Yes, meditation can look like sitting peacefully, all Zen, with your eyes closed.
That kind of meditation used to scare me a little because, quite frankly, I often found it near impossible to sit still. I felt far too busy, too restless, or too compelled to put my energy somewhere else to ever feel as though I could properly “master” it.
But did you know you can walk your way into meditation too?
I know! It was pretty mind-blowing for me to discover this as well.
And now that I understand more about what may actually be happening in the brain while we walk, particularly when we walk in nature, I have been able to incorporate it much more intentionally into my own practice.
And I can genuinely feel the difference.
In fact, you can quite literally walk your way towards a calmer mind, a more regulated state and a healthier brain.
And it’s ridiculously easy to do.
No special equipment.
No perfect meditation room.
No ability to “clear your mind.”
You don’t even have to sit still.
You just need to walk.
And if you can walk somewhere surrounded by nature, even better… because fascinating research is showing us that where you walk matters.
Before I talk about intuition, creativity or noticing signs, I want to say something to all the people who tell me:
“I can’t meditate.”
Maybe you’ve tried sitting cross-legged with your eyes closed.
Maybe someone has told you to “clear your mind”, and within approximately seven seconds you’re thinking about emails, school lunches, a deadline, an argument from 2007 and whether you remembered to put petrol in the car.
Or perhaps your life is simply running at such a pace right now that sitting still feels impossible.
If that is you, I want you to know something.
Meditation does not have to mean sitting still.
One of the most useful practices I’ve discovered during particularly stressful periods of my own life is walking meditation.
When I’ve been sitting at a desk for too long, working intensely, juggling too many things or simply feeling incredibly wound up, sometimes the last thing my body wants me to do is sit down again and close my eyes.
It wants to move.
So I walk…
But there is one important distinction.
Whenever possible, I don’t walk through a shopping centre or along a busy city street.
I walk in nature.
And science is helping us understand why that can feel so different.
Your brain is tired of concentrating.
Think about how much information your brain processes every day.
Emails. Messages. Apps. Headlines. Traffic. Deadlines. Notifications. Screens. People needing things from you.
Even when you don’t consciously realise it, your brain is constantly having to decide:
Pay attention to this.
Ignore that.
Respond to this.
Remember that.
Don’t forget this.
Psychologists refer to this effortful form of concentration as directed attention.
And directed attention isn’t unlimited.
It becomes fatigued.
This is where nature gets really interesting.
Researchers studying Attention Restoration Theory use a beautiful term called soft fascination.
Soft fascination describes the way natural environments can hold our attention gently, without constantly demanding something from us.
Think about it.
A bird flying overhead.
Clouds moving across the sky.
Leaves moving in the breeze.
Sunlight changing through the trees.
Water.
The horizon.
None of these things requires you to solve anything.
You don’t need to respond.
You don’t need to make a decision.
You don’t need to swipe.
You don’t need to reply.
You simply notice.
Your attention is still engaged, but in a completely different way.
Instead of forcing the brain to continually filter information, make decisions and resist distractions, nature appears to allow some of those heavily used attentional systems an opportunity to recover.
And this isn’t simply a lovely theory.
Researchers have actually measured changes in the brain.
In a randomised controlled study involving 92 adults, researchers first mentally fatigued the participants and then randomly assigned them to either a 40-minute walk in nature or a 40-minute walk through an urban environment.
Importantly, the researchers controlled for many of the things that could otherwise explain the difference, including the length of the walk, distance, elevation, walking pace, heart rate, calories burned, temperature and humidity.
In other words, it wasn’t simply that one group exercised more.
The significant difference was where they walked.
And their brains responded differently.
Using EEG, researchers examined electrical brain activity associated with executive attention and mental effort.
After the urban walk, participants showed greater activity associated with demands on the executive-attention system.
After the nature walk, that activity was lower, supporting the idea that the natural environment allowed that attentional system more opportunity to recover.
The nature walkers also reported feeling more restored, and although walking improved mood in both groups, those who walked in nature experienced a greater increase in positive feelings.
Another analysis of the same experiment examined a neural response called error-related negativity, or ERN, which is associated with our ability to monitor behaviour, notice mistakes and exercise executive control.
After the nature walk, this neural marker of executive control improved.
The urban walking group did not show the same improvement.
So when we talk about nature “resting the brain”, we aren’t necessarily just talking about a feeling…
Scientists can actually measure differences in electrical brain activity after people walk in nature.
And broader reviews of nature research have also found potential benefits for areas of cognition including working memory, cognitive flexibility and attentional control.
That blows my mind.
Because it means when you walk through nature, you are not necessarily asking your brain to stop paying attention.
You are changing the way it pays attention.
Instead of:
Respond.
Decide.
Scroll.
Filter.
Answer.
Remember.
Hurry.
Your brain gets to:
Look.
Listen.
Notice.
Wander.
And that may be one of the reasons walking meditation can feel so powerful for people who struggle to sit still.
You don’t necessarily have to force your brain into silence.
Sometimes you can simply give it a different environment in which to operate.
When everything feels like it’s malfunctioning
I also think this is especially important for those of us living ridiculously overstimulated lives.
Sometimes I notice periods where everything seems frantic.
My phone isn’t behaving.
The computer crashes.
Technology seems to be fighting me.
Things break.
Nothing seems to work efficiently.
I’m jumping between twelve different jobs and my brain feels like it has 47 tabs open at once.
Now, I’m not suggesting there is scientific evidence that your malfunctioning phone is the Universe ordering you to go for a walk.
But personally?
I choose to take moments like that as my cue….
Get off the technology.
Go outside.
Put your feet on the earth.
Walk.
Look further than the distance between your face and a screen.
And notice.
Because perhaps sometimes the problem isn’t that we need to try harder.
Perhaps our brains have simply had enough input.
So how do you actually do a walking meditation?
This is the beautiful part.
You don’t need to “empty your mind”.
You don’t need to chant.
You don’t need to achieve some mystical state.
You simply bring your attention out of the noise and back into your body and the world around you.
Feel your feet touching the ground.
Notice the rhythm of your steps.
Notice your breathing without trying to change it.
Feel the temperature of the air on your skin.
Listen for the furthest sound you can hear.
Then the closest.
Look for movement.
A leaf.
A bird.
A cloud.
A branch.
Notice colours.
Notice shapes.
Notice light.
Notice something you ordinarily would have walked straight past.
And here is the important bit:
Don’t photograph it.
Don’t Google it.
Don’t immediately send it to someone.
Don’t turn it into content.
Just look.
Just… be there.
Because that gentle state of noticing, that soft fascination, may be giving your exhausted attention system exactly the space it needs.
And perhaps there is something else happening too.
When the relentless noise of our conscious mind begins to quieten, suddenly there is a little more room.
Room for ideas.
Room for connections.
Room for creativity.
Room to notice what your body is telling you.
And perhaps room for some of those quieter internal signals we often describe as intuition.
That is one of the reasons I think walking in nature can be such a beautiful practice for anyone wanting to strengthen their intuitive awareness.
Not because walking magically gives you intuition.
But because it may help reduce some of the noise that makes intuition difficult to hear…
So if you’ve spent years telling yourself:
“I’m terrible at meditation.”
Maybe you’re not.
Maybe sitting still just isn’t the doorway that works best for you.
Put your shoes on.
Leave your phone in your pocket.
Find some trees, some sky, some water, a park, a bush track, a paddock or somewhere you can see a little further than the next building.
And walk.
Don’t try to achieve anything.
Just notice.
Maybe you don’t need to become better at sitting still.
Maybe you just need to start walking…
Try it for 7 days. Try it once a week. Try it each weekend for ten mins.
Whatever you can achieve at the moment comfortably.. just try it.
Get out into nature, even if it’s a park.. and start walking and start breathing and start noticing the beauty that exists all around.
And when you get back home, make sure you do a little check in with yourself. How are you feeling now? A little calmer? A little more serene?
And if you’re an overachiever you might like to journal for a few minutes about the change in your demeanour…. maybe sketch a bird you saw. Or just simply take a minute to think about the beauty..
When we give ourselves time to still our minds, it makes way for creativity, it makes way for flow, for movement of ideas and solutions and a general state of comfort and ease.
So go get walking!
I’ll see you out there.
xxx