Sustainable Health-- Take a Mindful Hike

By Julie Woodward

Are you looking for easy ways to unwind and relax even the middle of your busy days? Do you find yourself feeling worried about yet another disheartening news cycle or overwhelmed with work or personal stress, and yet uncertain about how you will find the peace and calm you long for?

One of the easiest ways I know to restore myself to feeling centered is to go outside. Yes, that’s all. Just step outside! If I get myself outdoors, within 5-30 minutes I feel my tension shift into calm. Maybe this is true for you, too? Especially during the pandemic, when gyms closed and fears ran high, so many people came to rely on the power of a walk outdoors to restore a sense of balance. More than ever, I value and prioritize the sense of connection with a larger life that I experience, and that we all may experience, when immersed in nature.

Approaching a walk outdoors as a formal meditation practice can provide us with a path to deeper relaxation and peace. A specific meditation practice I enjoy is based on the Japanese art of shinrin-yoku, forest bathing or “taking in the forest atmosphere.” This meditation process involves taking attention to each of our senses in turn: noticing body sensation, what is perceived through the senses of vision, hearing, smell, taste, and touch. I co-lead monthly mindfulness hikes inspired by the forest bathing practice in local and county parks and preserves with a park naturalist; I have observed the transformative power of even a brief mindful walk. I invite you to try this simple six-step practice, described below, when you have 20 minutes to an hour available.

Prepare for your hike. Begin by going outdoors. If you can and you want to, go to a quiet, safe, natural location such as one of our local or county parks or preserves, with natural features—trees, a forest, plants, wildlife, a river, and some degree of quiet from city noise and traffic. Or take a walk on the sidewalk in your neighborhood, or near your work location. This practice may even be done while sitting comfortably outdoors. The idea is to set yourself up so that you may feel free to let your focus be absorbed in your senses, uninterrupted by the need to attend to traffic, crosswalks or your safety, or by a requirement to speak with other people. This is, as much as possible, a silent meditation, with no talking, and your attention focused inward on your experience and outward on what you perceive in nature.

Feel your body sensation. Standing still, feel yourself standing; feel your feet on the ground. Look around you to orient to and take in your surroundings. Invite yourself to shift out of your busy automatic pilot mode (of doing, thinking, fixing) and to shift into being mode. You might envision your hands sweeping off the burdens you carry on your shoulders and setting them off to the side. When you feel ready, begin walking. Just walk and feel yourself walking. Feel the sensation in your feet, your legs, your hips. When you notice that you have started thinking, you are no longer feeling yourself walk, so, just come back, and feel yourself walk. That’s all. Allow your attention to be absorbed in the sensation in your body as you move. Invite a sense of curiosity to your experience. What do you feel beneath your feet? Do you notice the air on your skin? A rhythm to your movement? When you feel ready and have explored sensation, come to a standstill. Notice the quality of your inner experience, your sense of connection to your surroundings. What did you notice as you walked and felt yourself walking? Were you able to focus on body sensation? Did thoughts come up? If so, that is natural. The meditation practice is to notice when thoughts come up, and gently guide attention back to the meditation focus, such as body sensation, vision, hearing, smell, taste, or touch. How is this kind of walking different than walking for transportation in daily life? How might this awareness inform your daily life?

Sense of vision. Next, bring your awareness to your sense of vision. As you continue walking, allow your eyes to receive information from your surroundings; observe colors, qualities of light, patterns, movement. Invite yourself to observe without expectation, with a beginner’s eye and mind. See and know that you are seeing. When you are ready, pause to reflect. What did you notice with your sense of vision? How is this way of seeing different than your usual way of seeing? How might you bring this way of knowing back into your daily life?

Sense of hearing. Bring the focus of your attention to your sense of hearing. Allow yourself to open to receive the sounds that are present. Notice sounds arising, persisting, fading away. Notice sound pitch, pattern, location in background, or foreground. Observe whether you interpret the sounds to be pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. Just walk and notice sound. When you are ready, pause and reflect on the experience of hearing. What did you notice with your sense of hearing? How is this way of hearing different than your usual way of hearing? How might this awareness inform you in your daily life?

Sense of smell and taste. Bring the focus of your attention to what you notice through your sense of smell. What scents do you detect? What does the scent evoke in you? Feel the natural rhythm of your breath. Feel yourself breathing in and breathing out. As you inhale, do you notice scent? Do you sense taste? When you are ready, pause and reflect. What did you notice with your sense of smell? How might this awareness inform you in your daily life?

Sense of touch. Bring your attention to your sense of touch in your fingers and hands. Rub your palms together to stimulate the sensory receptors in your palms. Do you sense temperature, texture? Looking around you, do you notice something in nature you feel drawn to touch? A tree, a rock, the grass, or dirt? What do you notice through your sense of touch? Explore the sensory information available to you through your sense of touch. When you are ready, pause and reflect. What did you notice with your sense of touch? If you touched a tree or the ground, did you feel a sense of aliveness? How is this exploratory, observational sense of touch different than your daily, sometimes more goal-oriented kind of touch? How might this awareness inform you in your daily life?

Reflection and Inquiry: As you come to the end of your meditation hike, letting go of focus on any one sense and notice the overall awareness of your inner experience. What is the quality of your awareness after this practice? What is your sense of connection with yourself? Your sense of connection with life around you after this practice? Remembering back to your state before the hike, what was your state of being then? What is the self-identity expressed in that state? Now, after the meditation, what is your sense of identity once you have relaxed? Know that with each hike you take, or practice you do, you cultivate, choose, and build the neural pathways that create the traits to embody this more relaxed, peaceful identity.

Taking a mindful walk outdoors is more an un-doing than a doing. It can be a release from the demands and multitasking of daily life, providing you with rest—a moment to feel alive. For this practice and for this moment, you have all you need, just being as you are.

Julie Woodward is a social worker, embodiment coach, mindfulness and yoga teacher specializing in nature-based and integrative body-mind approaches to health and wellbeing. A co-founder of Ann Arbor Center for Mindfulness and Mindful City Ann Arbor, Woodward leads meditation sits, meditation and yoga retreats, and co-leads monthly mindfulness hikes through Washtenaw County Parks and Rec. For more information on the hikes and to register, visit parksonline@ewashtenaw.org. Visit Woodward online juliewoodwardmsw.com.

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