When I took a Buddhist “Gesture of Awareness” workshop with Charles Genoud last fall, he assigned our group of thirty the following exercise: we were to walk around the large dance studio, randomly mixing directions, gliding around each other, not thinking, not doing. “Just walk,” Mr. Genoud reminded us. We walked and walked around the room, shoulders relaxed, sometimes smiling vaguely at each other. Nothing mattered. We just walked.

Then Mr. Genoud told us to change. We were now to walk with the intention of getting to a specific place. We picked our own destinations (to the windows across the room, to the tall fan, to the curtains in the back). Then we walked to them. Then we picked another place to go and walked there.

“What was the difference between mere walking and walking to get somewhere?” he then asked. Well, the difference was amazing. The perception of time seemed altered. Time suddenly mattered when a destination was involved. When walking to get somewhere, I felt anxiety, not only in me, but in everyone else. It just dropped down like a heavy burden and rested on top of the whole group. This was just an exercise, I kept thinking. Why would walking to get to a specific place be stressful when compared to walking without any aim?

Try it. I still experiment with this and compare the two methods of walking on my early-morning strolls with our dog Chester. When I’m wanting him to quickly do his business so I can get on with my day, I find myself feeling stressed. When I hook into a more pleasant place of just being, trying out a new block we haven’t visited in a long while, it is restful and I enjoy the adventure of being with him. And incredibly, Chester relieves himself just as fast, maybe faster.

Where are you going? Do you have to get there quickly? It is good to walk without intention every day, and find yourself in a new place, without worry. A new way of being might occur to you. If you don’t intentionally walk without intention, you’ll get lost anyway.

This is meditation, by which I mean, this is one way to meditate without sitting in a lotus position and counting your breaths. That’s another destination. And we’ll get to that.