It’s easy to get distracted by thoughts as you walk in nature. But there is always something to listen to. Today I listened to the sounds of water. It was a beautifully calm morning as I sat by the lake and focussed on the repetitive lapping of the water against the rocks. This was extremely calming and really made me think about the present moment.
I wondered why it was so relaxing. Julian Treasure https://www.juliantreasure.com/is a sound expert and he reports that “gentle surf has a cadence of roughly 12 cycles per minute, which is very similar to the breathing of a sleeping human being. And so we find it a very restful sound.”
Our days are usually full of so much sound that we often can’t identify individual sounds, and many sounds can be unpleasant. Take a moment to listen more, next time you are out in nature, and focus your listening on individual sounds – a bird singing, the wind in the trees, the river bubbling by. Take a short film like I did, and replay it when you are busy, to give yourself a moment of calm.