Monday, September 25, 2017

Field Walk (田野步行)

Whether one is practising Thai medicine or Thai magic, field walk in an integral part of the training. 

Field walk is not the modern day version of 'power walk' stuff.

Field walk to a herbalist and a magician is just like the walking meditation in Theravada Buddhism.

For a herbalist, field walk is performed after the morning prayers to the lineage masters and ancestors. The aims for herbalist field walk are first to look for fresh herbs, the second to have 'conversation' with mother nature and the third is to 'discharge' contaminated energy absorbed while treating patients.

For a magician, field walk is also performed after the morning prayer. The aims are to have conversations with the mother nature as well as to discharge negative energies; and also to sharpen his/her 6th senses.

The difference between walking meditation and field walk is that, walking meditation seeks to tame our mind in order to achieve enlightenment. Field walk on the other hand, aims to seek the help of mother nature to purify a practitioner's aura while attaining new knowledge.

Ideally speaking, field walk should be performed in the wilderness such as jungle or mountain as the air is fresh and free from contamination. However, a recreational garden works fine either though you will get a very different result.

As with walking meditation, field walk requires one to settle his/her mind and that he/she must temporarily discard any type of anticipations. It is best that just let the nature take its course and if field walk is done by others, then talking should be kept to minimum.

The method is simple:

When one starts to walk, he/she can imagine that he/she is at the center of an invisible ball. 

As he/she starts to walk, this person can start counting 1-2-3 and walk 3 steps while inhaling with his/her nose. At the same time, he/she can imagine as he/she inhales; external energy enters the ball and the ball started to fit into the person's size.

After the inhalation, the person should hold his breath and his/her visualization and then walk 3 steps while counting 1-2-3.

After holding breath and walked 3 steps, the person shall release his/her breath and walk another 3 steps. And then by holding his/her breath, he/she took another 3 steps.

Simply speaking, the exercise is as follows:

breathe in - hold breath- walk-breathe out-hold breath-walk

After doing this walking exercise for a while, the person shall notice that someone talks to him/her. He/she should just listen to the messages and take note but do not follow any instructions given or the person might be possessed.

The counting of numbers is only for beginers. We can instead think of the words 'how-are-you?' and the effect is the same. `An experience person can coung up to 9 but the main idea is just to relax and enjoy the walk.

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