by Renee Lindstrom, founder of Inside Awareness Center for Integrative Somatic Learning

In the fall of 2025, a group of Buddhist Monks quietly began walking across the United States with the intention to shine a light on a pattern of mindfulness for peace. They called this action, Walking for Peace.

This Peace Walk is gaining momentum, and people of all races, ages and health are responding. The Monk motivating this action, Venerable Bhikkhu Pannakara, began planning it two years beforehand. He has stated he was inspired during the experience of providing families in Fort Worth, Texas, with meals each week during COVID and internationally through his centers supporting Countries needing disaster relief. He longed to take inspired action to bring peace following a pattern that has been used longer than anyone currently living on the planet. This mindfulness walk is a focused trekking pattern that potentially began when walking was the only mode of transportation. Monks trekking on a mindfulness walk is not a common sight in the United States, and this is the first time it has been undertaken.

This Peace Walk is running parallel to the warmaking currently unfolding through the influence of the current leadership in the United States. If a war is initiated by the United States, the world will be affected. It is two opposing energies. War and Peace. As a practitioner of balance, these two opposing forces would be what I classify as counterbalance!

In one of the Venerable Monk’s discourses, he mentioned that the energies created by thoughts become the environmental reality of the global experience. He suggested he was motivated to walk to bring awareness to the benefits of mindfulness. It begins with a mindful practice of letting go of thoughts. Both sitting meditation and walking meditation are strategies for practicing mindfulness.

Leadership through Mindfulness is the opposite of that of Authority

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Mindfulness leadership begins with alignment to core values and a quiet mind, which increases the range of connected function through the body, mind and emotions. This pattern creates clarity beyond limiting beliefs and chaotic reactions to environmental stimuli. It promotes empathy for people, places and things based upon value judgments.

Authoritarian leadership projects outwardly on strategies for accomplishment that is aligned with thinking. It’s aimed towards the future, and the orientation is the past. There is no focus on the present due to the dominant thinking in the mind. This pattern is based upon the social conditioning of right and wrong thinking and evaluative interpretations. These interpretations include moral judgments that block empathy.

Mistaking the Mindfulness Leadership qualities of inner connectedness, openness, kindness and empathy for weakness

This example of the Venerable Monks walking for peace dispels the concept that the qualities of inner connectedness, openness, kindness and empathy are weaknesses. The outpouring of support and attraction for people of all races, ages and demographic categories who gather with the Monks suggests a strength beyond aggression. The superpower of this energy is the hopefulness it brings to the collective masses that overturns experiences of separation and the attitudes of us over them. It is a grassroots movement that is modelling qualities missing in humanity in the moment. In fact, this grassroots movement is demonstrating a strength that hasn’t been experienced in the United States before. It can’t be compared to previous movements as it lacks the comparative component of us versus them and the attitude of fighting for justice. Rather, the focus is intention through personal action in the moment to create future outcomes.

About the Author

Renee Lindstrom has been a practitioner of mindfulness meditation for 30 years. Through mindfulness meditation, she discovered the art of feng shui and has adapted it to a Western mind for integrating a lifestyle that is relevant in Western social and cultural conditioning. Both the mindfulness meditation practice and lifestyle integration led to a 25-year practice of communication that began with the basic models of Nonviolent Communication founded by Dr. Marshall Rosenberg. The integration of the communication model shifted significantly with the inclusion of the study and practice of the Feldenkrais Method of Somatic Education. This study and practice began in ’04, with graduation in ’07. Since graduating and practicing as a teacher, mentor and functional integration practitioner, she has been integrating the models into techniques with a focus on mindfulness and intention. The results are doable behaviour patterns for learning and retraining that incorporate mindfulness for shifting socially conditioned learned behaviours. The focus of learning is on behaviour, so it encompasses the interconnected functions in processing movement, speaking, feeling and transitions in the environment. This combination and focused attention on retraining and learning in these areas motivated the development of an interactive life area template for life that initiates living in a pattern of mindfulness through interactions and interrelating. For her, it is the next steps of living mindfully in action. Renee’s focus is not limited to a niche market, as this learning system for life is not restricted to age, demographics or systems. As a learning focus, it is relevant in every aspect of functional needs through interactive alignment abilities for inner processing of environmental stimuli and responding through the physical, mental, and emotional in connection with one’s life areas. These include: Knowledge, Career, Community, Past, Health, Future, Wealth, Fame and Relationships

Learn more on Peace Walk –https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walk_for_Peace

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