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It can take time to develop a taste for the simple pleasure of mindful walking. (See the instructions below, at the end of this article). The key to mindful walking is allowing the attention to rest on the sensations and coordinated rhythm of walking. In the beginning, it’s helpful to practice mindful walking in a structured way.
#MINDFUL WALKING HOW TO#
In a certain sense, to walk mindfully is to relearn how to walk: how to move the body through space in full awareness. Yet once the muscles and proprioceptive system learn how to do this peculiar trick of moving as an upright biped (from a physics perspective, it’s actually quite a feat!), walking becomes a largely unconscious process. Most of us learn how to walk in the first year or two of life.
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It strengthens concentration and focus.In fact, mindful walking confers a pretty wide range of benefits: When we can learn to walk with full awareness, our locomotion becomes a field for soothing our hearts and training our minds to dwell more completely in the present. How often do we miss hearing the birdsong, or seeing a tree in bloom, because we are absorbed in something else? Even when out for a stroll in the park or nature, we can find our attention captured by thoughts, engrossed in conversation, or lost in planning. Our mind is focused on our destination, what we aim to do when we get there, or various other concerns. Most of the time walking is utilitarian: we go from point A to B. – John Muir, The Unpublished Journals of John Muir I only went out for a walk, and finally concluded to stay out till sundown,įor going out, I found, was really going in. the store, work, the bike, car, or public transit. While we may do it less than we used to (evolutionary biologists estimate our ancestors took between 5,000 and 10,000 steps a day!), for most of us, it’s still a primary means of getting around – from one room to another from home to. The steady rhythm of our walking strengthens mindfulness naturally, and reminds our nervous system of a more patient, steadier way of life. It takes time to walk, one foot after the other. Walking mindfully allows us to connect with and receive the richness of the world around us, and grounds us in the rhythm of organic time: day and night, seasons and tides. Modern life in the digital age tends to be fast, and for many, mostly indoors. Mindful walking is another favorite way to bring more awareness to life. I’ve written elsewhere about how we can use our formal seated mindfulness to develop a natural awareness that permeates our days. In order to integrate mindfulness into our lives, it’s helpful to have clear, discrete practices to create this habit of presence. While we can aim to be mindful in all of our daily activities, the project can seem daunting or overwhelming without some stepping stones along the way. Learning to make mindfulness part of our everyday life can deepen and enhance the range of benefits we experience: greater well-being, increased resilience, stronger attention, self-regulation, to name a few.