Planting Your Feet - Resources for Teachers

This page provides a list of exercises and resources that may be helpful for teachers who wish to introduce a walking meditative practice in the context of Subject Matter Knowledge. As you will see from the suggested exercises, meditative walking could be incorporated into a wide variety of subject disciplines to enhance a bodily awareness, as well as supplement existing course material with embodied practices.

As you can see from the google docs embedded in this page, the list of resources is designed to be dynamic and not limited to three three exercises that I have created for this course specifically.

Some of these exercises combine two or more potential subject area disciplines. When implementing these exercises, it's important to cater the lesson to the age level, resources, subject area and skill level of the teacher. Gentle reminder: a teacher should not be afraid to say, "I am just a beginner" and practice alongside their students!

Guided Meditation Script Example: Running Water

Today I am going to present to you a video where you meditate on running water.

Get into a comfortable position, and observe your body feeling more relaxed from head to toe.

When you are sitting, keep your back straight to allow circulation to the brain.

Keep your eyes slightly open, enough to see the video.

This meditation will explore running water

Observe how this running water trickles over the rocks, gently splashing and filling every surface

Be aware of the bubbles in the stream coming together and dissolving. Realize that your thoughts are just like the bubbles flowing, coming together for a short while, then disappearing.

Just like the bubbles, your thoughts form shapes, some big and some small..then eventually they disappear again.

Observe the stream of the running water without getting stuck on the bubbles. Let the bubbles come and go.

Then see how the water itself finds a way to fill the pond even when there are many rocks.

The rocks, like the things that bother you when you meditate, are just minor obstacles. The water fills the space around the rocks. Rocks are no barrier to the water

The water is your true being in the present. Even when there are obstacles, nothing blocks that being.

Now enjoy the sight of the water, the rocks and the bubbles as one single, undivided experience.

When you are finished the meditation after 10 minutes, you can open your eyes wide. Gradually move your body out of the sitting meditation.

Keywords That Students Might Have Used in Their Reflection:

running water metaphors

Exercise 1: Creating a Mindfulness Outdoor Meditation App (MOMA)

Recommended Subject Areas:

Outdoor Education, Media Studies, Language and Communication Studies

Objectives:

Create a multi media object that can be shared online with other students to enhance meditative practices
Appreciate the natural world by focusing on a particular part of it and using an audio/video sample

Materials Needed:

a media device for recording audio/video, such as a camera, cellphone, recorder, notepad, etc. (Students can do this exercise in partners if there is a shortage of media devices)

Procedure :

Students will do silent, mindful walking meditation for the first half hour in a natural area where there is little human noise or influence (e.g. park, beach, wood, garden, stream). This practice helps the student calm their mind and start to appreciate nature around them.
After half an hour, students separate individually or in partners to find a natural space or object that appeals to them. (Preferably the space has some meditative property or quality that can be captured audibly or visually)
Students will then record a 5-6 minute (maximum) sound or video recording of a particular sound or sight that appeals to them.

Post Editing (Classroom/Homework)

After taking their video/audio sample, the students will write a reflection, 1 -2 pages double spaced, where they reflect:

a) What image or sound did you use? Why did you use it?

b) What do you think makes this image or sound "meditative"? Describe qualities that make the sound or image most helpful for meditation (example: leaves have a "hypnotic" swaying quality that helps a person relax; the sound of running water is like the feeling I get when thoughts are witnessed and not held onto, etc.)

Students then craft a guided meditation script where they narrate the experience and quality they would like their listeners/viewers to hear/see/feel when they use their media object. The students get to take their fellow students on a "guided tour" of the meditative object they created.

< (See sample guided meditation excerpt on left)

Exercise 2: Exploring Walking In Contemporary Narratives

Recommended Subject Areas:

Literature, Biography, Environmental Studies

Objectives:

Draw from contemporary literary sources to understand the impact of walking as a personal, philosophical, political commitment, or as a transformative experience
Give students options to transform their embodied walking practice into vows or specific commitments that are personally meaningful

Procedure:

Students select from a course list of literary sources and biographies on the topic of walking or solitary hiking travel. (Note: this lesson can happen in a single semester, since the students will be working with a full-length text in their explorations)
Students will write a 1-2 page reflection each week on what they are learning from this book about the nature, purpose and pedagogies of walking. To guide them in this reflection, the students will be given prompts. Examples of prompts include the following:

Personal Walking Journal

Throughout this course, the students will be keeping a journal of their own meditative walks. At the end of the course, as a major course evaluation, the students will compare the meditative journal with their weekly reflections on the narrative they have chosen related to walking. They will approach this 4-5 page reflection from the following perspectives:

What transformations, if any, do you feel you underwent from the beginning of your walking journal to the end of the course?
Are these transformations similar to/different from the transformations of the narrator you chose?
If you were to re-do your walking exercise with the knowledge you learned from the narrator, how would you re-do it? What would you add/take away/keep the same?

The goal of this final reflection is to get students to think about the methodologies of walking they used to lead to personal insights or discoveries.

"I Walk For" Poster...

Students will finish the course with an interactive exercise, where they share a poster exploring the values and what/who they walked for. (This might be similar to a coat of arms exercise introduced to children in early grades to showcase their favorite activities. Click here for an example).

This exercise will add to the meditative walking experience by introducing the notion of vows. We walk mindfully with the idea that our wholehearted effort can be transferred to the benefit of someone or something we care for.

Here are some recommended books which I found inspirational in my own personal walk. Please follow the doc link below to add your own list of books related to walking!

Reading List

Emerson, Ralph Waldo ( 2009 ) Nature (ebook). Gutenberg Press. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/29433/29433-h/29433-h.htm

Francis, John (2005): Planetwalker: How to Change Your World One Step at a Time. Point Reyes Station, CA: Elephant Mountain Press

Krakauer, Jon (1997). Into the Wild. New York, NY: Villard

Satish, Kumar. (2014). No destination: Autobiography of a pilgrim . Cambridge: Resurgence Books

Strayed, Cheryl (2012). Wild: From lost to found on the Pacific Crest Trail. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

Exploring the Walking Narrative in Literature and Embodied Practice: An Annotated Reading List

Exercise 3: Labyrinth Walking - Embodiment, Design, Pedagogy

Recommended Subject Areas:

Art, philosophy, religious studies, psychology, math, problem solving

Objectives:

Introduce students to a historic overview of labyrinth walking
Practice labyrinth walking
Explore the metaphors of the "labyrinth" through art, images, and contemplating a particular problem

Background

In many spiritual traditions such as Christianity, labyrinth walking is done by focusing on a particular spiritual question (Bumgardner, 2019) and walking mindfully through a maze of stones or other materials. Unlike traditional forms of walking meditation, which rely on a bare awareness of sensation and embodiment, labyrinth walking relies on metaphor to steer practitioners toward their own confusions/conclusions about the particular problem or question they chose. However, like other forms of meditation, labyrinth walking involves practicing receptiveness to finding answers in one's own premeditated experience of the present. Writes Bumgardner:

Open your senses and focus on the process of taking slow and deliberate steps. Bring to mind a prayer or spiritual question to contemplate during the walk to the center.Reaching the center, pause to reflect, pray, and listen for an answer or for deeper revelation. Now begin the return journey. Pray or reflect further. Upon exiting, absorb the experience with continued reflection, prayer, or journaling." (Source: https://www.verywellfit.com/walking-the-labyrinth-3435825)

This exercise involves a combination of physical embodiment of the walking itself and engaging in a particular question, problem or dilemma while walking.

Procedure

Students visit a labyrinth in their area. (In Toronto, Trinity Park, close to Toronto's Eaton Centre, has a labyrinth. See http://www.labyrinthnetwork.ca/toronto-public-labyrinth)
Students choose a particular question that is not logically solvable and ask the question silently, while slowly walking along the labyrinth. (Note: This "problem" need not be a philosophical one: it could be a math problem that a person is stuck on, a learning difficulty with a topic or unit, or even a logistical problem such as having to choose between two discordant paths). Teachers can provide students some extra prep time to come up with the problem before visiting the labyrinth.
Students take note in a reflective journal the following:

Art Based Project:

a) Building a Personal Labyrinth

Labyrinth walking can easily lend itself to arts based reflection, such as drawing one's personal labyrinth. When drawing a labyrinth, students can include photographs or artistic representations at each point in the labyrinth which represents key points in life's journey. For example, a "snag" in the labyrinth could represent the way students feel stuck in some area of their life. Labyrinths can also include "dead ends" (tried and failed routes that felt promising at one time), "false starts", "easy paths" (where the maze seemed smooth), "illusions", "temptations", etc.

Note: Whatever students use to draw their personal labyrinth, encourage them to start with a simple question, problem or challenge that grounds the imagery they paste or graft into the labyrinth. The labyrinth does not need to represent all of a student's life, but can be a small part of it or a little problem they want to symbolically tackle.

b) Building a "Collabyrinth"

I use the term "Collabyrinth" to describe a group-based labyrinth in which team members find ways to collectively represent their working relations and shared dilemmas.

The group members start at four different "quadrants" of the labyrinth and design their own section (similar to a triangular slice of pie), The challenge is to then join the sections into one large labyrinth and make connections between one person's section and another's. For example, one student's snag might be "not enough time to finish my assignments", while another's might be "second language learner with insufficient fluency". The team members might join these parts of the labyrinth by proposing a learning partnership where they help each other manage time and assignments while practicing in a second language.

At the end of the arts based exercise, students can present their labyrinths to the class as a poster and share with others.

Bumgardner, Wendy (2019). Walking a Labyrinth as Spiritual Exercise: https://www.verywellfit.com/walking-the-labyrinth-3435825

Additional Teacher Resources