By Jaime Ballard / Women’s Day
During short or prolonged times of stress and anxiety, exercise and meditation practices have been found to help people maintain their mental, as well as physical, health. And while popular forms of meditation and mindfulness — like yoga or tantra — are more likely to be called upon in moments of duress, there’s another form of meditation that can easily be incorporated into every-day life. Mindful walking, a simple approach to mindfulness and meditation, can help you stay in motion while focusing on your body an and the many ways it works to empower you.
As the country enters another month of the COVID-19 pandemic and all that comes with it, consider trying mindful walking to help calm your body, mind, and spirit. Here’s everything you need to know about mindful walking: what it is, how to do it, and what the benefits are.
What is mindful walking?
Walking meditation is a simple approach to mindfulness that’s easy to incorporate into your daily routine. As the name suggests, walking meditation gives you the opportunity to focus on the physical experience of walking.
“Walking meditation is really an opportunity to bring a mindful presence to a moment while you’re in movement,” Diana Shimkus, a mindfulness teacher in Encinitas, California, tells Woman’s Day.
“I believe that walking meditation begins from the very moment that your feet hit the floor in the morning,” she continues. “It’s a real opportunity to literally just ground [and] root ourselves in our own bodies by feeling the feet on the floor. And then in the transition from lying to sitting, and sitting to standing, and then standing to walking, we can just stay in the body, and use each lift, move, and place as an opportunity to stay in embodied presence.” Read more from Women’s Day.
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