How To Find Calm Through Walking
The Science of Happiness
PRX and Greater Good Science Center
4.4 • 1.9K Ratings
🗓️ 5 December 2024
⏱️ 17 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
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Mindful walking isn’t just a stroll—it’s a science-backed way to reduce, improve concentration, and soak in the beauty of your surroundings at the same time.
Meditation has proven benefits, but the style that works best depends on a person's habits and preferences. In this episode of The Science of Happiness, we explore walking meditation, a powerful practice for feeling more centered and grounded. Dan Harris, host of the award-winning 10% Happier podcast, shares how walking meditation helps him manage the residual stress and anxiety from years of war reporting and high-pressure TV anchoring. Then, Dr. Paul Kelly from the University of Edinburgh dives into the science, explaining how walking meditation can reduce stress, sharpen focus, and improve overall well-being.
Practice:
- Acknowledge the presence of your body.
- Acknowledge the thoughts and attitudes your mind is naturally thinking about.
- Acknowledge the nature around you.
- Repeat steps 1-3 in intervals.
Walking Meditation: https://tinyurl.com/29dnmndp
Today’s guests:
DAN HARRIS is a previous TV anchor and war reporter. He is a NYT best selling author with his book 10% Happier, and hosts a podcast by the same name. He’s one of the country’s best known proponents of meditation and he’s made walking meditation a regular practice for years to manage stress and anxiety.
- Listen to The 10% Happier Podcast: https://happierapp.com/podcast
- Follow Dan on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/danharris
- Follow Drew on Twitter: https://x.com/danbharris
DR. PAUL KELLY is a professor from the University of Edinburgh studying mindfulness. His studies focus on how meditation can reduce stress, sharpen focus, and improve overall well-being.
- Learn more about Dr. Kelly: https://tinyurl.com/zv7x9xxh
More episodes like this one:
The Healing Effects of Experiencing Wildlife: https://tinyurl.com/yh238ekp
How To Unwind Doing Mindful Yard Work: https://tinyurl.com/4p7drusk
How to Use Your Body to Relax Your Mind: https://tinyurl.com/yckyft6t
Happiness Break like this one
Walk Your Way to Calm, with Dacher: https://tinyurl.com/mp5cptan
Experience Nature Wherever You Are, with Dacher: https://tinyurl.com/mrutudeh
Find Calm When You Can’t Clear Your Mind, With Lama Rod Owens: https://tinyurl.com/4ce353nu
Tell us about your experiences and struggles with achieving mindfulness. Email us at [email protected] or follow on Instagram @HappinessPod.
Help us share The Science of Happiness! Leave us a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts and share this link with someone who might like the show: https://tinyurl.com/2p9h5aap
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | There's a list of ways you can practice walking meditation. |
| 0:04.8 | You can do this super slow walking where maybe you find 10 yards in your house or outside, |
| 0:11.8 | and you just kind of walk back and forth very slowly. |
| 0:16.4 | If you don't want to go at a slow speed, you can just take a normal walk or take a walk in nature. I do that with |
| 0:24.0 | my wife or child in moments when nobody's speaking. I can just tune into whatever's coming |
| 0:29.1 | through the senses and then every time I get distracted start again. You know, in the airport, instead |
| 0:35.7 | of walking and looking at my phone, which I also do, I can put the phone away and just feel the raw data of the physical sensations of the body moving through space, what's coming in through my eyes and my ears. |
| 0:50.3 | We are moving so often. You know, even if you're in a wheelchair or you're differently abled, we tend to move whatever parts of our body we can move. |
| 0:59.4 | And to create this positive Pavlovian response where the body starts moving and that's just a reminder, oh yeah, wake up. |
| 1:08.6 | We live so much of our lives on automatic pilot. Anything you can do |
| 1:14.3 | to wake up is something you should probably consider doing. |
| 1:27.0 | Welcome to the Science of Happiness. I'm Dacher Keltner. These days, people, like myself, tend to track their daily steps more closely than ever with smart watches that tell you precisely how far you've walked and how many calories you've burned. But what happens when we stop focusing on the number of steps and instead open our eyes and ears |
| 1:46.8 | and mind to the world around us? This week, we're going to focus on something that humans have |
| 1:52.2 | been doing for a very long time, which is meditative walking. Our guest today is my friend Dan Harris. |
| 1:59.9 | You probably know him as the host of the 10% Happier |
| 2:02.8 | podcast. Dan turned to meditation after experiencing a nationally broadcasted panic attack while |
| 2:10.1 | working for Good Morning America. And since that time, he's become one of the country's |
| 2:14.3 | leading exponents of mindfulness and the benefits of meditation. |
| 2:18.9 | He's also written many books about the subject that have taught bestseller lists and have been |
| 2:23.1 | wonderful reads. We'll talk to Dan about his practice of meditative walking. We'll also dive into |
| 2:29.7 | what science says about how this simple practice can do wonders for your body and mind. |
| 2:36.6 | So by walking meditatively, you are more likely to feel relatedness, connectedness to nature, |
... |
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