Be with Nature: Mindful Walking, Strolling, or Hiking 

This month’s practice invites you to focus on being with nature while mindfully walking, strolling, or hiking:

Do your best to regularly find a place outdoors where you can connect with the earth, whether it’s in an open meadow, a city park or playground, alongside a quiet stream, on a windy lane through a farmer’s field, on a long stretch of sandy beach, on a walk in your neighborhood or in your backyard. Take mindful walks or leisurely strolls and pause frequently to notice the natural environment that surrounds you. If possible, leave your phone and any electronics behind. 

As needed, please know you may also do this exercise while seated outdoors, or indoors while looking out an open window to a nearby tree or landscape.

• Mark Coleman, meditation teacher, author, psychologist and founder of Awake in the Wild, encourages beginning a mindful walk by simply standing and noticing what it feels like to be in nature. Without judgment, he suggests noticing any tendencies you may have to want to distract yourself with your phone, music, thinking, or planning, and instead, just experience the many elements of nature, without an agenda or distractions.
• Then he suggests you go a bit deeper. Using all five senses, mindfully engage with the world around you. Spend time opening up to and receiving the unique sounds in your environment. When you are ready, expand your mindful exploration to include smells and aromas. Then explore what it’s like to absorb this natural setting with your eyes – not looking for anything in particular, just allowing whatever you see to touch you, letting yourself become engaged with whatever draws your attention. Whenever you can, he also suggests taking off your socks and shoes and feeling the earth beneath your feet, feeling the weight of your body as it releases into the earth and changes a bit with each step.
• Perhaps most importantly, make the walk your own by bringing a sense of open curiosity and playfulness to your time in nature.
• Before you conclude your walk, take some time to reflect on what it feels like to be in nature with this quality of mindful attention. Mark Coleman suggests:“Feel into the fact that you are a part of this living, breathing ecosystem, even if you can only sense this truth for moments at a time. Reflect how with each breath, you are intimately connecting to the photosynthesizing plants, leaves and grasses all around you. Be mindful of a simple joy or sense of aliveness that may come with this intimate contact. Notice if you can hold your fears and anxieties with a bit more tenderness, a bit more spaciousness of mind. See if Nature can help you to heal.”