This walking meditation guided by Kazumi Igusa is an opportunity to slow down and notice the wonders of the natural world in our urban environment.
City life can often seem frenetic, noisy and disconnected from natural beauty. It’s not often that we slow down and take in everything there is to experience. But even in the city, if you pay attention, you can hear the cry of a bird, notice your favorite color in the windows and look at the huge sky.
In this guided meditation, we slow down and take in the beauty of our surroundings, no matter where we are.
A guided walking meditation to notice the beauty around us—even in the city
Read the guided meditation script below, pausing after each paragraph. Or listen to the audio practice.
- Let’s start with three deep breaths.
- As we begin, I want to draw your attention to how you move when you’re walking around town or trying to get from one place to another. How fast are you moving? How do you walk?? What’s your pace? Do you have a destination and a deadline? Do you have a place? Wherever you are, slow it down a bit. If you can afford to walk indeed slow and won’t hold up traffic please. And if you don’t walk and are in a wheelchair, you can slow down. If you really need to be somewhere, try to relax in that space, whatever it is. Slow and steady, but maybe not too slow depending on where you are.
- Draw your attention to how you go – your balance. Are you making a move? Start to notice small changes in the muscles involved. And whatever you think, it’s okay. You just notice where you are in that space right now.
- Then, admitting that our minds sometimes wander and we have there’s a lot going on in our lives, just take a deep breath and pay attention to each step. Begin to settle into a rhythm. Focus on each muscle involved in creating this movement to propel you forward and move the weight. Maybe if you’re in a wheelchair, you use your hands. How are the hands involved? Are you holding something? Maybe a backpack, a bag, or someone’s hand. Focus on being truly present in your physical space, in your physical body. Take a deep breath. As we move through our urban environmentwe begin to notice other things outside ourselves.
- The first thing I want to draw your attention to is the smell around you. Depending on where you are, this can be pleasant or unpleasant. When you inhale, can you identify a certain smell? You may smell a lot at once. You may have noticed a change in smells as you move past different places. And when you smell those smells, notice what you’re thinking. Are you making history? Do you feel like you want to be around a nice smell or maybe you push away trying to avoid a bad smell? If that’s the case, that’s fine. It’s all normal. Simply smell the smell and mark it as pleasant, unpleasant or neutral. See if you can spot pizza, poop, grass, or whatever.
- Then take a deep breath and turn your attention to the sights. What do you see? Start by focusing on the color that brings you joy. If it’s a bright color, you might notice it on candy or chip wrappers, perhaps in advertisements, signs, window displays with lots of flyers. If it’s something more earthy, like green or brown, you may start to notice it in nature—in trees and plants. Just choose your color and start spotting it on your journey. Even when color is present on man-made objects such as clothing, hats, backpacks, signs and the like, it is part of the urban environment. If they are flowers, trees, plants, we simply notice the natural parts of the urban environment. Both are necessary.
- Taking another deep breath, we move on to looking at nature. Starting with animals. And for this, perhaps, we will not focus on people and their pets. Let’s look for animals that exist in this environment without being owned by humans. You can spot lizards depending on where you are in the world, stray cats, squirrels, insects.
- I want to draw your attention to the birds. We call birds indicator species. They tell you if your environment is healthy. So look up. Look around. Listen. You may even need to stop for a moment. when you hear the birds start listening for variations in their calls, perhaps even different species. When you have mockingbirds, sometimes it’s the same bird making a bunch of different calls. Really stop to listen to it as if they are telling you something. If the sound of traffic drowns out some calls, that’s fine. The urban environment is complex. There are both artificial and natural things here. When you see birds, pay attention to their behavior, coloration, and any other details that might jump out. And pay attention to your thoughts when you see or hear birds. You can see or hear seagulls when you are near the coast, rock pigeons also known as doves, finches, sparrows, titmice. See if you can identify any of these species by location or call. Take a deep breath as you notice where the birds are. Perhaps on plants, trees, bushes or grass.
- Those of us who live in urban environments often suffer from plant blindness and not notice the plants. Take a moment to notice the leaves and see if you see any patterns in how these plants grow. Are there flowers? Maybe you can recognize a certain species. Can you name it? Take a deep breath. The experience of being close to plants and animals in nature.
- And as you keep moving, keep noticing your color, new plants, new animals. Notice what you think and when you tell yourself a story or when you ask a lot of questions. And if so, take a deep breath and then focus again on the details of the experience – the shape of the leaves, the color of the feathers. As humans, we cannot survive without the natural parts of our environment. So it is very important for us to be mindful of how our movement around the world affects the nature around us and how the nature around us can affect our experience. Take another deep breath. If there’s a big tree or a squirrel standing there staring at you, or a plant that intrigues you, take a moment to stop.
- Be grateful for your part of this urban environment. Expressing some gratitude that you can even experience it today. Taking a deep breath. Finding your walking rhythm. Slow but steady, or whatever works for you. Continuing to notice your color, plants, animals. And continuing to inhale deeply.
