When I find myself distracted during the day, I will often take some steps outside the house, and combine meditation with my next gardening tool, exercise. A walking meditation can be a rejuvenating experience as you burn some calories and think actively on a given topic or thought. There are a number of walking meditation options through exercise and meditation apps, so give them a go and see if it works for you. For me the combination of being outside, moving, and trying to focus my thoughts makes it easier for me to look for intersections with the problems I’m trying to solve, and if not, the insertion of a distraction like who in the neighborhood needs to mow their lawn, can be just the moment of distraction you need to clear a mental roadblock!

In a way, this is the sunlight portion of our mental garden, as there is just something about moving, and being outside that really helps to give thoughts some of that needed energy. Personally, I have a love/hate relationship with traditional exercise these days. It certainly helps me manage my anxiety and for the most part I feel better afterward, but at 46 things hurt. Keeping this in mind, I find myself enjoying a nice walk or hike when I combine targeted thinking or meditation, but still need a nice heavy sweat on occasion. Since it is hard for me to justify stepping away and jumping on the Peloton for an intense ride to 90’s grunge followed by the shower to regain a semblance of humanity, I tend to take shorter breaks with less sweating to give my mind a break and get my muscles moving. Whether that is taking a walk around the neighborhood, or grabbing some dumbbells, or heading to the backyard for a little fetch with the dogs, anything to break the cycle and insert some healthy distraction is a good thing here.

My favorite form of sunlight in the garden is taking a walk. Walks don’t have any set distance or time requirement, they just are an excuse to get up from your desk and get some air. If you aren’t using a walk to meditate, I challenge you to NOT take your headphones, and to instead listen to the world around you. Let the sounds along with the smells, the feeling of the air, and the tastes if you pass a solid food truck option, guide your intentional distraction and explore potential intersections with the thoughts consuming you. I’d say leave your phone, but I’m not naive. We never leave our phones, so when you take your phone open up a note to jot things down. Start your walk with attention to yourself, and to how your body is feeling as you go about your walk. Use your own reactions to stimuli to help guide your mind either towards solution, or towards an embrace of the distraction in your day. Don’t check social media, and only answer emergency text messages. This is a time for you, so make it about you. Speaking of being about you, I also find exercise as a great tool to heighten self awareness. After all, we need to be just as aware of our body as we are of our mind, and what better way to find your physical strengths and weaknesses than exercising. Just as we need to push our thinking through meditation to see how far a thought can go, we also need to push our bodies to know how far they can go in times of physical stress. Inserting this aspect into your tool box of self awareness will only make you stronger, and more capable of overcoming the mental challenges in front of you. Performing through exhaustion will help you unlock a cheat code to implementing thoughts through the form of strategies, and when you couple that with the benefits to improving your overall health, you can’t ignore it. I’m not suggesting you need to go out and become a triathlete, or join a Crossfit box, but making some form of exercise a part of your routine will go a long way to providing you another outlet for stretching your exhaustive mind, while also equipping you with another tool to leverage when you need a productive distraction.