Abstract This paper is a phenomenological investigation into how we, as self-movers, experience ourselves moving our bodies. Through an examination of walking meditation, its purpose is to understand how an activity as mundane as walking can provoke an experience of human freedom. Describing how we move our bodies is surprisingly more difficult than one might imagine. When we look at the commonly accepted way to describe our moment-to-moment movement, we find confused descriptions that are too narrowly conceived to capture our experience of movement. To make matters worse, closer inspection of our experience also reveals that we cannot even locate the mover of our body. Many of these confusions can be cleared up by employing a distinction from phenomenology between reflective and pre-reflective consciousness. As a result of clarifying these issues, new insights and more illuminating descriptions of how we move become possible. These gains in clarity, in turn, provide us with a way to understand how walking can be a portal to experiencing the depths of human freedom.
by