What is mindfulness walking?
Mindfulness walking is a type of meditation that involves you moving around in nature, rather than sitting with your eyes closed. One of the benefits to mindfulness walking is that in can be incorporated into anywhere you walk. Mindfulness walking is meant to bring you closer to nature as well as your own body. There are different steps to follow when you practice mindfulness walking. Overtime, mindfulness walking will become apart of every walk you go on as it becomes a part of who you are and helps you to connect with your more.
Steps to mindfulness walking
There are different steps to follow to get the full benefits of mindfulness walking. Without following these steps, the benefits will not be taken in.
- Start walking at your own pace. You want your mindfulness walk to be as comfortable as possible, although it is a form of exercise you are also relaxing your mind with a form of meditation.
- Once you have found your pace and rhythm on your walk, focus on the sounds you can hear. This part is where your mindfulness begins. Listening to the sounds of nature brings you to a calmer state. Attempt to listen out for 5 things you can hear around you. This can be sounds of birds calling to the trees blowing in the breeze, even the water in lakes or canals.
- Step three would be to shift your awareness to your sense of smell. Look out for the thing you can smell, this can be the smell of animals, the smell of flowers and trees or smells in the distance like food shops. Opening up your sense of smell and aiming it at your surroundings teaches you to connect with your body better.
- Move on to what you can see after. This can be all the different types of flowers, trees or even birds and other animals you can find in nature. Surrounding yourself with the wildlife around you or wild plants brings you inner peace and helps to relax you. Keep an open awareness around you, as you will begin to discover something new about either the world you live in, or something about you.
- In the last moments of your walk, you should move your attention to something you can touch. You can feel the flowers round you, touch trees or even attempt to ground yourself within the earth. Focusing on all the different textures you can feel brings you to a calmer state.
What is grounding?
Grounding yourself is important. To ground yourself, you are getting rid of the electrodes in your body and help you to connect you to the earth. To ground yourself is beneficial and has positive effects. Grounding yourself reduces stress and pain, improves your blood flow, energy and sleep, reduces inflammation. It also promotes the healing of wounds. It also improves overall wellbeing.
What are the benefits to mindfulness walking?
There are many benefits involved in mindfulness walking, but the top ones include
- Reduces stress. Practicing mindfulness walking helps you to lower your stress levels. Regular exercise pumps the body with the endorphins’ hormone. Endorphins are a feel-good hormone, the more you exercise, the more of the hormone you release, and you feel better.
- Improves your mood. Mindfulness walking increases your happy mood, being out in nature reduces your stress related hormones, this makes you feel happier and calmer. Walking in the morning or evening is a good idea as you are closer to nature and there is less noise and air pollution.
- Reduces fatigue. The feeling of being tired comes from having a ‘brain fog’. Brain fog symptoms can be reduced by mindfulness walking, improving your ability to concentrate and make decisions.
- Strengthens willpower. As you learn how to connect with your body, your willpower will increase. You learn what you do due to lack of willpower and how to stop it.
- Connects you with your body. Being able to connect better with your body gives you better understanding of your physical and emotional state. Mindfulness walking can teach you to unwind and understand your body.
- Improves your quality of sleep. Any exercise can increase your quality of sleep, but with mindfulness walking you become calmer. It calms your mind and body, which promotes better sleep.
Mindfulness walking vs meditation
This type of walking can be done anywhere outside at any time. Although it is best to find somewhere quieter, it can be done in louder and busier environments.
Meditation on the other hand has many limits. You are limited to certain levels of noise and also have movement and position restrictions.
In mindfulness walking, you look at the world around you and find relaxation in the world you live in to understand your body better.
With meditation, you sit down with your eye closed to find your relaxation. Some find meditation to be very difficult at first.
On the other hand, mindfulness walking and meditation have some similarities. Both require you to practice different breathing techniques and both have the same outcome. They give you a calmer mind, improve your overall health and they both teach you about your body.
Mindfulness walking and your health
Anyone can practice mindfulness walking as it is beneficial to all, but it can also have significant benefits to those with mental health illnesses. Mindfulness walking can help combat symptoms of depression, anxiety, insomnia, low self-esteem. Going on a mindfulness walk can give you a more positive outlook on yourself and life around you, sometimes it can even give you a break from the chaos of life. Your sleep quality is also improved by mindfulness walking which can also make you feel happier.
Mindfulness walking can also improve your physical health. Although this type of exercise is not strenuous, it can help lower the risks of heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes, cancers and a healthy weight. Overall health improvements also lower the risk of anxiety and depression taking over, and you release more of the ‘happy hormone’ the more you exercise.