A variation of Zen Walking Chant.

[Guest guest]

I have had the fortunate opportunity to experience a " Zen Walking

Chant, " if that's what it is formally called. I don't know. Anyway,

and, to me, more important is what I discovered about it and it's

implications for and/or compatibilty with ACT defusion techniques. At

the Zendo I attended, we would have a sheet of paper with a Zen Sutra

written in Japanese and broken down to the one or two syllables of

each word. We would walk in step, one step at a time while chanting

the one or two syllables written of the sutra. So, e.g., step and

chant, next step and next syllable. After doing this twice, I realized

that if I were doing this with english words, I'd be practicing

defusion from whatever it was that the message held written normally.

Since the Zendo practice was in Japanese, it wasn't as impactful as

say, writing out a paragraph of troublesome thoughts etc., and then

breaking that paragraph down into one or two syllables for each word,

i.e. " I am depressed, " would become: " I am de pressed. " So I

experimented. I began writing paragraphs in normal grammatical

structure, then breaking it up as I showed, then walking a step and

syllable at a time, e.g., step and " I " ... step and " am " ... and so on.

What I noticed is that the original message written normally became

foreign while walking - chanting; it no longer even made sense, it be

came just words, then syllables, then just sounds. Then when I re -

read the paragraph written normally, it was less believable and less

troublesome. Well almost always less believable, not always less

troublesome. Sometimes, even, while doing the walking - chanting, I

began laughing. Whether I laughed at myself or the content, I don't

know, I just would sometimes start laughing. Have I created my own

diffusion technique?