Mindful Walking: An Easier Way to Get the Benefits of Meditation in your Life Thirty Follow Mar 21, 2017 · 5 min read

Research has found that mindfulness meditation reduces stress, treats depression and anxiety as effectively as antidepressant medications, improves sleep and memory, increases patience, eases pain, makes sex more enjoyable, and improves overall well-being. The scientific evidence is overwhelming, mindfulness is one of, if not the best technique for increasing the quality of your life.

But there’s a problem with mindfulness.

Less than 10% of people who start a mindfulness practice continue with it for more than a week. Mindfulness is a great habit to build, anyone could gain tremendous benefits from practicing meditation. But for some reason very few people can maintain the habit.

Why?

Because in today’s society, our minds are constantly racing, thinking, analyzing, and ruminating. The modern world is fast paced and frantic. If there isn’t something we need to do in this moment, there’s ten things we need to worry about that need to be taken care of later in the day.

Sitting down to meditate means putting everything on hold. It means having nothing but your thoughts to keep you company for at least 10 minutes. This is challenging and even stressful because it’s completely antithetical to the modern lifestyle.

To meditate you must learn to do the exact opposite of what we spend all our time doing, we have become so used to being active, to have to be doing something, and to focusing on our racing thoughts and future plans; that taking ten minutes to sit in silence feels uncomfortable.

All of the benefits of mindfulness don’t mean anything if meditation is too stressful to make into a habit.

Fortunately, there’s a solution.

Build the habit of meditation by practicing mindful walking.

A walking meditation will give you all the benefits of mindfulness meditation, but it will be much less difficult to make into a regular habit.

When mindful walking, your goal is the same as with a sitting mindfulness practice, but your body is active, you are doing something. And while practicing a walking meditation, you will engage all of your physical senses much more than with a sitting meditation.

How to Practice Mindful Walking

If there is any point during your day in which you regularly travel via walking, you can start your practice then.

If not, simply set aside 20 minutes to go on a walk around your neighborhood each day.

As you begin walking, notice how your body feels. What does it feel like when your feet touch the ground? How do your arms feel as they move? Your legs?

You can expect thoughts about the past and future to start popping up. This is normal, and to be expected. It’s a common misconception that mindfulness is about getting rid of these thoughts, mindfulness isn’t about silencing your mind, but becoming more aware of its contents.

Whenever thoughts start running through your mind, simply notice them, and become aware of those thoughts from the perspective of an observer.

As you continue walking, pay attention to what you can see. Notice the sky, the clouds, the details of any trees or buildings. Take in the outdoors and focus on the details that you would normally ignore.

Also, become aware of what you hear. Notice your footsteps, birds chirping, cars in the distance, even the sound of your own footsteps. Focus on specific details, hone in on one particular source of sound at a time, this exercises your ability to focus your attention.

Notice anything you smell. Whether it is pleasant or not, take the smell in and be aware of it without judging it as bad or good. And if you do judge the smells, be aware of those judgments.

As you walk, shift your focus through the different senses, and throughout, be observant of any thinking that occurs.

Tips for Implementation

Although mindful walking is less of a leap from modern life than a sitting mindfulness practice, the habit can still be a challenge to develop. Here are a few research-backed strategies to make your practice easier to sustain.

To make something into an effortless habit, it’s helpful to have a trigger that will remind you to do the activity at regular intervals. One strategy is to use an app like google calendar to set a daily reminder at a time in which you will be free to go on a mindful walk.

Another strategy is to practice your mindful walk immediately before or after work every day, and at the same time on days when you don’t have work. This consistency will make the habit substantially easier to maintain because your mind will begin to associate mindful walking with the specific time of day you set aside for your practice.

In his acclaimed book, Power of Habit, Charles Duhigg found that to make something a habit, it’s helpful to experiencea reward once you finish the activity. Don’t hesitate to use this as a morally justified excuse to eat a piece of chocolate at the end of your mindfulness walk!

Start small, oftentimes people don’t follow through on their goals because they put too much pressure on themselves with lofty goals. Psychologist Roy Baumeister found that one of the biggest reasons people fail to complete their goals is because they overestimate their own willpower. Set a goal for just 20 minutes of walking a day (or even less), and if you feel like doing more, than do so, but don’t set your minimum too high. It’s better to start small and build a sustainable habit than to overestimate yourself and burn-out.

And of course, you can create a Thirty commitment, research has found that social leverage is one of, if not the, most powerful human motivators. Don’t hesitate to use it, with Thirty you can create a challenge that your friends will see, if you succeed in the challenge you can share your successes, and if you fail, your friends will know. This popular app has already helped many people with their mindfulness goals, is easy to use, and uses a strategy backed by scientific research.

Comment about your experience with mindful walking or about your Thirty challenge below.

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