safe route that you can walk for five minutes without needing to rush.

Begin at your natural pace and as you would normally observe your surroundings.

For the first minute, notice only the contact of the feet, without looking down:

• heel or forefoot arriving;
• weight passing through;
• the foot leaving the ground.

Then include the transfer of weight from one side to the other.

Notice the arms swinging, the head moving through space and the breath continuing.

Let the environment influence you naturally. Move around obstacles, adjust to other people and change direction when needed.

If attention becomes too controlling, let go of the internal scan and simply look ahead.

During the final minute, include the whole experience at once: body, ground, breath, direction and surroundings.

Finish without stopping abruptly. Let the walk become whatever activity follows.

• Did attention improve the movement or begin to interfere with it?
• Where did you carry unnecessary effort?
• Did you notice your balance felt different at different stages of stepping?
• How did the body adjust to obstacles without conscious instruction?
• Could awareness include both your body and the environment?

Walking depends on the coupling of perception and action: sensory information and movement continuously influence and inform one another.

The body uses proprioceptive, visual, vestibular and tactile information to update balance, direction and step placement. Much of this organisation occurs through the body schema, the largely non-conscious sensorimotor representation that allows skilled action without calculating each joint position.

Conscious attention can reveal aspects of walking that normally remain implicit. However, too much conscious control may disrupt automatic coordination. This is why the practice moves between specific attention and whole-field awareness.

The goal is therefore to reengage in the development and adaptive process that we normally take for granted, but avoiding becoming overly conscious of the process.

Traditional Chinese martial arts often treat stepping as moving the base, or the root.

The practitioner maintains a stable centre of gravity and connection with the ground when one foot lifts. Support transfers through to the stepping leg, the centre moves and the connection with the ground continues or is re-established.

Slow walking and forms train this process deliberately, but the principle belongs equally to ordinary walking. Balance may be maintained, but may also be lost in an ongoing process of reorganisation and recovery.

Standing and walking are therefore not separate practices. Standing develops the quality from which movement begins. Walking tests whether that quality can move adaptably.

Traditional cultivation ultimately seeks this convergence: the organisation found in formal practice becomes part of ordinary movement and daily life.