Walking is good for your health, right? It is a great exercise to keep your body healthy – low impact and cardio if you speed up a bit. But have you thought about how walking can help your mental health? When you walk with the awareness that you can calm your brain and soothe your soul at the same time, your mental health will benefit.
Lets go on a walk together…
Prepare mindfully. While you put on your joggers, fill your water bottle and put on your hat, what are you thinking about? Be mindful of your thoughts and begin to form and intention for your walk. If you are overwhelmed by a situation and your brain is racing you may intend to give your brain a rest from it while you’re walking ( often this allows solutions to arise easily when you go back to it later), so your intention may be ‘I walk with a clear mind’ or ‘I notice all living things’.
Anchor yourself in nature. I walk along a bike track near a creek and I love to immerse myself in the environment. As I enter the bike track there is a tree that seems to embrace me as I walk towards it….. so I go to it and put my hands upon its bark and feel its solidness, my feet on the ground and imagine my breath going down through the tree and my feet into the earth and down the trees roots, deep, deep into the earth. I send my intention along with my breath.
When you do this, you become grounded, aware of your breath and your connection to Mother Earth and your spirit (the you that is inside your body) as you remind yourself of your intention.
Feeling self-conscious? It rarely happens that anyone sees me when I do this. Whether it is that I slip into another dimension or that anyone who passes is to absorbed in what they are thinking, they just don’t see… and if they do I can hope they learn from my way of being.
I can hear you thinking ‘I am in the city. Not much nature here!’ If this is the case, then it is still helpful to find a way of spending some moments doing this. A plant in your garden, a pot plant or a patch of grass or dirt will suffice. Using your imagination and feeling your feet on the ground and imagining a forest around and maybe holding and feeling a wooden object will place you where you need to be.
If you are feeling particularly stressed, I have written “The Building Blocks of Self-Care: what everyone needs to know” to help you with some easy steps towards keeping your stress manageable.
This is the beginning of the journey to have meditative walks… there is more to come! I hope you enjoy your experience and find peace and calm.
Love and Blessings
Betsy