I tried a walk­ing med­i­ta­tion this morning.

I didn’t take the boat to work — I nor­mally take a lit­tle ferry from my end of the har­bour to the City Cen­tre — but instead got out of the door a bit ear­lier than nor­mal so I could walk it and still be in for 9am. I decided I’d walk down to the har­bour­side, where I can stop wor­ry­ing about cross­ing busy roads, and then kick off a fifteen-minute walk­ing meditation.

It was lovely, and quite suc­cess­ful, espe­cially the first half, I’d say.

I often walk along the har­bour­side, but I’m habit­u­ally insu­lated from the world by an iPod, nor­mally play­ing some pod­cast or other. It’s more often techno-fare like Leo Laporte’s shows than any­thing with more spir­i­tual aims, too, though some­times I’ll lis­ten to a Mind­fulist or a Zen­cast episode. But what­ever I’m lis­ten­ing to, it’s a time-shifted piece of some­one else’s world that I’ve vol­un­tar­ily stuffed up my ears with, keep­ing out the real­ity I’m walk­ing through.

And some­times it’s good to get a reminder of what you lose when you do that. Not hav­ing the head­phones in, con­cen­trat­ing on my breath, try­ing to keep my thoughts from spi­ralling out of con­trol, and out of obser­va­tion, I noticed so many extra things.

The sounds, the seag­ull cruis­ing a few inches above the har­bour sur­face, the flow­ers — so many flow­ers! — the early-morning peo­ple, the feel of my feet along the pavement…

It was great to be so present in the world.

One other bonus was that I was tired this morn­ing, and I’m even more tired now. By the time my nor­mal med­i­ta­tion time swings around — 6pm at the ear­li­est, really — I’m going to be com­pletely bushed, and if I were to med­i­tate this evening, I’d just be a droopy-eyed unfo­cused mess.

Instead, walk­ing through the fresh morn­ing air in the bright light, that just wasn’t a problem.

I did drift out of mind­ful­ness here and there, some­times pro­ject­ing into the future, won­der­ing what the weather would be like today, some­times into the past, wor­ry­ing about past actions and deci­sions, things I can’t change. And some­times I was tempted to stop and take a pho­to­graph, though I resisted that until some­time around the thir­teenth minute of the fif­teen, and even then, did it mindfully.

One thing that really struck me, though, was the dif­fer­ence between the first half of my walk, med­i­tat­ing, and the sec­ond half, once my iPhone had buzzed in my pocket to tell me the fif­teen min­utes were up. I don’t know whether that was the key dif­fer­ence, or whether it was sim­ply because there are an awful lot more peo­ple about, and inter­ac­tion with peo­ple, on the sec­ond half of the walk, but I found myself being very judgemental.

By that, I mean there was an almost-constant nar­ra­tive in my head of “God, what’s she wear­ing,” or “Why is that pranny rid­ing his bike so intim­i­dat­ingly behind those peo­ple on the pave­ment,” or any one of tens of moments of imme­di­ate, unin­formed judge­ment and, if I’m hon­est, dislike.

Now, I’m quite often like that. Really, it’s some­thing I’ve noticed a lot of the time when I’m walk­ing around town. I don’t know if it’s morn­ing grumpi­ness, a gen­eral mis­an­thropy, or some com­bi­na­tion of those and other things. And I don’t know whether the med­i­ta­tion was staving it off at all, or whether the first half of my walk was just lack­ing in tar­gets, because it was quieter.

But it’ll be inter­est­ing to do this exper­i­ment a few dif­fer­ent ways — maybe I can med­i­tate for the last half of the walk next time — and it’s fan­tas­tic to add a tool to my med­i­ta­tion tool­box that means I’ve got a good option for ground­ing myself and med­i­tat­ing on the days when I’m a lit­tle more tired, and when I know I’m less likely to want to med­i­tate in the evening.

Have you tried walk­ing med­i­ta­tion? If not, I rec­om­mend it. Mind­ful­ness should be about more than being mind­ful in the per­fect cir­cum­stances, sit­ting in a quiet room with your eyes closed. You should try to carry your mind­ful­ness out into the world with you, and walk­ing med­i­ta­tion is a great way to do that. And it’s good exer­cise, too!