Ultimately, a wellbeing walk is what it says on the tin: a walk that enhances your sense of wellbeing. However, the wellbeing walks that I facilitate are more about the wellbeing than the walking, and are short walks - more wanders really - in natural environments, with the emphasis on mental and emotional wellbeing rather than physical.
Of course, any walk outside in woodland, or along a river bank, say, or at a nature reserve, brings the physical benefits of fresh air, daylight - hopefully some sunlight on short winter days - and gentle exercise, but the emphasis on the walks I offer is for developing your inner awareness and on using your senses for enhancing wellbeing. Such a walk is enjoyable at the time, for its own sake, and it gives you skills for taking that enhanced wellbeing into your life in general.
On the walk we’ll wander slowly around the quieter parts of wherever we are, utilising secluded areas and seating places (if there are any) to stop frequently for trying out activities to raise our sensory and self awareness.
In our day-to-day lives, unless we are very specifically looking for something, or listening out for something, we generally pay little, if any, attention to what we receive via our sensory channels. Yet assuming no sensory impairment, we are seeing, hearing, and feeling things all the time. Smelling and tasting too, although we tend to be even less aware of those senses.
We can in fact be bombarded with sensory input, and so in certain situations it’s very sensible to try to block out or at least lessen that input, but on these wellbeing walks - in the ‘sensory safety’ of the natural world - we learn how to make more of sensory input. We learn more about ourselves in doing so - raising our self awareness generally - and we learn techniques to take with us into our wider lives.
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