In this walking meditation, Peter has gone out to Rørbæk Lake, in freezing weather, at dusk.
The exercise is structured so that you can join in, in the most literal sense, i.e. walk around your living room and listen to the recording, or take it outdoors on your mobile phone.
Since it deals with fundamental aspects of breathing, you can also sit or lie down and listen.

In the first half of the meditation, attention is focused on the connection between walking and breathing, on how a natural rhythm of breathing and movement occurs.
There are many important potential benefits of walking with mindfulness. Walking meditation, or Zenwalk as it is also called, is a way, a primary way, in which we can practice taking the relaxed presence we may find on our meditation cushion out into the world.
What is pointed out in this guide is now mainly another aspect: Vitality.
In meditation we need our bodily vitality. The experience of bioenergy flowing in the body is the foundation on which meditative awakening rests. The more life, the more wakefulness.

Here, walking is something special. A special form of movement. Natural, musical. Because we are symmetrically built, because our arms can move in opposite directions and thus balance the movement of the feet, our walk is rhythmic, like music. Where a certain tempo is called andante, that is, walking, strolling.
’'If you just walk, it will go', writes Søren Kirkegaard in his diary. It is this ordinary – and yet, if you give it space, often sensual, simply delightful experience of walking that Peter is talking about and for.

The slightly increased breathing that occurs when we walk brings our breathing to the forefront, so that we can feel in a very direct way that it is vital.
This exercise suggests that we occasionally stop and hold our breath, to feel how just this small delay immediately turns on the nervous system's warning lights.

Attention to the connection between walking and breathing points out one of the fundamental connections between the autonomic nervous system and breathing: The sympathetic nervous system, which regulates the flight-fight-freeze mechanisms, speeds up the heartbeat and breathing when we feel threatened or under pressure.
That is why breath presence, training in maintaining calm and constant breathing even under stress, is a primary tool for what neuropsychologists call 'self-regulation of homeostasis'.
Homeostasis is our ideal psychophysical state, it is the balance between relaxation and alert readiness for action as both the most functional and pleasant way to be in the world.

Self-regulation of homeostasis is: being able to maintain or return to a centered balance from challenging situations.
You can practice this in this 17-minute walk with Peter – in the frosty twilight at Rørbæk Sø.

It is your path and yours alone.
Others can follow you.
But no one can do it for you.

– Rumi