A Walking Guided Meditation to Realize the Beauty Around Us—Even in the City

This guided meditation walk from Kazumi Igus offers an opportunity to slow down and notice the wonder of the natural world in our urban areas.

City life can often feel hectic, noisy, and disconnected from the beauty of nature. It’s not often that we slow down and take in everything we get. But even in urban areas, if you pay attention, you can hear a bird chirping, notice the color you like in the shop windows, and look up at the big sky.

In this guided meditation, we slow down and take in the beauty of our surroundings, no matter where we find ourselves.

A Walking Guided Meditation to Realize the Beauty Around Us—Even in the City

Read and practice the guided meditation text below, pausing after each passage. Or listen to the audio practice.

1. Let’s start by taking three deep breaths.
2. As we begin, I want to bring to your attention how it goes if you are traveling in the city or trying to move from one place to another. How fast do you go? How do you go? What is your speed? Do you have a place and a time? Or do you have a specific location? Wherever you are, slow down just a little bit. If you can walk indeed slow and you won’t catch traffic, you’re welcome. And if you’re not walking and in a wheelchair, you’re welcome to slow down. If you really need to be somewhere, try to relax in this space, whatever it is. It’s slow and steady, but maybe not too slow depending on where you are.
3. Bring your attention How you go-your balance. Are you taking action? Begin to notice small changes, the muscles involved. And whatever you think, it’s all right. You are just aware of where you are in this space right now.
4. Then, we admit that our minds sometimes race and we have a lot of things going on in our lives, just take a breath and bring your attention back to each step. Start settling into a rhythm. Be aware of all the muscles involved in creating locomotion to propel you forward and shift your weight. Maybe if you’re in a wheelchair, you use your arms. How are the hands involved? Do you have anything in mind? Maybe a backpack, a bag, or someone’s hand. Focus on being truly present in your physical realm, your physical body. He took a deep breath. As we move through our urban environment, we begin to notice other things outside of us.
5. The first thing I want you to bring to your attention is the smell around you. Depending on where you are, that can be fun or not. When you breathe, can you identify a certain smell? Maybe you get too many smells at once. Perhaps you notice a change in smell as you pass through different areas. And as you smell these smells, be aware of what you are thinking. Are you creating a story? Do you find yourself wanting to be around a good smell or maybe pushing it away, trying to avoid a bad smell? OK then. Everything is normal. Just smell the smell and label it as pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. See if you can identify pizza, feces, grass, or whatever.
6. Then take a breath and focus your attention on what you see. What can you see? Start by focusing on a color that brings you joy. If it is a bright color you may notice it on candy or chips, maybe on advertisements, signs, store front windows with lots of flyers. If it’s something earthly, like green or brown, you may start to see it in nature—trees and plants. Just choose your color and start noticing it on your journey. Even if the color is in a man-made object such as clothes, hats, backpacks, signs, and the like, that is part of the urban environment. If it’s flowers, trees, plants, we just see the natural parts of the urban environment. Both are necessary.
7. Taking another deep breath, we switch to looking at nature. Starting with animals. And because of this, let’s maybe not focus on people and their pets. Let’s look at the animals that exist in this area without being domesticated by humans. You can notice lizards depending on where you are in the world, stray cats, squirrels, insects.
8. I would like to bring your attention to birds. Birds are what we call them index types. They tell you if your environment is healthy. So look up. Look around. Listen. You may even need to stop for a while. When you hear birds, start listening for variations in their calls, maybe even different types. When you have mockingbirds, sometimes the same bird makes a bunch of different calls. Really stop and listen to it as if it is telling you something. If traffic noise is blocking other calls, that’s fine. The urban environment is complex. It has both man-made and natural elements. If you can spot the birds, note their behavior, colors, and any other details that may emerge. And be aware of your thoughts when you see or hear birds. You may be able to see or hear seagulls if you are close to the shore, pigeons, doves, birds, sparrows, chicks. Be aware if you can’t identify any of these species through the site or by calling. Take a deep breath, notice where the birds are. Maybe on plants, trees, shrubs, or grass.
9. Those of us who live in urban areas often have plant blindness and don’t notice the plants. Take a moment to notice the leaves and if you see any patterns how those plants are growing. Are there flowers? Maybe you can recognize a certain type. Can you say it? He took a deep breath. Feel the closeness of plants and animals in nature.
10. And as you continue to walk, be careful your color, new plants, new animals. Be aware of what you are thinking and when you are telling yourself a story or when you are asking a lot of questions. And if so, take a deep breath and focus back on the details of the experience—the shape of the leaves, the color of the feathers. As humans, we cannot live without the natural components of nature. Therefore it is very important for us to be aware of how our movements in the world affect the environment around us and how the environment around us can affect our experience. He took another breath. If there is a big tree or a squirrel standing there looking at you, or a plant that worries you, take a moment to stop.
11. Thank you for this part of this urban area. It expresses gratitude that you can even feel today. Taking a deep breath. Finding your walking rhythm. Slow but steady, whatever works for you. Continue to notice your color, plants, animals. And continue to take deep breaths.