Mindful movement allows us to check in with our bodies and get moving in a way that can help us lower stress, release stagnant energy, and strengthen our mind-body connection. It’s a great way to practice self-care by incorporating both mental and physical well-being. Oftentimes, when we engage in mindful movement to help our body feel better, our mood is uplifted, too.
The principles of mindful movement are the same as any other mindfulness practice. We aim to bring our full attention to the present moment to experience the here and now. We bring our awareness to our movement and focus on our breath or the way our body feels as it moves. When our mind wanders, we bring our attention back to the practice, to our breath, to our body.
Mindful movement helps us nourish our body by stretching, strengthening and toning, or even just by paying attention and bringing awareness to how our body feels. But we can also use movement to elevate our emotional wellness.
When we move our body and adjust the postures in which we hold our body, we also shift the activity of our autonomic nervous system which influences reactions like our heart rate, blood pressure, and fight-or-flight response. This means that mindful movement can give us access to shift our emotions and moods from the outside-in.
Practicing yoga can also increase self-esteem. A study found that working in open and expansive postures can increase “the subjective sense of being energetic, empowered and in control.” Doing open-postured yoga for even two minutes can have an uplifting effect on how we feel. Plus, making time in our day to move our body can increase focus and our ability to coordinate our goals.
Mindful movement can be a great way to switch up your mindfulness practice if you want to try an alternative to seated meditation. It can also be an access point to mindful practice for people who don’t like to sit still. You can bring mindfulness to any workout or walk simply by being with your body as you move. Leave the headphones at home and try to bring your awareness to what you’re doing as you do it. If distracting thoughts arise, redirect your attention to your breath or your body. You might even find that you enjoy your workout more when you bring mindfulness to your practice.
Any activity can work for mindful meditation, and you can find anchors for your attention in the motions: Maybe it’s the point when your right hand enters the water while you swim, or the contact of your feet on the pavement as you run. Weight lifters might use the up-and-down repetition of a barbell. Or, you could stick with the one anchor that is always available to you: your breath. Notice as it quickens or slows, and return to it whenever you find your mind drifting to a thought about that text message you forgot to answer, or the milk you accidentally left on the countertop.
Harmonizing your mind and body is powerful. You’re making strides—figuratively and literally—for your physical and mental health. With that reward potential, a sweaty mindfulness session might be easier to put permanently on the calendar.
Once more, sweep your arms overhead as you breathe in. Exhale and twist to the right, reaching the left arm forward and the right arm backward. Bring both arms down to touch your legs. Inhale and bring your arms all the way up. Repeat for three breaths.
To finish, keep your arms overhead, stretch as high as you can, and breathe into the stretch. Finally, release your arms down to your sides.
There have been some studies looking into whether mindfulness and other meditative movements like those found in yoga, tai chi, and qi gong, can improve sleep quality. According to one review of studies taking a few minutes to settle your mind and body before bed can help you fall asleep faster as well as help you get more restful sleep.
There’s still a need for more high-quality research. One review of 1,049 studies on meditative movement and sleep outcomes found only 14 studies worthy of being included in the review. Of those 14, the results showed that mindful movement interventions led to significantly better sleep quality.
While we wait for the research community to provide more definitive answers, it seems it’s definitely worth giving mindful movement a try if you have trouble sleeping.
A basic walking meditation is pretty simple. All you need to do is notice yourself walking as you walk, making your body sensations the anchor of the meditation. To break out of the autopilot we are often in, you might ask yourself, “How do I know I am walking?” and then check in with your senses.
It also may help to bring awareness to certain aspects of walking. For example, you can bring mindfulness to your body as you notice the sensation of your feet on the ground or the movement of your muscles, especially as you encounter different surfaces beneath you. Notice not just what your legs are doing, but also your arms, torso, spine, and head as you walk. You might be able to detect subtle shifts in your pulse, body temperature, or breathing rate before, during, and after you begin moving. You can also focus on the gentle rocking motion of your weight shifting.
Sometimes in sitting practice we use our breath as our anchor and focus on the point between the in-breath and the out-breath, where there is a moment of stillness. Likewise, in walking practice, we can notice the points of stillness where the right step becomes the left step and the left step becomes the right step.
One simple way to focus your attention is to bring words or phrases to your steps. For one, you can count in rhythm with your steps. Whenever your mind wanders off and you lose count, simply notice where your mind has wandered, and return the count to one again. The key is to do this without judging yourself, and your wandering mind.
It may also help to have something to say along with the movements. You can, for example, say thank you and send gratitude or compassion to your feet and body as you move—a practice from Christopher Germer and Kristin Neff’s program Mindful Self-Compassion. Or, you can quietly or internally repeat reminder phrases to yourself.
You might enjoy repeating the following phrases, suggested by mindfulness teacher Thich Nhat Hanh, with each step:
I have arrived, I am home, in the here, in the now.
Or these phrases, saying for each footstep:
Nowhere to go. Nothing to do. No one to be.
Experiment with any or all of these on your next walk, or come up with your own phrases that resonate for you next time you are out.
This adaptation for the walking meditation is simple, and just involves really tuning in to our five senses as we move through space. As we get into the moment with our senses, we can really savor the precious moments we do have to be outside and moving, and all that is around us. Our senses keep us grounded in the moment while our thoughts drift to the past or future.
As you walk, you can try focusing your awareness on parts of the body, almost like a body scan in motion.
Continue to scan your body as you walk, noting how sensations change over the course of your walk.
Bringing attention to the beauty of our surroundings is another way to bring deliberate awareness to walking, and to actually shift our perception of the world out of the “negativity bias” or inherent pessimism wired into us, toward the positive and beautiful. Various experiments have found that focusing on the beauty around us as we walk tends to have a lasting effect on our mood long after we rest, similar to the way other gratitude and appreciation practices work.
This research is the inspiration for another walking practice: to simply notice the beauty in the world around us as we walk. It may be a tree beginning to blossom, a particularly beautiful shaft of light, a house or car painted a favorite color. On your walk, make a regular practice of noticing one positive thing—something beautiful, something funny, or perhaps even an act of kindness—along the way. Note these to yourself in a journal or share them with family when you return, or share with others online.
You might also, if you take the same route each day, choose to focus on the changes that you encounter. Notice each day as the seasons gradually change, how the sights, sensations and even smells and sounds also change. What’s one new thing that you find, each day on your walk? How about at different times of day, or weekends compared to weekdays?
You can also bring awareness to your own emotional experience of walking. Notice your emotional reactions to everything (and everyone) around you, especially as people and things get close to your personal space. This might bring up small feelings of self-consciousness as you pass others, or a slight pleasure when you step into sunshine, followed by a slight dread as a small hill approaches.
The inverse way to explore our emotions is by noticing how our emotions affect our walking and observations, and vice versa. How does your emotional state change your movement, what you see, or how you respond, depending on whether you are happy or sad, calm or anxious, frustrated or relaxed?
You can even do this on purpose: Change gears and try walking like you are fearful or anxious. Then walk as if loaded down by shame, or as if you are distracted. Try walking confidently after that, and then shifting back into your own rhythm and gait, if you can still find it. Reflect on all of these, noticing where on the spectrum of moods and emotions your regular pace of walking takes you.
You might notice that how you walked affected how you perceived the environment around you. When you walked with sadness, for example, you likely saw less as your eyes were downcast. Or perhaps you noticed that when you walked with confidence, you actually felt more confident, which you probably did if you know about the research of Amy Cuddy and the science of “power poses.”
1. As you begin, walk at a natural pace. Place your hands wherever comfortable: on your belly, behind your back, or at your sides.
2. Now for a few minutes, expand your attention to sounds. Whether you’re indoors, in the woods, or in a city, pay attention to sounds without labeling or naming, or getting caught up in whether you find them pleasant or unpleasant. Notice sounds as nothing more or less than sound.
3. Shift your awareness to your sense of smell. Again, simply notice. Don’t push or force yourself to feel anything at all, just bring attention to the sense of smell, whatever you discover.
4. Now, move to vision: colors and objects and whatever else you see. Patiently coming back each time something grabs your attention, or even if something needs addressing, like avoiding an obstacle. Staying natural, not overly rigid, not daydreaming and drifting, but with sustained awareness.
5. Keep this open awareness of everything around you, wherever you are. Nothing to do, nothing to fix, nothing to change. Fully aware, and walking.
6. In the last moments, come back to awareness of the physical sensations of walking, wherever else your mind found itself throughout the practice. Notice your feet again touching the ground. Notice again the movements in your body with each step.
When you’re ready to end your walking meditation, stand still for a moment again. Pausing, choose a moment to end the practice. As you finish, consider how you might bring this kind of awareness into the rest of your day.
1. Find a lane to practice in so that you can walk back and forth in a place that’s relatively peaceful and in which you will not be disturbed or even observed. The lane doesn’t have to be very long since you’re not going anywhere anyway, just long enough to take 10 or 15 steps or so, then pause. Stand and breathe for as long as you like, then turn and go back in the opposite direction, to the other end of the lane, where you can pause again, stand and breathe. Then, when you’re ready, turn once more, and continue with the walking step by step, moment by moment.
2. You can walk at any speed. We try to be in touch with at least four basic components of each step. There’s the lifting of the foot, moving it, placing it on the ground heel first, and then shifting the weight of the body onto the forward leg as the back heel lifts while the toes of that foot remain touching the floor or the ground.
3. The cycle continues as we now lift the back foot totally off the ground, observe it as it swings forward and lowers, making contact with the ground. Then, our weight shifts onto that foot as the body moves forward. In this way, we walk extremely slowly, just feeling what is involved in walking, moment by moment, and step by step. As for the hands and arms, you can clasp your hands behind your back, or in front of you, or just let them hang at your side. Whatever feels most comfortable and most natural.
4. We can certainly put our mind in our feet and feel them make contact with the floor or the earth, but there’s no need to look down at your feet. They know full well where they are. That is part of our body’s wondrous sense of movement and location. The walking should be slow, but natural. It’s not about walking in a stylized or exaggerated way, it’s merely walking and knowing that you’re walking. You can walk with awareness of the feet, kissing the earth with every step and sensing that the earth is kissing right back.
5. You can sense the air around the body. If there’s a breeze on the skin, you can bring awareness to any and all parts of the soundscape, the bodyscape, the breathscape, the mindscape, the nowscape. All of this is unfolding in any and every moment, and with every step.
6. You can even practice loving-kindness in the walking by evoking one or more people to whom you would like to direct loving-kindness with each step. You could go through your whole family over, and over again, calling to mind one person per step as you walk back and forth, or bring other people to mind, including yourself.
1. Choose a foot to start with. Pick it up, move it through space, and gently place it on the ground, feeling the sensations of each part of this process from heel to toe. So, picking the foot up, making a choice, picking a foot up, lifting it, moving it through space, feeling it touching down from heel to toe.
2. Walk with intention. We’re so used to walking in what we call automatic pilot, basically being tuned out and just letting the body go. You may notice that this feels a little strange to be so intentional about walking. That’s okay. This intention that you’re bringing is a way for you to reconnect with the present moment and what you’re feeling right now.
3. Let yourself notice. Notice as much as you can about the feel of picking your foot up, moving through space, and gently placing it down. I get most of us are so used to walking, when we first bring our attention to it, we might even feel a little wobbly. It’s okay: this is normal, and part of what it feels like to wake up and actively notice the details of what we are doing.
4. Focus your attention. Focus on the feeling of your feet making contact with the ground right now. Can you notice a difference between thinking about your feet and feeling them making contact with the floor or the earth? Can you let yourself experience what it’s like to be grounded and connected as you make a conscious choice to be present for this walk?
5. Feel your surroundings. If you’ve chosen to walk outside, allow yourself to feel the impact of the air on your skin. What do you notice? Is it warm or cool? Is the air damp or dry? Allow yourself to feel it.
6. Notice when thoughts take over. You may notice how quickly your attention is drawn to your thoughts, whether it’s thoughts of your day, list making, maybe you’re running an old conversation or story over and over in your mind. Once you notice your thoughts trying to take over your walk, you may also notice that being lost in thought makes it more difficult to connect with your senses. You probably will notice that you find it harder to hear what’s going on in your environment, harder to smell anything, or taste anything. Thoughts are that powerful. So, when you know the thoughts are pulling you away, just notice that this is what’s happening, smile, and then you can gently and kindly choose to redirect your attention back to your felt senses and even more particularly, back to the feeling of your feet walking. Come back to this experience of the senses and the feet over and over throughout your walk.
7. Let yourself experience your surroundings. What do you notice about the weather? Do you have an opinion about it? What happens if you just experience that weather is here, noticing the qualities of the weather, and how you’re experiencing it on the skin or in the body? What happens when you let yourself notice the sounds around you? What do you notice about the smells around you? Can you experience these sensory qualities as the symphony of the world?
The smell of the world: noticing pungent, acrid, sweet, sour, fresh, earthy. Maybe you can notice sounds as high-pitched, low hums, loud, or soft. How much can you allow yourself to take in the world in the minutest detail as your senses experience what’s here, without adding the layer of judgment on it about how you feel about it? Just for now, see what you’re able to do as you take in the raw data of the world around you—experience it in this morning walk.
8. Pause now and then. Another way you might heighten the sensory experience of this walk is, every once in a while, stop right in your tracks if you’re able and it’s appropriate, and notice in a very specific way what it feels like to be grounded as you feel your feet making contact with the earth or the floor. Maybe take a moment to choose a particular thing to experience through the eyes, focusing on color, shape, texture.
Let your nose have a big sniff in and intentionally smell the air. Redirect your attention to your ears and hear the world right now. Can you hold everything you’re noticing lightly, and just let it be part of your environment while you experience it? You don’t have to judge it, or change it, or do anything about it. Just be here for you right now and then when you’re ready, make a choice to select which foot you’ll begin with and start your walk again.
9. Find your pace. Walking, noticing which foot is moving as you pick it up, move it through space, gently place it down feeling the foot making contact with the earth. Although it might help to begin by practicing going slowly, once you have learned to be present to walking in this new way, there’s no reason you can’t move more quickly. Find whatever pace allows you to stay present while you’re experiencing.
10. Try aimless wandering. You might want to use this morning wake-up walk to take you to work, or any particular destination. But if it feels safe to do so, it can also be wonderful to allow yourself to do an aimless walk. Maybe setting a timer, perhaps 15 minutes, and allowing your feet to take you wherever they want to go, staying present to your ever-changing environment without having a goal as your destination. Noticing what it feels like to reconnect to inner instincts that show up as everything starts to quiet a bit, as you heighten your senses with this morning walk. Noticing over and over as the attention is drawn to other things, particularly thinking.
There are a number of yoga poses that will help you with your mindfulness meditation practice. Here are 10 simple yoga exercises to reduce stress, improve well-being, and get you primed for a sitting meditation session—or anytime.
This sequence emphasizes balance: on your hands, hands and knees, and standing on one leg, as well as when moving the spine in all directions—forward, backward, and sideways. It’s great to do whenever you want to cultivate balance and presence in your body and mind. It takes about five minutes, but feel free to repeat the entire sequence or any section as much as you like. As you move through it, notice when your mind strays, and return to the sensation of the breath or any other physical sensation, such as stretching, quivering, or your muscles tiring. That’s how you’ll know when to push and when to back off. It’s particularly useful to do this sequence before meditation practice as it will create the strength, flexibility, and stamina that will support the physical effort required for sitting.
Many studies have linked yoga with better sleep. Harvard Medical School sleep and circadian health expert professor Sat Bir Singh Khalsa notes that experimental trials have also shown meditative breathing can be a powerful sleep aid.
Khalsa has researched how meditative breathing can help with sleep, insomnia specifically, and he found that it increased sleep time and decreased wake time. The study had its limitations. It used a particular breathing pattern: inhaling for 4 counts, holding for 16, and exhaling for 2, but Khalsa says that he can make a larger recommendation. Slow, mindful breathing at around 3–6 breaths per minute—normal is 15–20—could be effective for falling asleep. “Anything that slows down the breathing rate will help with decreasing arousal,” he says. And since most mindful movement and yoga poses are done with some form of slow breathing in this range, “putting two and two together, it makes sense,” he says.
And as Khalsa adds, there’s no reason to wait for double-blind studies. The fundamentals for any bedtime routine are consistent. One needs to unwind the mind and the body, so the autonomic nervous system is quieted down and the production of stress hormones, like adrenaline and cortisol, decrease. The slowdown also needs a certain time investment. “While there isn’t a magic combination of poses, doing yoga certainly falls into those parameters.” It’s gentle. It’s relaxing. And, most especially, it’s lying down, and “You can’t fall asleep standing up,” Khalsa says.
Bottom line: There’s little downside to trying and only positives to gain.
