How Walking can help Over Thinking and Stress

Life itself can be very stressful? Am I right? Work, Looking after little ones, cleaning the house, cooking, bills and then sometimes added problems from the people in our life... these are all things that seem to take over out lives and sometimes these things can also lead to stress, anxiety, and sometimes depression.

So I have been thinking about how I can make my life feel a little less stressful and one way to do this is mindfulness.

Finding time to be more mindful can be a really tricky thing. So this month (and perhaps in the future on my blog) I am going to be writing about all things Mindful. 

There are going to be some great ideas, tips, and products to read all about. 

I have started straight away with my journey and am already doing things that I can't wait to write about and tell you all about on my blog. 

Firstly I am going to tell you about what I did this weekend and that would be simply going for a nice walk. 

My mind is a terrible over thinker. I simply can't stop thinking about what needs to be done, what has happened in the past, or what might happen in the future.

Walking can really help with stress and over thinking, especially when you find a pretty place to do it in. Living in Lancashire and on the doorstep to yorkshire I am surrounded with loads of amazing places to visit and this weekend I went on a walk to one of my new favourite places. It is a beautiful woodlands that brings you out onto a big rushy river. 

The woodland is great for exploring. There isn't really much of a path anymore, which is just the way I like it. This means that you are really at one with nature as you step over fallen down tree's and splash through muddy puddles. 

I find that walks like this can be great for my mind, you really are in the middle of no where and you are to busy watching where you are walking to be worrying about any problems. Plus places like this, you never know what you are going to find!

Which brings me onto the next part of how a walk keeps me mindful, and that would be the discovering part. Once you get through the forest and down by the river, I usually spend hours walking the stretch along it and doing a thing called beach sweeping. 

Beach sweeping is literally walking along with your eyes to the floor hunting out what has been washed up. By the river there are grassy banks and beaches full of stones and it is the perfect way to keep my mind focused. When my brain is busy playing I spy for things, it doesn't think about anything else in those moment and I can find hours go by with out even thinking of a problem. 

There is so much you spot on a sweep of a river, you find all sorts of odd objects, new and old, and sometimes you find bizarre looking things. But my favourite things to look for are bones, skulls, glass and pottery. 

So what did I find?

I spent hours hunting along the edge of the river and found some lovely coloured glass. It is always a bonus when you find blue glass because blue glass is much rarer. If you have not collected glass by a river before, you may be thinking, are you crazy you could cut yourself, but actually the nice thing about glass washed up on a river is that it is smooth, it has been bashed against rocks in the water and the water itself has brushed against it leaving it unsharp and smooth. Look at all the pretty glass I found. 

Then I found some pottery, you find all sorts of tiles and bits from broken plates and these are great to have a look at after and see what colours and patterns you have found. I am thinking of maybe eventually making a mosaic out of them.

Lastly, Did I find any bones and skulls? These can be a little harder to find but yes I did! I was very lucky to find one sheep skull that still had its horns on, plus I found 2 jaw bones both with teeth intact. I know skulls arn't everyones thing, but I am a little strange and I find them cool!

I did find some other things on my walk, such as a end to someones walking stick carved into a nice shape, a marble, and some lovely coloured and shaped stones. 

This is totally my choice of activity to do when I need my mind to switch off and I plan to do it over and over again in the future. 

What do you enjoy doing on your walks?