‘Silent Walking’ Is A New TikTok Trend, Here’s How It Can Help You

Imagine taking a walk without talking on your phone, texting, listening to Daft Punk’s “Harder Better Faster Stronger” or scrolling through the latest things that the Kardashians have said on social media. In other words, what about doing what people had been doing for thousands of years before smartphones, social media and the world of 24-7 distractions arrived? Wow, what a concept.

Well, this centuries-old trend has actually become a new TikTok trend. It’s even got a new name—“silent walking”—because everything on TikTok has to have a catchy name, right? And it shouldn’t take an etymologist to figure out why this name emerged because it’s all about, you know, keeping things silent when you are walking.

Where did this why-don’t-we-do-what-people-have-already-long-been-doing trend begin? Well, TikToker Mady Maio spoke about her “unintentionally starting a movement” in the following post:

As you can see, Maio mentioned that her nutritionist had advised her to take a 30-minute walk each day “instead of doing insane cardio like I used to. Those workouts were making my body inflamed but that’s a story for another time.” She went on to say, “My sweet boyfriend challenged me to walk without distractions.” She spoke about getting into a flow state after a few minutes where you can actually “hear yourself.” Then she added, “The universe and your intuition comes to you through whispers.” So “you’re going to miss the whispers” if you are never really alone in your thought.

All of this makes sense because it’s not really like anything new. Again, people have been taking silent walks since the beginning of humanity. A number of studies have shown the benefits of taking walks without distractions such as strolls in nature. And in this case, a stroll through nature doesn’t mean blasting Naughty by Nature songs into your ears at the same time. For example, a study published in PNAS found that “Participants who went on a 90-min walk through a natural environment reported lower levels of rumination and showed reduced neural activity in an area of the brain linked to risk for mental illness compared with those who walked through an urban environment.” People have long been using quiet walks to clear their heads and come up with new ideas. Buddhist monks regularly practice “walking meditation,” which is where your focus your attention on your feet, your body and the ground when you are walking. In this practice, you should actually pay attention to the process and feeling of walking.

So why might this practice of silent walking, walking meditation, or whatever else you want to call it have fallen off in recent years? Well, first of all, it has become harder and harder to find times and places that are free of distractions. It can be easy to forget how many different people and companies are trying to stimulate your senses all the time. Over the past decade, there’s been an explosion in the invasiveness of advertising, the number of available television shows, the ways to contact you and the amount of information both useful and junk that’s being thrown at you each day. The advent and growth of the smartphone has made this distractions problem several-fold worse, because your smartphone can be kind of like a high maintenance significant other, always poking you and demanding your attention.

Moreover, silent walking may seem tough to do if you are not used to being alone and alone with your thoughts. This may even seem daunting and anxiety-inducing because it’s easy to avoid asking yourself tough questions about yourself. For example, you may not be willing to ask yourself why you keep falling into the wrong relationships, choosing the wrong lines of work, not being treated how you’d like to be treated or in general not getting what you want. You may shy away from confronting yourself with questions “am I really happy”, “do I really like my job” or “do I really like the people around me?” Such questions can threaten the rip off the veneer of happiness that you may have. Instead, it may appear a whole lot easier to keep bathing yourself with external stimuli to leave yourself numb to the truth.

Naturally, “go ahead and suppress all your thoughts” is not something that mental health professionals will typically tell you. When you don’t listen to your own thoughts, it’s near impossible to tell what you want—what you really, really want, in the immortal words of the Spice Girls. Rather than your own thoughts, your mind may then get filled up like a fanny pack with what other people—such as your friends, your classmates, your workmates, celebrities, advertisers, and social media influencers—want you to do. And listening to them can be like wearing a pair of Spanx that is several sizes too small. It can leave you in a life that you don’t really want.

Moreover, a silent walk can have a calming affect on your entire body. When your senses and central nervous system are constantly being stimulated and triggered, it can leave you perpetually in a fight-or-flight condition. Your body can unconsciously always be in a “what’s going to happen now” or “is that a tiger, are you a tiger, where might there be tiger, will a tiger be in my bathroom” state. That can be like inducing a constant state of anxiety, which as you can imagine is not good.

So how do you go on a silent walk. Well, here are the steps:

1. Find somewhere reasonably quiet to walk.
2. Start walking.
3. Just keep walking.
4. Don’t check your smartphone. Just keep walking.
5. Are you listening? Don’t check your freaking smartphone. Just walk.

To resist the temptation, it’s best to leave all those devices—your smartphone, your smartwatch, and any other wearables—at home before embarking on a walk. All those social media apps are designed to keep seeking your attention, sort of like a three-year-old child. Don’t worry, the world won’t end on your walk. And if it somehow does, you probably couldn’t have done anything about it anyway.

Additionally, you may want to make sure that you’ve eaten enough and gone to the bathroom before commencing your walk. Otherwise, “is that a bathroom, is that a bathroom, where’s the bathroom” or “taco, taco, taco” may dominate your thoughts while walking. As a result, the only real insight that you may gain is knowing where the bathrooms are located or how much you like tacos.

Also, make sure that you choose a safe location to walk. Silent walking doesn’t work too well when you have to run screaming for your life or call for help. The best path would be one where you can get lost in your thoughts and not worry about the terrain and those around you. A completely natural environment may offer the best place to silent walk, assuming that there are no tigers around. However, just because you are in a busy city, doesn’t mean that you can’t do such a walk. You can always choose a park or a time—such as the early morning, the evening, or the weekends—when the hustle and bustle will be less, as long as the surroundings are reasonably safe.

So why not try to make silent walking a habit? Life may not be a walk in the park. But taking some walks in the park could really help your life.