This week I try walking meditation
Back when I studied law, I’d climb trees. When my head got too frazzled from the insane logic that is torts, I would down pen, walk a few blocks to the bushland near my house, and clamber up a eucalypt. Then I’d sit. Bushwalkers passed beneath me, oblivious to the fully-grown woman suspended out on a limb above. Sometimes it took an hour for my head to clear. Once it did, I’d dismount and head back to my desk.
Law does crazy things to a lot of people; I think I got off rather lightly with this tree-climbing caper, all things considered. In fact, it kind of saved me. It was an appropriately odd release that got me out of my head fug. I’d always come back to earth far more grounded.
Nowadays I mostly walk. This column generally emerges from a walk around the block. Paragraph by paragraph, it unfurls as I lap the ‘hood.
As Nietzsche wrote: “All truly great thoughts are conceived while walking”.
Henry Thoreau once said: “Methinks the moment my legs being to move, my thoughts being to flow”.
Which is not to imply my column is a work of great thoughts. Just that it probably wouldn’t exist at all if I didn’t walk.