Image by Aravind kumar
In This Article:
- How walking can become a spiritual journey.
- What role does intention play in transformative walks?
- Why are thresholds symbolic in mindful walking?
- How does walking help release body-image issues?
- What practices can turn a walk into a reflective, healing experience?
Turning a Walk Into a Spiritual Journey
by Michael J. Gelb and Bruce Fertman.
Every walk can be a spiritual journey.
According to entheogenic explorers, to transform a journey into a spiritual journey, we need a “set and setting.” Coined by psychiatrist Norman Zinberg, set and setting refers to a positive intention (set) and an appropriate environment (setting). Every year millions of people choose to walk in sacred places (setting) with a positive purpose in mind (set).
Elizabeth Lesser brought the two together when she fulfilled her dream of walking the Camino Trail to the shrine of St. James in Santiago de Compostela, Spain. For more than a thousand years, pilgrims, including St. Francis of Assisi, have walked this path.
Why did Elizabeth fly across the ocean to walk for fifteen to twenty miles each day? Beyond embracing the challenge of testing her endurance, the stress of the pandemic and political divisiveness led her to feel worn down. She needed to go on a spiritual journey, to be a peregrina, the Spanish word for spiritual pilgrim, “to invite magic back into my heart.”
Each day she and her fellow pilgrims began by reaffirming their set, their intention to contemplate two questions: “What are you walking away from? What are you walking toward?”
She explains, “It’s the set, the intention, that turns a hike into a pilgrimage. I was walking away from the weariness, pessimism, and negativity of the past few years, and I was walking toward a sense of openness and possibility. My intention was to re-enchant my life and to spread that enchantment.”
She adds, “Now back at home I am still a peregrina, still a pilgrim. I am walking a few miles each day, not twenty, but my intention is the same — to infuse my life and the life around me with as much joy, purpose, and magic as I can.”
Turning Any Walk Into a Spiritual Journey
You can turn any walk into a spiritual journey. Like Elizabeth, choose a question, intention, or theme to contemplate as you walk.
Poet and artist William Blake famously wrote, “If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear as it is, Infinite.”
In a slight twist on Blake’s words, let’s consider how we can shift our perception of doors so that we might open ourselves to the infinite in everyday experience.
On a typical day, how many times do you walk through a doorway? Think about your front door, bedroom or bathroom door, office door. In and out, back and forth, day after day. As we move from one activity to another, we cross thresholds. We walk through them.
Walking is the connecting action between all other actions. How might doors help us remember to walk, and live, well?
The moment we cross a threshold, we are given an opportunity. We are about to shift settings. We have a fresh chance to choose our intention.
How do we want to be as we enter this new space, as we begin a new task? Many different spiritual traditions emphasize that every doorway is potentially a portal, an opening, an opportunity for us to be how we want to be.
Where Does the Journey Begin?
More than 2,500 years ago the founder of Taoism, Lao Tzu, wrote that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. That’s one step too late. The journey begins with the intention. It happens at the threshold, in that moment when we stop, decide, and commit to our set, our sacred intention.
In some Christian traditions entrances are marked with a cross or crucifix, and devotees may make the sign of the cross as they enter or depart. Deuteronomy 6:9 commands that the divine message shall be inscribed “upon the doorposts of thy house and on thy gates.” Thus many Jewish homes feature a prayer scroll (known as a mezuzah, the Hebrew word for doorpost) on the side of the main entrance door and on internal doorways as well.
Sage and physician Maimonides explained the purpose: “Whenever one enters or leaves a home with a mezuza on the doorpost, he will be confronted with the declaration of God’s unity... and will be aroused from his... foolish absorption in temporal vanities.”
Every doorpost presents an opportunity to free ourselves from attachment to “temporal vanities” and instead to embrace eternal verities, to reaffirm our purpose:
How do I want to be as I enter this new situation? How do I want to conduct myself? How do I want to treat people?
Here’s a mnemonic acronym to help you with this enlivening practice.
PORTAL:
P: Pause as you stand on the threshold. Intend. Decide. Commit.
O: Open yourself and see the open space before you.
R: Release any unnecessary tension.
T: Transition: Cross the threshold being how you want to be.
A: Awareness: Once in the space, be aware of how you are doing what you are doing as you are doing it.
L: Leave: Consciously. Awake in mind and body.
Every time you walk through a door, you have an opportunity to remember who you are and how you want to be.
Walking Away from Your Body-Image Issues
You are not your body and hairstyle, but your capacity for choosing well. If your choices are beautiful, so too will you be. -- EPICTETUS, Discourses
The false narrative of the cosmetic body is foisted on us by enterprises that depend on our insecurities to drive their sales. The onslaught of media and advertising designed to make us uncomfortable in our bodies is so pervasive that we feel called to offer some help in freeing you from this pernicious narrative.
Let’s begin with a few questions and reflections.
Do you remember when you first began to think about what your body looked like? Can you remember the first thing(s) you did not like about your body? When we ask these questions in our seminars, needless to say, we get lots of responses. Some of the most common include:
I was too skinny / too fat.
I was the shortest / the tallest.
My nose, feet, or head was too big.
My ears stuck out too much.
My skin was the wrong color.
My face was always breaking out.
My eyes were the wrong shape.
I was knock-kneed, pigeon-toed, and so on, ad infinitum.
The desire to be accepted is an evolutionary imperative. For children it can feel like a matter of life and death. When we begin to feel ashamed or unhappy about some aspect of our body we try, if we can, to hide or minimize it.
For example, those who are self-conscious about being too tall may, without knowing it, begin collapsing their chests and slumping down. Those who are self-conscious about being too short often unconsciously arch their lower backs and lift their chests and chins up to make themselves appear taller.
As we mature, we may work through some of our body-image issues psychologically, but these physical patterns often remain embedded in our bodies. What can we do about this?
Invoking the bear and other animals can help a lot. Animals have no idea what their bodies look like, nor do they care. You can explore what that might be like with this thought experiment/meditation we call the “issue-free body.”
The Issue-Free Body
The quest for a world that values the authentic over the artificial is expressed in many ways, in many cultures. The Stoic philosophers emphasized that character and excellence were the essence of beauty, and the Chinese sage Confucius wrote, “I have yet to meet a man as fond of high moral conduct as he is of outward appearances.”
In Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Nights ’ Dream, Helena yearns for love based on inner qualities rather than looks. She says, “Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind.” In Shakespeare’s era and in ours many people have a hard time letting go of their attachment to superficialities, even if they’re not well served by them.
In a classic episode (“The Doodle”) of Seinfeld, George Costanza is disconcerted after he sees what he thinks is a grotesque caricature of himself, drawn on a napkin by Paula, a girl he likes. George enlists Elaine to find out if Paula “really likes” him. Paula shares that she does indeed like George, adding, “Looks aren’t that important to me.”
When Elaine reports back to George, he becomes extremely upset, exclaiming, “Looks aren’t that important to her? I’d rather she hate me and think I was good-looking.”
Slowly, however, it dawns on him that this could be a liberating new kind of relationship that could shift him out of his negative self-image as a “short stocky bald man.”
Imagine This
Imagine being raised in a culture where people do not judge themselves or others based on superficialities. Envision a world where everyone focuses on being rather than appearance, a world that recognizes and emphasizes the value of inner qualities like integrity, character, and kindness.
Imagine growing up in a culture where people could feel the goodness and dignity within them and the goodness and dignity in everyone around them. Imagine what it would be like to release all associations with your appearance and body type and to just be, as a soul, as a human being.
Imagine that you were raised in a culture where no one feels self-righteousness or shame about what their bodies look like or what they can or can’t do. Where no one is defined by their age, race, gender, or sexual orientation. Where no one feels self-righteousness or shame about their marital status or family structure, or around how much or how little money they earn, their level of education, or the kind of work they do.
Imagine this as a good actor would. Act as if you had grown up in this utopian culture, as if this is all you have ever known. If you embrace this vision, maybe you can feel how it may be changing something in your body right now?
Perhaps you feel some resistance to this exercise? Are we unrealistic for even suggesting this utopian possibility? Maybe. But, to paraphrase songwriter John Lennon, You may say we are dreamers, but we are not the only ones. We hope you’ll join us, and the world can walk as one.
Go for a walk after doing this imagination exercise, and see if you feel different from how you usually do. Afterward, do some stream-of-consciousness writing about how it feels to have a body with no issues and to be a human being with no issues.
After doing this for the first time, one of our students wrote, “Tears started flowing immediately.... I felt so much emotion welling up in me. I realized how much of an unnecessary burden I’d been carrying inside me, for my whole life, by trying to make my appearance acceptable.”
Another student commented, “I realized that I usually walk around feeling ashamed. I don’t even know what I am ashamed about, but suddenly I felt unashamed about myself. For the first time in my life, I felt like there was nothing wrong with me. It moved me very deeply.”
Copyright 2024 by Michael J. Gelb and Bruce Fertman.
Reprinted with permission from New World Library.
Article Source:
BOOK: Walking Well
Walking Well: A New Approach for Comfort, Vitality, and Inspiration in Every Step
by Michael J. Gelb and Bruce Fertman.
Walking is good for you. It can regulate weight, improve sleep, elevate mood, transform stress, and boost creativity. Most people want to walk more. But what if the key isn’t just to walk more, but to walk better? Walking Well presents a three-part journey that will guide you to discover more comfort, vitality, and inspiration in every step. Filled with simple, practical guidance from authors with over a hundred years of collective experience in teaching people how to move well, this book not only improves how we walk but reveals how much is possible for us once we know how to walk well.
For more info and/or to order this book, click here. Also available as an Audiobook and a Kindle edition.
About the Authors
Michael J. Gelb is a pioneer in the fields of creative thinking, executive coaching, and innovative leadership. He is a fifth-degree black belt in aikido and a gifted teacher of tai chi and the Alexander Technique. He is also a professional juggler who performed with the Rolling Stones. He is the author of seventeen books — including the international bestseller How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci — which have been translated into 25 languages and sold more than one million copies. More information at MichaelGelb.com and WalkingWell.com.
Bruce Fertman brings sixty years of study as a movement artist and educator to his work, having trained in gymnastics, modern dance, ballet, contact improvisation, the Alexander Technique, tai chi chuan, aikido, chanoyu (Japanese tea ceremony), Argentine tango, and kyudo (Zen archery). For the past thirty years Fertman has taught in Europe, Asia, and the Americas helping people experience the interconnectedness of physical and spiritual life. For more information, go to GraceOfSense.com and WalkingWell.com.
Article Recap:
This article explores how to turn any walk into a spiritual journey by combining intention (set) with mindful environments (setting). Inspired by sacred pilgrimages like the Camino Trail, it emphasizes the power of crossing thresholds consciously and walking with purpose. It also addresses body-image issues, offering transformative practices to release self-judgment and embrace inner qualities. The “PORTAL” method provides a practical guide to enriching each step as a path to spiritual and personal growth.
