Fox Walking

Fox-walking.

The first time I heard this phrase, I was intrigued, as you may imagine given the name of this blog.  I was reading Tom Cowan's blog, Riverdrum, where he mentions it.  This is what he has to say:

"Fox-walking is a term for stalking in which you move extremely slow, I repeat extremely slow. You put your foot down on its outer edge and roll it over onto the ball of your foot, and lower your heel. You cannot walk fast doing this. This is more extreme than slow-motion scenes in movies. It will take perhaps five times as long to go wherever you're going to compare to your usual pace. But it is truly ecstatic. You're hardly moving so you feel like just another thing in the forest. Birds don't see you coming and fly away. Chipmunks don't bat an eye. And you notice everything. You see everything partly because you're spending so much time at each step you take, but also because you don't have to look down at the ground. When you Fox-walk, your foot feels the roots or rocks or dips on the earth, and you adjust your step accordingly. Fox-walking frees you up to keep your attention on the 180° scene in front of you. You can spend a lot of time looking at what ever you see."

So, of course, I had to give it a go. What I immediately noticed was that I am not nearly the ninja I thought I was when I was younger.  Eventually, once I figured out that I needed to open myself so that energy flowed into me rather than concentrating so much on noticing as much as I could that I was pumping energy out of me, the animals and birds no longer flew from my presence.

Once I became calm and open to the energies and consciousnesses around me, I immediately became "bigger".  That familiar connection and oneness, that I was formerly only used to feeling in meditative and sitting trance states, rushed into me more forcefully than I had ever previously experienced.  I began to make this as regular a practice as I could from then on, and I highly recommend everyone try it.

The Meditation of the Senses and the Drum

One of the meditation techniques I am fond of involves opening one's senses and maintaining awareness of all the stimuli coming into your senses all at once.

Typically, I will first close my eyes and begin by rhythmically breathing. I usually do not count my breaths nor do I try to time my breaths to a count, as in the four fold breath with which one may be familiar. I simply breath at a moderately slow pace and try to keep it as even as possible, just becoming one with the breath as much as possible so that it is the only thing in my awareness.

Then I will shift my awareness to my skin, and to all the sensations that my skin is experiencing, from the wind to my clothing to the surface I am sitting on or the ground under my feet. After I feel all of these sensations firmly, I will bring in everything I am hearing, then also everything I might be tasting and smelling, and finally I will open my eyes and try to keep everything I am seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling and feeling in my awareness all at once.

This method has the effect of making me presently aware of my connection to all things, and often I will experience a "rushing" of myself out into and through all of creation, and a rushing in of creation into myself, like the waves of the trackless sea, and I am able to experience in that moment a oneness that all things share.

Last night, I tried out my new drum for the first time, a Remo 16 inch buffalo drum. My purpose was simply to "get to know" the drum, to hear its voice and feel its vibrations, and how it acts and reacts to being played in different ways. I did not expect such a strong experience, as I hadn't even cleansed it.

I played first with the light on. I simply wanted to get used to the drum, and it was very enjoyable to play. Next, I turned off the light and played a simple 4/4 time beat over and over, one-two-three-four, one-two-three-four, at about 4 beats per second.

I concentrated on merging with the rhythm so that nothing existed but the rhythm. Before long, I noticed the harmonics that were created by playing this rhythm at this speed, like a didgeridoo constantly droning. After about 15 minutes of drumming while maintaining awareness only of the sound of the drum, I beat out a faster tempo for a few seconds and then stopped.

What I noticed immediately was that the trance and feeling of oneness, which I try to achieve through the meditation of the senses that I outlined above, was very clear and strongly present. I could not believe how strongly I could feel it. It had been rather effortless.