Discover How Walking and Journalling Can Transform Your Mental Health
- 2 days ago
- 7 min read
Anna is a journalling coach and wellbeing advocate on a mission to share the transformative power of writing with 100,000 people. Through her company, Writing with Purpose, she helps women navigate life’s challenges and rediscover their joy through creative expression and nature connection, alongside hosting the Writing with Purpose podcast.
You already know that a walk helps you feel better. You come back with your shoulders lower, your breathing slower, and a little less knotted than when you left. Most of us have experienced that shift without ever stopping to question it. But what if you could make that shift more intentional? What if you could capture what surfaces during a walk and use it, rather than letting it dissolve before you reach the front door?
This is the argument for combining walking, nature, and journalling as a deliberate pairing that compounds the well-being benefits of each. The evidence and experience point in the same direction.
How walking impacts your brain and body
Research for Living Streets' National Walking Month found that 54% of people who walk do so to improve their mental health and happiness, and 40% of respondents said they feel anxious, irritable, or lonely after staying at home the entire day. Surely these figures suggest that a walk counteracts feeling low.
That instinct is well-founded. The Mental Health Foundation's research found that 82% of people in the UK believe regular physical activity is important for mental health and wellbeing. Walking lowers cortisol, the body's primary stress hormone, releases endorphins, and regulates the nervous system. Even a short walk shifts your physiological state in ways that are measurable and real.
A 2023 study carried out by the University of Cambridge suggests that a daily walk can prevent one in ten early deaths. The physical case is well established. The mental health case is equally strong, and arguably less well understood.
What journalling does beyond walking
Walking clears our heads, whereas journalling makes sense of what is inside our heads. Dr. James Pennebaker's research at the University of Texas demonstrated that expressive writing for just 15 minutes, three times a week, produces measurable improvements in working memory and stress resilience. Walking moves you through the world, whereas writing helps you understand what that movement stirs up. There are positive outcomes for both, but together they compound.
Without writing, the insights that surface during a walk often disappear. You return home, the kettle goes on, work continues, or the kids demand attention. Whatever clarity you found on the path dissolves into the afternoon. Journalling can create a container for those moments, helping to turn a feeling into something you can hold, examine, and return to.
Why nature changes everything
Not all walks are equal. A walk through a shopping centre and a walk in woodland both involve movement, but their effects on the brain are quite different.
Psychologists Rachel and Stephen Kaplan developed Attention Restoration Theory in the 1980s, which proposed that exposure to natural environments promotes the recovery of directed attention, highlighting nature's role in replenishing attention resources and reducing mental fatigue.
The Kaplans found that nature contains what they call ‘soft fascinations,’ for example, clouds moving across the sky or leaves rustling in the wind. These natural elements attract and hold attention effortlessly, allowing the attention system to recover from depletion. In plain language, nature is doing the restorative work, so your brain doesn’t have to.
This matters for journalling because a depleted brain produces depleted writing. When you write after time in a natural setting, you are writing from a clearer, calmer cognitive state, and the quality of your reflection changes.
The compound effect when you bring all three together
If walking lowers your body's stress response and nature quietens the mental noise, then writing captures what surfaces when the noise settles.
Each element amplifies the others. The movement of walking loosens thoughts that sitting keeps fixed. The natural environment holds your attention gently, without demand. The writing converts that loosened, quieted state into something tangible, such as an insight, a question, a memory, or a shift in perspective that you can use to take action.
This is not a theoretical argument. Anyone who has written a few lines beside a river or paused on a hillside to note what they are feeling recognises the purity of that writing. It’s different from the writing that emerges at a desk. Nature, it turns out, is a co-facilitator.
Using your senses as a doorway
One of the most effective ways to begin writing in nature is by engaging your senses. Sensory attention pulls you out of your head and into your immediate environment. It interrupts rumination and creates presence, exactly the state that produces honest, useful writing.
Using a simple framework to work with, sense by sense, is a great place to start the next time you venture outside for a walk. Walk at a slow pace and pause regularly. At each pause, close your eyes, take three slow breaths, then open your eyes and write.
Journaling with sight
Start by noticing what catches your eye first. Is it a bright color, a movement, or something subtle in the surroundings? Take the time to count how many shades of the same color you can spot around you. This exercise encourages a deeper connection with your environment. Additionally, challenge yourself to describe one small thing you might normally overlook. These small details often hold the most significance and can be the catalyst for deeper writing.
Journaling with sound
Pay attention to the sounds around you. What is the first sound you hear? Is it something immediate, or do you need to listen more closely to detect quieter, hidden noises? Try to distinguish between natural sounds, like birds or wind, and human-made ones, such as traffic or voices. Finally, describe a sound that you cannot immediately name. This could be the rustling of leaves or the hum of distant machinery, sounds that seem familiar yet resist easy identification.
Journaling with smell and sensation
Focus on the scents that fill the air. What does the atmosphere smell like, and how does it make you feel? Does it evoke a sense of calm or nostalgia? Similarly, take note of the ground beneath your feet. What does it feel like: soft grass, rough gravel, or something else? Pay attention to how your body responds to the walk. Has anything on this journey triggered a memory or an emotional response? These sensations offer a gateway to introspective writing.
Journaling with taste
Imagine that the landscape has a flavor. If it were to be described as a taste, what would it be? Is it fresh like rain, earthy like soil, or perhaps something more abstract? Pay attention to the air you breathe. What does it taste like as it enters your mouth and lungs? There is a certain quality in every place that can be experienced almost as a flavor, not literally, but in the way a mood or atmosphere leaves an imprint on your senses.
Journaling with touch
Find a texture nearby, whether it's the roughness of bark, the smoothness of a stone, or the softness of a leaf. Describe this texture in detail, capturing its essence. Next, notice the temperature of the air. How does it feel against your skin? Is it warm, cool, or a gentle breeze? Finally, take a moment to check in with your body. What is it telling you that you might not have noticed before? Perhaps your muscles are tense or relaxed, or maybe the walk is bringing awareness to something you've overlooked in your daily routine.
Going deeper with John Muir Laws
John Muir Laws, naturalist, artist, educator, and co-founder of the Wild Wonder Foundation, uses a three-part prompt at the heart of his nature journalling practice: I notice. I wonder. It reminds me of. These prompts, which he draws on to develop what he calls intentional curiosity, move you from passive observation to active engagement with what is around you, deceptively simple and very powerful.
Use these prompts as an anchor when you are not sure where to start or when you want to move beyond description into something with more depth.
Alongside that framework, these three questions can take you further inward:
What do you notice around you?
What is stirring within you?
What feelings, memories, or longings does the natural world bring to the surface?
The shift from the first question to the third is the change from observation to self-awareness. That transference is where the real work happens.
How to start this week
You do not need a guided walk, a special notebook, or an hour to spare. You can begin this practice with what you already have.
Choose a walk you already do, to the park, around the block, or through a local green space. Take a small notebook or use the notes app on your phone. Pause three times during the walk, take three breaths and write for two minutes. Use one of the sensory prompts above, or ask yourself: what do I notice right now, inside and outside of myself?
When you return, read back what you wrote and write a sentence of reflection. You may surprise yourself.
The consistency of this practice, even once a week, begins to change how you move through the world. You start noticing more and trusting what you notice. Over time, that noticing becomes a form of self-knowledge.
Begin your practice
May is National Walking Month, which offers the perfect reason to start. The longer, lighter days that come with spring make it easier to get outside and stay there.
Walking is good for you. Journalling is good for you. But if you want to understand what is going on inside you, and do something useful with that understanding, combining the two in a natural setting is one of the most accessible and effective tools available.
If you would like to explore how journalling can work specifically for your life and circumstances, book a Journalling Audit consultation, and we can identify the approach that fits you best.
Read more from Anna Woolliscroft
Anna Woolliscroft, Writing for Wellbeing Specialist
As a certified Journal to the Self Instructor and holder of a Master's in Creative Writing and Wellbeing, Anna guides women in reclaiming their purpose through proven journalling techniques and creative writing strategies. From climbing Mount Kilimanjaro to transitioning her marketing business into meaningful work, Anna has learned that transformation begins with honest self-reflection. Whether through live workshops, on-demand training, self-learning resources, or her podcast featuring therapeutic writing experts, Anna's mission remains clear: to share the life-changing power of intentional writing with 100,000 people over the next decade, helping women move from feeling stuck to living with clarity and confidence.
