Welcome to this Kids in Nature Quiet Walk meditation.
My name is Jessica Amos.
I am founder of Stay With Yourself,
The practice of being who you are,
Where you are.
In today's meditation,
We will go outside and take a quiet,
Very quiet,
Tiptoeing walk.
But first,
Take yourself outside and find a lovely spot to just stand out in nature for a moment while we breathe in and out,
Relaxing the body and preparing to walk around for a little while.
You can close your eyes wherever you're standing and start by taking three deep breaths in through the nose,
Down into your tummy and exhaling out through the mouth.
Take a deep breath in through the nose and out through the mouth.
One more,
In through the nose and out through the mouth.
You can continue breathing like this,
Breathing deeply,
Breathing all the way into your tummy when you inhale.
Imagine your tummy is an empty balloon being filled with air.
When you exhale,
You can feel your tummy softening and relaxing.
You can even roll your shoulders as you breathe in and out.
Roll your shoulders down and back.
You can roll your shoulders forward,
Whatever direction feels good.
Move your head around from side to side as you just breathe.
You can wiggle your arms out and wiggle your legs and get your body loose.
If there's anywhere in your body where you feel stressed out or you feel like that's where you carry some of your worries or your fears,
Sometimes we carry our fears in our shoulders and our shoulders creep up next to our ears.
You can drop your ears,
Your ears,
No,
Your shoulders,
Drop your shoulders down.
So they're farther away from your ears.
Relax your hips,
Kind of do a little dance move with your hips and you can do all this with your eyes closed and just feel your body relaxing and getting loose.
And then when you're ready,
You can open your eyes and take a moment from where you're standing to look around you.
You can kind of do a very slow,
Slow circle and pick a direction to stand in,
A direction you would like to start walking in.
It doesn't matter.
There's no right or wrong direction.
Pick a direction where you can,
You can start walking and you can keep walking for quite a ways.
And very,
Very slowly,
Very slowly,
As slow as you possibly can,
Start taking steps in one direction.
You can slowly lift up one leg,
Set the heel down and then the front of the foot down and step and then pick up the other leg and slowly put your foot down and try to make as little noise as possible.
You can also take little steps where you don't pick your leg up too much.
You just pick it up a little.
You can tiptoe whatever way you feel you can be the quietest as you walk almost like you are floating,
Like you're walking on clouds and you're walking very,
Very lightly and very,
Very quietly.
You can imagine that you need to be very quiet.
Maybe there's some birds who are taking a nap.
Maybe there's some bugs on the ground,
Little homes and you don't want to disturb them so you have to walk really gently.
You can even imagine that you're trying to blend in,
That you don't want anyone to see you.
And so you must move really slowly to not bring attention to yourself.
Imagine that you are an animal in nature who needs to hide,
Doesn't want to be found and has to be very quiet and sneaky.
If you thought it would be fun,
You could even get on your hands and knees and you could crawl and be very,
Very quiet as you crawl.
And if you want to change directions at any time,
You can change directions.
Be aware of if you're making noise or not or if you start walking too quickly,
You can slow back down and just keep walking like this for a little while,
Very quietly,
Very slowly.
This is a very fun exercise to do in nature,
Is to come out here and pretend that you're an animal that lives out here and you need to be quiet.
And also as a human,
We need to be aware that there are all kinds of little and big things that live out here in nature.
And we need to be very soft and very gentle and very careful because lots of animals and little bugs have their homes here on the earth,
On the ground and in the trees and in the bushes and plants around us.
So taking quiet,
Really gentle walks is a way to really feel how slow and lovely it can be to be in nature.
You can take deep breaths.
Just let yourself slow down a little bit.
And when this meditation is over,
I encourage you to keep walking very softly outside here,
Exploring and leaving as little evidence as you possibly can that you were ever here.
And you can always do this practice in your bedroom,
Just walking tiptoeing around your room or around your house.
You can do this when you go to the grocery store or at school,
Anywhere that you are.
Thank you for sharing this quiet walk with me today.
Until next time,
May you stay with yourself today and always.
