Maybe it's stress and anxiety, maybe it's prolonged periods of looking down at our devices. Regardless of the reason, many of us have tense neck and shoulders. With sustained and consistent practice, mindfulness can act as a preventative tool, cueing you to adjust your posture and to manage your stress better. If you add this to the simple movements in today's practice, you can also awaken these areas in a way that may not have been possible before.

As beings with eyes positioned to see forward and minds conditioned to think ahead, we often forget about the back of our body. As a result, once we start practicing mindfulness, we don’t realize we often focus on the front of our body when we tune in to our breath or physical sensations. This mindfulness practice, which includes movement, aims to balance things out by enlivening this area that we so often ignore as well as to strengthen the muscles in our back.

Walking is something most of us get to do on a daily basis, whether we're walking to our car, from one place to another, or simply from our bedroom to the bathroom in the morning. During these times, however, we are often lost in planning the next thing we have to do, rehashing what just happened, fantasizing about something, or as mentioned in yesterday's session, jumping into the information stream. In this 10-minute meditation (with ending bell), you'll be guided through a formal practice of walking meditation. Afterwards, you will be prepared to try to integrate this knowledge during non-formal opportunities of walking.