How walking meditation can improve your mental health

While conquering the world’s swimming pools in the late 1990s and the 2000s, Amanda Beard had already included breathing exercises and visualisation techniques in her training.

She was not the type of person to practise meditation, though. She didn’t completely understand it, or she thought of it as something incompatible with her “anxious and fidgety character.”

Several years after the end of her athletic career, she discovered walking meditation. “I put on my earbuds, turned up the music really loud, and just went out for a walk,” Beard says.

Today, the seven-time US Olympic medallist practises walking meditation in nature, around the house, on a plane, or while walking the dog. It’s a daily practise that contributes positively to every aspect of her life, she says.

Here’s what you need to know about walking meditation, including how to do it, the potential benefits, and tips from meditation experts.

Don’t fall for these 10 meditation myths.

Walking meditation is a mindfulness practice that weds the physical benefits of walking with the focused mindfulness of meditation.

Instead of sitting cross-legged, you meditate on the stroll. Vietnamese meditation master Thich Nhat Hanh has poetically defined it as, “printing peace, serenity and happiness on the ground”.

You don’t need equipment or a designated space to start.

Walking meditation is about paying attention to how your body feels and noticing your surroundings — the sky, the trees — while tuning into all of your senses with curiosity rather than judgment.

This means you can meditate on the go in the countryside, in the city, in your backyard, and virtually anywhere.

A simple, 10-minute walking meditation for beginners requires only that you start walking and observe your body while letting yourself blend into the world around you, per a comprehensive 2025 global review published in the All Scientific Journal. Consider what you hear, smell and see. Think about how your feet touch the ground.

Try to fully immerse yourself in these sensations without dwelling on any thoughts (though don’t worry if some drift in) — a simple act with the potential to gradually usher a new kind of awareness into your life.

If you’d like a more formal type of walking meditation, such as watching your breath, you might try slowly inhaling through your nostrils. Then hold your breath for about two seconds and slowly exhale through your mouth for four seconds, or simply observe the way you breathe as you walk.

You can also use apps like Healthy Minds Program, Insight Timer, Smiling Mind, or Headspace.

Try these 10 ways to sneak in meditation into your everyday life.

The science backs it up: a 2018 report in Health Promotion Perspectives found that combining meditation with movement leads to moderate-to-strong reductions in anxiety, depression, and psychological stress, while also boosting cognitive resilience.

“The benefits of this brilliant and easy way of meditation are many, including improved memory, mood and our ability to focus,” Dr. Schramm says. “When we do this over and over again, we train the brain to focus on only one thing at a time and, over time, this increases both our blood flow and actual neuronal changes within our brains.”

And you don’t have to wait long to feel the difference. According to Dr. Schramm, even two weeks of regular meditation can lift your mood as levels of feel-good hormones like dopamine and serotonin rise.

Learn more about what might happen when you start meditating every day.

It is safe to assume walking meditation is a low-risk activity, but this does not mean to practise it recklessly.

“It’s better that you do it somewhere where you don’t have to take care of anything else,” says Tara Stiles, a yoga, movement and wellness expert as well as founder of Stråla Yoga.

It should be a time for breathing, moving, noticing your breath and noticing how you feel as you breathe, according to Stiles.

“It is not advisable that you do it while crossing a busy street or taking care of a small child,” she adds.

And you may find it harder to meditate on the go if you cannot fathom stepping out of the door without your mobile phone in hand. “The fewer distractions, the better,” Stiles says.

Can’t walk today? Try these 12 breathing exercises to help you relax in minutes.

“The magic of meditation is to be able to help you connect with yourself; meditation shouldn’t feel a certain way,” Stiles says.

It’s a common mistake in meditation: People fear a wandering mind.

“A wandering mind is completely normal,” Stiles says. “Even long-term meditators aren’t sitting there never having a thought, but when they have the thought, they choose to guide themselves back to their breath instead of getting frustrated.”

Beard recommends starting with five or 10 minutes of walking meditation, and not worrying about distractions.

Three years after practising walking meditation almost daily, the highly decorated swimmer reports she has become kinder to herself, less judgmental of who she is and the things she does, and more focused.

“And these have overflown into all the different aspects of my life,” she says.

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Source: RD.com