This week in Real Happiness, Sharon introduces the reader to four new forms of mediation: Body Scan Meditation, Walking Meditation, Body Sensation Meditation, and Everyday Activity Meditations. Guess which one I tried?! If you said “Walking Meditation” you’re picking up what I’ve been putting down for the past week.

As an antsy meditater thus far, I was so excited that I was “allowed” to try a more active approach to meditation this week. On Sunday night I gave it a whirl. It was late at night and cold out, so I chose the second floor of my house as my “path”. With the help of Sharon’s guided meditation, I spent 20 minutes focusing on the lifting, moving forward, and putting down of my feet. I added the mantra “lift, move, place” to every movement and…drum roll please…meditation success! Of course my brain wandered a bit because I was so excited to blog about the experience, but I was definitely able to focus for longer periods of time than my typical sitting and breathing meditation. Wooohoooo!

I gave it a second go around tonight on my walk home from work. I was a bit nervous that sounds of the city would be a major distraction, and that the second time around things would be more familiar and therefore easier to stray from, but again…success! So what if I had to look down at my feet the entire 13 blocks to stay focused? The important part is that I was focused.

The only thing that is getting my over-achieving, perfectionist panties in a bunch is the fact that I feel like I’m cheating.  I keep thinking that because this doesn’t feel like real meditating, it doesn’t actually count. Leave it to my ego to get involved.

Tonight I came across the last sentence on page 101: “We can practice meditation in four different postures: sitting, standing, walking, and lying down, and each one is equally “real”, a complete practice in itself”. I don’t have a tattoo, because I never thought there was anything important enough to tarnish this beautiful bod…until tonight…