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Two things you should probably know about me:
I can’t sit still and meditate - my mind just doesn’t stop when my body is at rest.
I’m not a walker. That’s just not something that was ever at the top of my list of “enjoyable things to do”.
And yet, a “walking meditation” is exactly what I swear by right now, four years after accidentally stumbling into it as a way to escape a personal crisis.
Back at the start of 2020, my long-term - and pretty toxic - relationship finally ran it’s course and tensions were high. Yet we were stuck in a small house with the country shutting down around us.
I needed an escape, somewhere to go, something to do, to leave the suffocating confines of my own home.
So, I walked. I walked in the most boring of places, a piece of abandoned land full of shrub and grass, a former landfill that nature was allowed to take over.
I walked and took pictures for no reason other than to DO something with my hands, to focus on something outside of myself, to process my feelings when I struggled to articulate them or write them down.
At first, it was out of necessity - I couldn’t go anywhere else, with lockdown restrictions limiting my movements.
Then, I continued out of choice and habit: it just became something I did, there was certain a comfort in it, and I noticed that it became a way for me to meditate - something that I’d always struggled to do in the past. I could put the camera in front of my face, and focus on the tiny blades of grass or the birds in the sky, I could play and experiment with different shutter speeds and camera movements, and my brain would just stop whirring like an overheated computer, even if for a short while.
Photography and meditation might seem like concepts that couldn’t be further apart, with the former looking outward to the world and the latter looking inward into self.
Yet when practiced in a certain way, photography can become a conduit to a mindfulness and meditation practice for those of us who have trouble sitting cross-legged and trying to quiet our scattered and confused thoughts.
So here is what almost two years of photographic meditations taught me:
Let go of perfection or any expectation of a particular end result: it’s not about creating an award winning image or even a pretty picture, it’s about the process itself.
Cultivate shoshin - beginner’s mind - by having an attitude of openness, eagerness, and lack of preconceptions about what you’re seeing and photographing.
Don’t judge or analyse. Simply be a silent witness to what’s around you. Don’t think “what a beautiful flower, how can I photograph it in the best possible way?” Instead, simply note: “a flower, I see you”. And click the shutter if you feel like it in that moment.
Let your curiosity and your intuition lead you rather than setting out to photograph a specific thing or a scene. Don’t go looking for the picture. Let the photograph find you.
Slow down and pay attention to what’s around you. Rediscover the ordinary and find beauty in it. It’s not about finding something exciting to photograph, it’s about finding a new way to look at familiar and possibly even boring things around you.
And finally, just keep going: even if you’ve walked this path a hundred times, can you experience it afresh? Can you see something you haven’t seen before? Can you appreciate it for what it is?
I CAN meditate (I don't but probably should get back to it) but I also do experience the quieting of the mind when I am photographing things. I've always called it flow. I find it hard to concentrate on anything unless my visual sense is occupied (my mind wanders during podcasts and audio books). Photography also provided me with comfort at difficult times of my life for the same reasons as it did you. Being completely absorbed in something that is a forcing function of presence, is extremely meditative.
Love this.