Mindful Movements are a series of ten physical exercises introduced into the practice by Thay many years ago. They are often practiced by the community as a group but can also be practised on one’s own at home. Typically, the mindful movements will take place outside after a walking meditation or sometimes indoors during a dharma talk in order to stretch the body.
Each movement should be carried out at least three times before proceeding to the next. Body movements should be flowing and graceful and not too rapid. So you may like to repeat a movement several times in one direction before changing direction. Each movement is coordinated to be in harmony with our breathing. The mindful movements give us a chance to get into deep contact with our body, and cherish the simple fact that we have a body and we are alive. So we do not practice these mindful movements to attain something - like fitness or health - but we practice them to feel happiness, joy and connectedness, right away, while doing them.
Origin According to Thich Nhat Hanh, "The ancestral teacher who first taught these movements was a British educator, sociologist and philosopher by the name of Herbert Spencer. He was quite an unusual philosopher, because he was not so much interested in speaking but in practicing what he spoke about.
"About 60 years ago I learnt about the 10 Mindfulness Movements of Herbert Spencer. After that I embellished them in five ways:
- Making the movements more soft and flowing.
- Adding mindful breathing to the movements
- Making the movements follow successively one upon the other.
- Making them a practice of mindfulness. For Spencer the mindfulness movements were simply physical exercises to promote health.
- Practising the Mindfulness Movements not to have health and happiness in the future but to have happiness here and now, right while we are doing them. With mindfulness happiness is possible. As we stretch our arms upwards to the utmost extent we can see many things. In my case I see most of my peers have died. Those who are still alive are not in good shape, either in wheel chairs or not able to stretch up like that. If we have broken our leg we cannot lift it up. Knowing that we have these good conditions to be able to exercise we feel very happy all the time we are exercising.
"These 10 Mindfulness Movements have been practiced in Plum Village for the past thirty years. In Buddhism we say that Buddhism is made of non-Buddhist elements. If we know how to do it we can make many non-Buddhist practices into Buddhist practices."