As I walked down from school today, I decided to do a colour meditation walk. This is a really easy way to give yourself some headspace and to allow yourself to focus on a task in a mindful way, the aim being that you spend less time with all the petty thoughts and worries and to do list for the day swimming around your head – because, who wants to spend time mired in all that when you could be having fun!
The way to do it is is simple. Pick a colour and for the length of your walk, focus on that colour and try to spot as many things as you can that are that colour or include it in some way. I always photograph the things I find as to me, taking the time to do this is part of the meditation, I look at the things I am photographing more, appreciate the subtle differences between the colours etc.
Obviously I live in a rural area which on the one hand is very pretty but on the other hand presents challenges – it would be hard for me to do blue for example! Lots of sky! So I tend to pick red, white, brown, green, yellow etc. But in urban areas, whilst they may seem less attractive, there is a lot more scope for colour in signage, clothing, shop fronts, buildings, doors, cars, bikes – you get the idea. I did pink once when in a town and also yellow in city – there is SO much yellow in a city when you start to look!
Today I picked red. This is everything red that I saw on my 15 minute journey today. I found that in trying to find red, taking the photos and thinking about the colours, richness of shades, textures, light etc I don’t think about anything else really at all. And when I got to my office to start the day I felt calm and relaxed. I have done them at other times of the day too, it’s just whenever you are walking somewhere, so that could be school runs, the commute, between meetings etc. You could also turn it into a family activity with children at the weekend, either all spotting the same colour or looking for different ones.
Here are my pictures from today. I hope you enjoy them, they are snaps, not carefully constructed or styled images, just things as I found them but I enjoy them anyway! I hope you decided to try this out, I am sure that you will enjoy it. Another added bonus is that in doing this type of activity you notice and appreciate your surroundings much more too!
