Mindful walking can be an effective way to help calm our minds and emotions, and relieve stress and tension, because in addition to being mindful, we’re also moving around. Just getting up and being a little active can help us pull ourselves out of our heads and connect directly to our experience in the present moment and disengage from doing mode. It also helps relieve any stress or tension or discomfort that’s been building up in our bodies, especially if we’ve been sitting for a while.
Mindful walking is also a great way to practice mindfulness when sitting meditation is difficult due to pain, or feeling too agitated or restless to sit still, or some other reason; and it gives us another way to connect mindfully with our body.
Here are some questions to ask yourself about what your experience doing the mindful walking was like:
Formal mindful walking meditation can be done on its own, like we just did, but it can also be practiced in conjunction with longer sitting meditation, as the walking periods allow you to take a break from sitting while still remaining mindful and maintaining your focus and attention. For example, instead of sitting for an hour straight, you might do a 25-minute period of sitting meditation, followed by five minutes of walking meditation, followed by a second 25-minute period of sitting meditation, and then finishing with another period of walking meditation.
We can also practice mindful walking informally, and just take some time out of our day to go for a mindful walk. When we walk mindfully, we begin by becoming aware of the sensations of our feet as they come into contact with the ground and then lift up as we walk. Then we can start measuring our breath with our steps: breathing in for 2-3 steps (or more), and then breathing out for 2-3 steps, using our breath and footsteps to ground ourselves into the present.
And then once we’ve been walking with our footsteps tied into our breathing for a while and settled our mind down a bit, we can expand our awareness to include our senses, taking in the sights, sounds, smells around us, while still maintaining an awareness of our footsteps and breath in the background.
Walking in this manner is a great way to give ourselves a break, step out of our heads and out of being mode for a while, and spend some time focusing on our senses, rather than our thoughts. And especially if we’re out in nature, this can be a very peaceful and relaxing way to calm our minds and emotions and relieve stress.
But we can walk mindfully wherever we are and whatever we’re doing, just slowing down a little and really paying attention to our walking as we go about our day, becoming mindful of the sensations in our feet and legs as we walk, and using our footsteps to help bring ourselves back to the present moment.