Yoga and walking

 

I've practised yoga sporadically for years, and regularly for the last few years; and I'm aware I can be a bit of an annoying yoga evangelist. Bear with me though. Breathing is foundational to your yoga practice, particularly common pranayama, regular, deep, in and out through your nose, it under pins everything. I've found developing breath work beneficial way beyond my yoga practice; so much so that most of the time conscious breathing has become my default. It's calming affects have even transformed my walking experience, turning our forest walks into almost moving meditations, nullify the perpetual mental static of my over thinking mind, allowing me more bandwidth to take in the surrounding environmental stimulus and therefore facilitating a deeper connection to the natural world. I recommend everyone has a go at conscious breathing, it's f*cking magical.

misty hill

The mist muffles sound and shortens vistas, it's easy to imagine you're further from the hustle and bustle than you are, walking in some wilderness. I like the quality of the light and feel of mornings like this.

Footwear

A good learning method if you're looking to hone your skills in relation to understanding terrain, is to take a walk in seasonally inappropriate footwear. Not boots in the summer, you'll gain little from that. No, go walking in the autumn/winter in summer trail shoes. That'll learn you. You'll pay far more attention to your footfall, learn to understand possible ground condition by flora, learn to look for subtle changes or indicators which will help your feet stay dry and most importantly learn to read the land ahead, making better informed path choices. Some changes or indicators can be very subtle too, you have to really look.  It's a totally different experience to walking in all weather, all terrain boots where you can just clump along protected; you have to think a lot more. Your reward, you'll notice a lot more though and gain a greater insight into terrain in general, and most importantly, you'll stay dry footed.

Bare foot

I've experienced a renaissance in bare foot walking of late. I used to go shoeless a lot, although the dangers of urban bare foot walking (glass, dog poo, etal) became to much. Out here though, in the forest, it's different...it's fantastic. Of course, out in the woods you have to watch out for that nemesis of the bare foot walker, the bastard Holly, but beyond that it's liberating.