Celebrate with a Walk in a Park!

Taken at the Community Garden

Happy Take a Walk in the Park Day! Celebrate March 30 by getting that derriere upright and moving in the outside air. Outside offers doors and windows to opportunity and insight - benefiting body, mind and spirit.

It doesn’t cost a penny to walk in your own yard or neighborhood. Though it costs a few more cents than usual to drive to a city park, paved walkways and faces met in passing offer safety and social benefits. Fancy shoes and duds are not necessary.

Feeling sluggish and unmotivated? That’s the best time to walk. Increased energy is a welcome by-product and brains appreciate it, too.

Some stress management recommendations make me feel more stressed trying to get it right. Walking actually combats stress instead of creating more, so it’s worth the effort to get up and out. In spite of myself, blood pressure lowers and the blues take a break.

With the simple focus on what my senses perceive along the route, walks in the park can promote mindfulness. Decreasing sensory overload doesn’t have to be a chore.

When mobility is an issue from time to time, opening the window by my chair and turning off the noise makers, or sitting on the porch without a device in hand relaxes my body and mind and gives my spirit a chance to balance.

Our world is distressed - the one right here - as well as the one ‘out there’ and dealing with it all takes a toll. I will think I’m managing, then wham…I’m not. During walks I find words for my prayers, feel the miracle and joy of nature, find my emotional footing and carry on.

“To be admitted to Nature’s hearth costs nothing. None is excluded, but excludes himself. You have only to push aside the curtain.” Henry David Thoreau