Written by Emma Preece, Marketing Manager, Spring Lakes
Meditation can be a very personal activity and there are many ways in which you can practice it. The intention of meditation is to help both body and mind to relax, helping to reduce anxiety and stress. In our modern world, this can be hard to achieve, and so it is important to find successful ways to achieve this, which is why outdoor yoga is becoming a popular option.
In this article, Spring Lakes take a look at the purposes of meditation and how outdoor yoga can help you achieve this state and get the best results from it.
What is meditation?
Meditation is often coupled with mindfulness, as it involves focusing the mind, clearing it of all distractions, stress and worries. The most typical image of this is sitting cross legged on top of a mountain, but it can actually take many different forms. In some cases, it might achieved through a range of breathing exercises, whilst others have turned to drawing or colouring.
Body-centred meditation helps you to focus on physical sensations within the body, whilst emotion-centred meditation concentrates on the emotions we need to experience, such as happiness or kindness. Meditation with movement has also proved to be popular as it can help you to focus on your breathing whilst performing specific body movements, and so it has often had close links with yoga.
Outdoor yoga
With more than 300 million people practicing yoga across the world, it is rapidly becoming one of the most popular activities that you can do. That is because it is open to everyone, from the very old to the very young, and works with all different abilities. Some take an interest in yoga for the physical flexibility that it can bring, whilst others turn to it for its meditative qualities.
As an ancient activity, yoga has often been practiced outside, and there are some very real benefits to doing so. For many, it gives them a chance to connect with nature without doing anything more strenuous, like hiking, running or cycling.
This direct link to the natural world can help you to find a greater form of inner peace by being able to smell the fresh air, hear the leaves rustling in the trees and see the sky. Some studies have found that viewing nature can increase your wakeful relaxation and your internal focus, which can really help to take your yoga to a different place and enhance its meditative properties.
Being outside can help to awaken your senses and will activate parts of your brain that can make you feel more present. Whilst the fresh air can heighten breath awareness, the scenery around us can help to release the feel-good chemicals endorphins.
In addition to this, we might also be exposed to different textures beneath our hands and feet, such as the grass or sand, and so further stimulation for the senses can be found. This all helps to focus the brain on the sensory experience in front of us and teaches us to switch off certain other parts of our brains so that we can simply concentrate on the moment.
Feeling the sun on your skin can also be incredibly important. Many of us are lacking in vitamin D because we do not spend enough time outside, and so taking the time to practice yoga in the open air can really help to boost this. This can help to boost the strength of your bones and muscles, but it has also been found to help to regulate your mood more successfully and play a part in reducing depression, and so it can play a big part in getting in touch with those more positive emotions as part of your meditation.
Yoga in your home or in a studio can have its benefits, but these are amplified when the activity is undertaken outdoors. That naturally serenity that is associated with being in the open air can help to improve both your concentration and your focus, which are all important factors in meditation.
When all of this combines, you should find that you get an energy boost after your yoga session, as both your body and mind will feel revitalised.
Practicing yoga outside
Whilst you could practice yoga in your own back garden, it is often better to do it as part of an organised group in order to give you help and support, as well as new challenges for yourself. You can find sessions for outdoor yoga in Nottingham and across the UK that will cater for all ages and abilities.
There are different types of yoga that you can look to involve yourself in, that can all help to enhance your meditation further. For example, Dru yoga involved soft flowing movements that incorporate directed breathing and visualisation, sun salutations and deep states of relaxation to help make your meditation incredibly effective.
It is popular with those wanting to boost their meditation as Dru yoga works on the mind, the body and the spirit all at the same time for a complete wellbeing rejuvenation.
Stress is now a modern epidemic and meditation is a popular way to try and tackle it. Cortisol is the stress hormone that we all carry within our bodies, and those who are exposed to a forest environment have been found to have a much lower concentration of it than those in an urban environment, which just goes to show how beneficial outdoor yoga can be as a meditative tool.
We all need a moment where we take the time to stop and smell the roses, but we can often get caught up in so many other things that we forget to do this. Outdoor yoga is a great way to put ourselves back in touch with both nature and us, learning to re-centre, clear the mind and reduce the stresses that we are constantly subjected to in a gentle and relaxing environment which makes it easier to meditate and plays a big role in enhancing the results.
About the author
Emma Preece is the Marketing Manager at Spring Lakes, a family run leisure park that specialises in water sports, wild swimming, camping & more!
