The Sunday scaries describe that feeling many of us get the night before embarking on another working week. Even if you love your job, sometimes the disappointment of another weekend zipping past can leave you feeling blue. This is certainly the case for me.
I always try to take a walk on Sunday unless the weather is truly against me. Walking is great exercise and fantastic for mental health, and you can try to enhance the mental benefits with walking yoga or mindful walking.
On a particularly scary Sunday, I found myself looking for something to upgrade my walk a little and came across this walking meditation from the meditation app Headspace. I’ve done a few Headspace meditations before, including a 10-minute meditation for intense days, and found it helpful. I particularly enjoy the voice of Andy Puddicombe, so giving this walking meditation a go was a no-brainer. Here’s what I found.
How to do this four-minute meditation
My experience of this walking meditation
1. It grounded me in my body
Puddicombe begins by drawing the connection between brain and body to your attention. As you walk, you’re encouraged to step out of your mind and into your body, feeling the sensation of movement with each step.
This is a hugely important part of the meditation for me, as I feel like I am almost constantly disconnected from how my body feels in any given moment.
I live with chronic pain and fatigue, so my body can be a difficult place to live, but taking moments to remember that I am my body and my body is me, and to feel everything fully, can be valuable.
While I don’t do this all that often intuitively, meditation and mindfulness have been great tools to help me get there on a manual setting, so to speak.
2. It grounded me in the present
Humans can find it difficult to live in the current moment. We love to ruminate on the past or feel apprehensive about the future, and with all this mental time travel, we rarely bring our minds back to the present. I liked this meditation because Puddicombe reminds the listener to recenter themselves and notice the world around them.
This was also very helpful for me when walking, as it encouraged me to appreciate my beautiful surroundings and enjoy my Sunday afternoon rather than ruining it with thoughts of a stressful week.
3. It quieted my mental chatter
In my experience, acknowledging your mind is too busy is the first step towards mental clarity and breaking away from anxious thoughts.
Puddicombe empathizes with this feeling and then guides the listener through the meditation to a place of calm and quiet. Being led away from my noisy mental chatter is particularly helpful as it allows me to visualize that journey and let those buzzing thoughts go.
4. It’s very short
Despite this, if you listen to it before you head out on your walk, or for the first few minutes it helps to set the tone, reminds you to switch off your mental radio (please stop playing Hall & Oates, I get it), and allows you to settle into a peaceful place while you walk at a comfortable pace.
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