3 Ways To Turn Your Daily Walk Into A Spiritual Breakthrough

You're already doing it, but are you making it count?

By Angela Bixby — Written on Feb 28, 2023

Photo: PeopleImages.com - Yuri A / Shutterstock

Mindful walking is an often overlooked and powerful tool. The name may seem confusing at first. After all, it's clearly a mindfulness practice, but can you do that while walking? Yes!

By definition, mindful walking is walking while being aware — aware of your thoughts, your emotions, your senses, and your surroundings.

Everyone sits at a different level of awareness, so meet yourself where you are for this.

Challenge yourself to get a touch more aware through the practice of going on a walk with the intention of focusing differently than you might normally.

When we mindfully walk in nature we increase its benefits. When we relax into walking meditation we are only focusing on the specific task in front of us, and this helps to clear our mind.

Walking mindfully also releases anxiety and stress from our systems in different ways from, say, rigorous exercise. It allows us the grace of being in our bodies and senses, and that naturally pulls focus away from the less productive mental states of anxiety and stress.

Remember, there is no right or wrong approach to mindful walking. It can be done outside or inside in any climate.

Here are three ways to get the most from mindful walking

1. Take note of how your body feels as you walk

The most important part of mindful walking is to pay attention to all of your senses while you are walking.

As you walk mindfully, slow it down a bit. Pay attention to how your feet, legs and body feel as you take each step. Notice how it feels to shift your body from one leg to the other as you walk.

Tune into how your shoulders, spine, back and neck feel as you walk. Once you get the hang of allowing this level of awareness in your body as you are mindfully walking, next move to your sight, smell and hearing senses.

This may mean slowly for some and briskly for others.

You are honoring your awareness and your needs in this practice to include your walking pace.

2. Challenge yourself to see, hear and smell new things

So if you have walked down a street many times and noticed the fronts of the homes — challenge yourself to notice the trees and their details.

If you typically look up, then look down with a fresh awareness and curiosity or vice versa.

What scents and smells are getting your focus as you amble? Consider pausing your mindful walking to include smelling flowering bushes, leaning your nose into a new blossom to detect its scent, or sorting out what might be cooking on your neighbor’s grill as you take your senses on a mindful walk through the neighborhood.

As you mindfully walk, focus on what you are hearing. Are you able to discern three different sounds in your environment?

Are they sounds that you previously ignored? Challenge yourself to hear the birds, the wind, the crickets or the sound of rain falling upon roofs.

3. Set aside stressful or nagging thoughts

One of the many benefits of creating a mindful walking practice is that it provides the opportunity to literally step away from internal stressors. As humans in the 21st century, we all spend too much time in our heads.

When we direct our awareness out of our heads and into this practice of being aware, focusing upon our body and our senses as we walk, we bring calm and stillness to our mind and our soul.

Mindful walking can be helpful as a daily practice or as a tool while you travel, or while working on a deadline, or as another method for problem-solving.

3 Ways To Turn A Simple Daily Task Into A Spiritual Breakthrough

You're already doing it, but are you making it count?

1. Take note of how your body feels as you walk

2. Challenge yourself to see, hear and smell new things

3. Set aside stressful or nagging thoughts