A Practice for Fidgeters, Restless Minds, and Anyone Who Hates Sitting Still | Meditation with Sebene Selassie
Episode
13 min
Read time
2 min
Topics
Productivity, Health & Wellness, Leadership
AI-Generated Summary
Key Takeaways
- ✓Walking as a bridge practice: Walking meditation connects formal seated practice to daily life by using an activity most people already do constantly. The technique requires no special setting — just a quiet path and a slower, more deliberate pace than normal walking.
- ✓Three-phase foot awareness: Each step is broken into three distinct sensations — lifting, moving, and placing the foot. Tracking this sequence anchors attention to the body and prevents the mind from drifting, functioning as a concrete anchor equivalent to breath in seated meditation.
- ✓Expanding attention progressively: The practice builds in layers — start with foot sensations, then expand to full-body awareness, then include environmental input like sounds, colors, and air temperature. This graduated expansion prevents overwhelm while training broad, stable attention.
- ✓Thought management during movement: When thoughts arise during walking meditation, the instruction is to acknowledge them without judgment and return to step sensations — identical to the restart technique in seated practice. This reinforces that meditation is the act of returning, not maintaining perfect focus.
What It Covers
Meditation teacher Sebene Selassie guides a walking meditation from Dan Harris's audiobook "Even You Can Meditate," offering a movement-based mindfulness alternative specifically designed for fidgeters and people who struggle with seated practice.
Key Questions Answered
- •Walking as a bridge practice: Walking meditation connects formal seated practice to daily life by using an activity most people already do constantly. The technique requires no special setting — just a quiet path and a slower, more deliberate pace than normal walking.
- •Three-phase foot awareness: Each step is broken into three distinct sensations — lifting, moving, and placing the foot. Tracking this sequence anchors attention to the body and prevents the mind from drifting, functioning as a concrete anchor equivalent to breath in seated meditation.
- •Expanding attention progressively: The practice builds in layers — start with foot sensations, then expand to full-body awareness, then include environmental input like sounds, colors, and air temperature. This graduated expansion prevents overwhelm while training broad, stable attention.
- •Thought management during movement: When thoughts arise during walking meditation, the instruction is to acknowledge them without judgment and return to step sensations — identical to the restart technique in seated practice. This reinforces that meditation is the act of returning, not maintaining perfect focus.
Notable Moment
Selassie closes the practice by inviting gratitude for the body's capacity to move and for the path underfoot — reframing a routine physical act as something worth appreciating rather than taking for granted.
Episode Transcript
This is the Ten Percent Happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hello there. How we doing? I am very excited to share another sneak preview of my new audio book, which is called Even You Can Meditate. It's out right now on Audible. You can grab a copy of the book if you go to audible.com/danharris. I'll put a link in the show notes so you can easily access it. What you're about to hear is a guided walking meditation. Walking meditation is great for a lot of reasons. First, it helps bridge the gap between formal meditation practice and the rest of your life because many of us are walking all the time. Second, if you're somebody who finds seated meditation excruciatingly difficult, if you're a fidgeter, if you're restless, if your mind goes haywire every time you try to sit still. Walking meditation can be a game changer. I do a lot of walking meditation. The basic idea is simple. You walk very slowly and deliberately, pay attention to the sensations of each step, and then every time you get lost, you start again. You will get guided in this practice today by my great friend, Sabine Salassie, my co author on this new audiobook, which again is called Even You Can Meditate. So if you like this guided meditation, you should check out the audiobook. We had a lot of fun making it. We worked hard on it. I think it's great. Also, check this out. Over on my new meditation app, 10% with Dan Harris, we're gonna be running a five day even you can meditate challenge. It will run from March 23 through the twenty seventh. Each day features a different practice from seven a, and these practices are good for both newbies and experienced people. Plus, during the course of the challenge, Seb and I will do two live online events where we will guide a meditation and then take your questions. If you wanna join, all you have to do is download the app and you can do that at danharris.com. Okay. We'll do some walking meditation with Sebenay Salassie right after this. For listeners who are steeped in Buddhism, you will know the term samsara. But samsara is not just a a Buddhist term. It's also the name of a company that is one of our sponsors today. If you have a fleet and you have drivers in your fleet and one of them got in an accident tomorrow, could you prove what actually happened? Without footage, it's much harder. So your insurance rates spike and you're stuck paying for it. That's why so many fleets choose Samsara's AI powered dash cams. Clear video evidence, real time alerts, and coaching tools that help prevent accidents before they happen. But Samsara is more than a dash cam. It's a complete connected operations with GPS tracking, asset visibility, maintenance insights, safety analytics, and compliance tools all in one place. Protect your drivers, cut costs, and …
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“Meditation teacher Sebene Selassie guides a walking meditation from Dan Harris's audiobook "Even You Can Meditate," offering a movement-based mindfulness alternative specifically designed for fidgeters and people who struggle with seated practice.”
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