Why Encountering Is The Key To Mindful Nature Walks in 2024
Whether it’s a gorgeous hike in the forest or a simple walk around the block, the great outdoors is the ultimate perspective giver. I’ve written about the benefits of mindful nature walking quite a few times before here at Emma Mills London, and I think encountering is the key to better enjoying your mindful nature walks in 2024.
Curious to learn more? Here’s a simple approach to mindful walking you might enjoy. It’s perfect for those moments when you want to feel calmer and more mindful, but you also want to be active and moving about.
Why Encountering Is The Key To Mindful Nature Walks
Part One:
- Set out for a short nature walk with no agenda of getting fit, or getting somewhere in particular, instead, just feel yourself to be out and about and at large in the world.
- As you stroll along feel the way your feet connect with the ground.
- As the walking continues notice the weight and position of your body as you move.
- Pay attention in a glad and fun way as you notice what the experience of walking is really like
Part Two:
- If you happen to be walking in a park or near some trees do take a moment to pause and encounter the natural landscape.
- You can think of encountering as a very relaxed and open way of being with nature. Whereas your usual thinking mind tends analyses and judges, perhaps thinking about whether or not things are nice, wondering what species or type of tree something is, the quiet self within often likes to just be with the tree. No overthinking, no deciding, just simple quiet togetherness.
- In encountering you acknowledge the beingness of the tree, the simple fact that it is. And in the process your own beingness comes to the surface too.
- You can practice encountering while on your mindful nature walks and you can also just as easily use it while meditating with a houseplant, your favourite pet, or even with your partner.
How To Enjoy Mindful Nature Walking
I took this photograph one morning in early Autumn when the mists light slanting through the trees. It was was really quite breathtaking!
Later that day I read the following passage in a book by William Samuels called ‘A Guide To Awareness and Tranquility’ It speaks so well of this encountering, I just had to share it with you.
“Imagine walking through a forest early on a crisp morning. The air is moist and still. You are alone. Occasional drops of dew fall from the trees above, plummeting through the slanting sunshine and enchanting morning mist. They flash like diamonds for an instant, then patter softly to the leaves below.
The only other movement is yours and the only other sound belongs to the morning. The air is exhilarating. The moment is holy.
Suddenly, unexpectedly a deer bounds across your path, leaps a fallen log, and noisily – but ever so gracefully – disappears among the trees! Your heart pounds. You are thrilled by the suddenness and beauty of the animals leap to anonymity; and then the silence, more silent now returns.
“How beautiful,” you think “how magnificent! How privileged I am to see such a scene and feel such emotion! Let me take a piece of wood and carve into it all the tenderness of the moment. Let me carve all I see and all I feel, all I am thinking and all I have thought. Let me take my knife and shape the wood so others will understand the splendour of this morning. Let me carve it with such exactness and precision that everyone who sees it will hear the bounding deer, see the soft sunlight and smell the sweet freshness of the wild earth.”
I ask you: who can tell such a story with a single piece of wood?
Where is the wood that can contain so much within it?
Who can confine Truth to ten words- or ten million?
Such is the job of anyone who takes it upon themselves to talk about the Truth of things.
Yet, in reality, the simplicity of Truth is less assuming than a single letter of
And so, here we are. The next time you head out for a mindful walk in nature, why not practice encountering and see where it leads you.
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