At a recent Universal Medicine event on Esoteric Massage, Serge Benhayon presented that many of us don’t ‘walk in joy’. I understood what he meant in theory, but later on I wondered what this meant in practice. Now, my walking has improved one heck of a lot over the last couple of years, in that I have learnt to walk being present with, and connected to, my body and with everything around me. But was I walking in joy? . . .
On my recent walks I have pondered on walking in joy. This is what I have discovered:
- On my first walk after the Universal Medicine course I decided to walk in joy. I realised that I felt very light in my body. My stride was naturally long and my pace naturally brisk – effortlessly so. I could feel the joy of this and boy did I appreciate that I was walking with joy! I felt so at ease with myself and the world, as if the ‘world was my oyster’.
- One morning I also chose to walk in joy and I could feel that I was not doing anything other than walking. I was not thinking anything. I was simply enjoying being with my body as I walked, appreciating the feel of the sand beneath my feet, the patterns the waves were making on the sand and the clear blue sky. This also felt joy-full and gave me a sense of complete freedom, connection and openness (with myself and others).
- One day I noticed my legs felt very heavy and my body felt tired; I realised I was walking in the sadness of a book I had been reading that morning on human rights in Afghanistan. I had not even thought about walking in joy that morning, let alone done it!
- One morning a swallow flew right in front of me and then away up into the sky – I realised that my mind had wandered off to what I had been working on earlier that morning . . . so I pulled it back to my whole body again . . . only later on in the walk to have a Monarch butterfly fly in front of me, when I realised I had wandered off again – thank goodness for the reflection of nature! I understood that I could not be walking in joy if my mind was wandering off, and that the swallow and the butterfly were simply reminding me of this.
- One day I started choosing joy but lost the joy in my walk as I walked too far for my body that day and was very tired when I got home.
So I ask myself – why these differences in the way I walk? Why do I walk in joy one day and not another?
I understand now that the difference is choice. If I simply choose to walk in joy then I do – how simple is that?
I would like to express my huge thanks to, and appreciation of, Serge Benhayon for bringing this ‘walking in joy’ thing to my attention. I continue to bring this awareness to all my walks now: am I walking in joy, or am I walking in sadness, or walking ‘checked out’ (my mind a million miles away from the rest of my body) or in disregard (walking when I am tired)?
And what did I choose at the beginning of my walk, and do I continue to choose joy as I walk, and am I appreciating myself for walking in joy and feeling the joy in others?
This has been very revealing and a huge learning for me.
By Anne Scott, Qualified Yoga Teacher, Fitness Instructor and Personal Trainer, Mediator, accredited Esoteric Healing Practitioner, Auckland, New Zealand
Further Reading:
Joy
Walking in Presence and Without Pain
The Wake of our Walk
574 Comments
Walk in joy and joy is shared with everyone and everything you meet.
Me too and the lightness that is felt with this.
‘I realised I was walking in the sadness of a book I had been reading that morning on human rights in Afghanistan.’ How many times do we take things on in life that is not truly ours where it affects us on either a conscious or unconscious level? Like literally billions of times! This does not mean to say not to care for humanity after all we are all one but we can never truly support another if we join energetically where they are as then they do not get a different reflection.
What a Joy to read this again as it offers so much about being present with what ever we are doing, as conscious presence is always going to bring us Joy-full-ness, and walking and being present is a great way to practice being Consciously-present.
One could say if you swallow to much you get butterflies and when we walk in disconnection and not being present as you have shared Anne, then we are weighed down with the burdens of life so if we don’t bit of more than we chew our walking becomes light hearted and full of joy.
I love the simplicity that it is a choice to walk in joy and it makes me realise that so many things in life are simply a choice and that often we make them complicated and hard when actually they need not be.