> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://mindbodyzen.co.uk/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # An Awe Walk for the Dark Half of the Year - URL: https://mindbodyzen.co.uk/living-well-awe-walk/ - Published: 2026-10-15T08:00:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-15T08:00:00.000Z - Description: The clocks go back, the trees go bare and the sky gets bigger. A short awe walk for the dark half of the year, the small self, and what the research does and does not show. - Author: Mind Body Zen - Tags: Pillar: Living Well, Presence, everyday wellbeing, Mindful Living, #pillar-living-well The clocks go back at the end of October, and the walk home moves into the dark. Leaves come down. Trees turn into line drawings against the sky. For a few months the world gets barer and colder and, if you lift your eyes, much larger. It is a fine season for an awe walk. An awe walk is a short walk with one aim, which is to find something vast or intricate and let it take up more of your attention than your own concerns do. Mind Body Zen has already written about [mindful walking](https://mindbodyzen.co.uk/living-well-mindful-walking/), which settles attention on pace, breath and the body, and about [forest bathing](https://mindbodyzen.co.uk/east-meets-west-forest-bathing-shinrin-yoku/), which immerses the senses among trees. The awe walk faces another way. Up, and out. ## Why the dark months suit an awe walk Summer hides things. Full canopies close over the street. Long evenings let the sky go unnoticed until bedtime. Winter takes the cover away. Bare branches show the architecture a tree spent decades building. Low sun throws long shadows across the pavement by mid-afternoon. Early darkness means the sky changes colour while you are still out, so an ordinary commute can include a sunset. On cold, clear evenings the first stars and the brightest planets show before dinner. Over some reed beds and piers, starlings gather in huge shifting flocks before they roost. None of this needs a mountain. Most of it is visible from a plain street. Someone just has to look up. ## The small self Psychologists who study awe describe a shift they call the "small self". In front of something vast, your sense of your own importance shrinks a little. The worries attached to it shrink too. Most people would call the feeling relief. Zen has trained this direction of attention for centuries. Its word *shoshin*, [beginner's mind](https://mindbodyzen.co.uk/zen-beginners-mind-shoshin/), names the habit of meeting a familiar thing as if for the first time. An awe walk is beginner's mind in a coat and gloves. The bare plane tree you pass every day becomes, for a minute, the strange and complicated thing it always was. There is a fullness in this. You stay yourself, at a truer size, inside a world with far more in it than your to-do list. ## What the awe walk study found In 2020 a team led by Virginia Sturm at the University of California, San Francisco, published [a study in the journal *Emotion*](https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0000876?ref=mindbodyzen.co.uk). Sixty healthy older adults took a fifteen-minute outdoor walk once a week for eight weeks. Half were randomly assigned to awe walks and encouraged to seek out wonder as they went. The other half simply walked. The awe walkers reported larger rises in daily positive emotions, especially the warm, other-focused ones the researchers call prosocial. They also reported larger drops in daily distress. Their selfies changed as well. Over the weeks they took up less of the frame, and the scenery took up more. The limits matter. It was one small study, in one age group, measured mostly through people's own reports. Anxiety, depression and life satisfaction did not change in either group. Read it as a promising link between awe and everyday mood, not a cure. If low mood or anxiety is weighing on you, an awe walk can sit beside proper support from a GP or therapist. It cannot replace that support. ## How to take an awe walk this winter The study's dose is a sound start. Fifteen minutes, once a week. Two a week is plenty. 1. **Go at the edge of the light.** In November, late afternoon gives you sunset, dusk and often a first star within a quarter of an hour. 2. **Wrap up properly.** Cold hands pull attention straight back to the body. Warm layers free it for the sky. 3. **Keep the phone in your pocket.** Take one photo at the end if you want one. 4. **Look up and out.** Most of the day is spent looking down and in. Lift your chin. 5. **Let one thing hold you.** A branch against the moon. Frost on a railing. Stay with it a few breaths longer than feels necessary. 6. **Choose lit, familiar routes after dark.** Feeling safe is part of being able to look up. On a clear evening this month, step outside a little before sunset. Find the tallest thing in view, a chimney, a crane, a single bare oak. Watch the sky change colour behind it until the first star comes out. The Mind Body Zen newsletter is free, and every new article lands in your inbox the day it goes live. Subscribe, and the next one will find you. ## FAQ ### How much awe walking is enough? The 2020 study in *Emotion* used one fifteen-minute walk a week for eight weeks, and that is a sensible starting dose. One or two short walks a week is plenty. Regularity matters more than distance. ### Where can I find awe in a city in winter? Look up. Bare street trees, low sun on old brickwork, a crane against a sunset, starlings at dusk and the first planets on a clear evening are all visible from ordinary streets. Stick to lit, familiar routes once it gets dark. ### How does an awe walk differ from mindful walking or forest bathing? Mindful walking settles attention on pace, breath and the body. Forest bathing immerses the senses among trees. An awe walk turns attention up and outward, toward scale and the "small self", and it works anywhere you can see the sky.