Want to improve your wellness? Take a walk! Walking is a wonderful form of exercise and can be so much more than a mindless trip around the block. Being aware of your environment and noticing nature’s colorful kaleidoscope of rich, vibrant colors bursting from the leaves on trees this time of year offer a rich opportunity to improve our well-being. The heightened awareness of “awe” walks combined with nature’s color therapy and meditation can be exceptionally powerful. Stroll with us to discover how walking with intention and taking in the beautiful Fall leaves can foster well-being.

"Awe" Walks Promote Wellness

What are awe walks? A new study conducted at the University of California, San Francisco, discovered that people who were aware of objects around them as they walked were more upbeat and hopeful than walkers who were not. These researchers coined these mindful walks as “awe walks”—as increased awareness can spark awe and wonder. Awe is defined as a feeling of reverence and respect mixed with admiration and wonder prompted by incredible beauty or power. This positive emotion is elicited in the presence of something exceptionally sublime, grand, or perhaps beyond comprehension. The researchers of the awe walks study observed that when we are in a state of awe, self-focus diminishes. They also found that it improved social interactions and connections. The study participants took 15-minute strolls outdoors for eight weeks, photographing themselves on each walk and rating their emotional states. The men and women in the study reported feeling greater awe, positivity, and joy. They also noticed increased smile intensity and smaller selves in their photographs—illustrating their renewed relationship with their environment. Their well-being continued well beyond the walks themselves, as participants reported that they had experienced reduced distress and increased positivity, kindness, and compassion toward others.

Benefits of Intentional Walks

Intentional “awe walks” are genuine therapeutic wellness modalities. Walking on its own is proven to improve cardiovascular health, manage weight, strengthen muscles, promote bone density, boost mental clarity and focus, enhance creativity, and reduce stress and anxiety. Adding mindfulness helps ground you further. Taking yourself outside and away from devices, focusing on your surroundings, and breathing fresh air enables you to connect with your environment and break away from life’s stresses. When you are looking up at the trees and the sky, you can’t possibly look down at your phone screen simultaneously! Even a short jaunt outdoors can boost your mood and increase Vitamin D levels. Just remember to wear broad spectrum sun protection to ensure skin health! While awe walks are beneficial year-round, taking in the changing colors of Fall and genuinely appreciating the transformation of the landscape as you trek offers an even greater perspective of our place in the vastness. More than just a pretty sight, Fall’s changing leaves are nature’s way of encouraging us to increase the “awe” factor in our lives and turn over a new leaf!

How to Go On An Awe Walk

An awe walk can be as simple as heading out your front door and looking for what amazes you. It can be anything big or small that elicits a feeling of wonder. Up your awe practice and wellness quotient by finding awe spots rich in “awe-portunities” and being in the moment to experience. Awe walk examples may include majestic mountains, the ocean’s shore, and other panoramic views. Not a nature lover? Don’t worry! While nature is an abundant wellness-enriching environment and on the menu this Fall, awe walks can also include urban settings, like a historical monument or part of your city you’ve yet to explore. You can marvel at towering skyscrapers, gravity-defying feats of architecture, or a gorgeous sports car whizzing by. Recognizing that beauty is everywhere if you look for it and noticing how far we've come from single-story log cabins and Model T's is enough to drop your jaw in awe!

Embrace Color For Wellness

The color explosion in Fall is a perfect introduction to color meditation and color therapy. Did you know that admiring the leaves’ transition from green to vibrant shades of red, orange, and yellow can powerfully impact your wellness? Red has a powerful energizing effect, orange promotes optimism, emotional balance, and healing, while yellow elicits joy. As you go on your awe-walks this Fall, notice the color of the leaves and focus on the hues your spirit gravitates towards, paying heed to nature’s vibrant cue to welcome positive changes to unfold.

Color Therapy 

Aside from the glorious hues of Fall, color, in the form of color therapy, is an ongoing resource for wellness. What is color therapy? Also known as chromotherapy or colorology, this alternative wellness practice harnesses the concept that color is a source of energy, light, and vibration that can be utilized to facilitate healing and improve well-being. While not a traditional type of therapy, color meditation or therapy can complement other therapeutic practices, providing a comprehensive approach. How does color therapy work? Think of color as an ally for improving your state of mind. Here are some general explanations of how color therapy promotes emotional and physical wellness:

• Emotions: Different colors can evoke a range of emotions.
• Stress: Certain colors can create peaceful environments that reduce stress and anxiety.
• Mood: Exposure to specific colors can enhance mood and overall mental health.
• Focus: Colors have the ability to influence concentration and productivity.
• Physical: Some practitioners believe color can affect physical health, aiding healing.
• Creativity: Certain colors can inspire us, making them useful in work and artistic arenas.
• Sleep: Soft, muted colors can induce a calming relaxation effect, promoting better sleep.
• Empowerment: Colors that resonate with our feelings can enhance self-awareness.
• Spiritual Growth: Specific colors can aid spiritual connection with their inner selves.

Color Therapy Guide

You can see a professional color therapist to guide your journey or incorporate color meditation or color therapy into your self-care routine to consciously utilize color to alter how you feel. Here’s how:

Color Energy Meditation How-To

• Silence your devices.
• Select the color you need to help you achieve your utmost potential. What color is best for meditation? That depends on what color your soul or spirit needs to reach the highest version of yourself! Find the challenge you commonly experience and the perfect color meditation to help improve your outlook:
• Fatigued and lacking energy? Choose bright red and invite this energizing color into your body to help activate your physical energy. Breathe red in to fuel you and give you the get up and go to accomplish what you want to achieve with your day.
• Stressed?  Choose pale blue and invite its calming energy into your eyes, temples, and brain center to bring peace of mind. Imagine blue's soothing energy flowing through your entire being and feeling relaxation wash over you. Breathe in peacefulness and know you can have a calm mind. If you prefer green, you’ll be happy to see that green also promotes serenity.
• Confused or indecisive?  Blue is also believed to improve focus and clarity, helping you flow into your day easily without worry.
• Sad or joyless?  Choose yellow to promote happiness and energy and invite it into your mouth, nose, ears, eyes, belly, and center of the brain to activate a joyful boost. Reflect on a joyful memory that makes you smile , and surround it in a circle of yellow light. Breathe with yellow, relish this moment of joy, and bring it to the next activity you take part in. Bright orange can also stimulate optimism.
• Stagnant and needing change?  Choose turquoise and invite it into your arms, chest, hands, and feet to awaken inspiration and create a new beginning. Allow for the possibility of new energy coming to you and take an expansive breath to create space for this new chapter. Breathe with turquoise and let it serve as a reset button to refresh and invigorate you, bringing renewed hope.
• Hard on yourself? Choose pink, and invite its gentle, healing energy into the top of your head to the soles of your feet or from your feet up. Allow pink to envelop you in a balm of self-love and know that you are deserving and worthy. Imagine this rosy hue flowing through you and allow yourself to feel more accepting and kind deep into your core. Breathe with pink energy and know self-love is coming to your mind, body, and spirit. 
• Ease into your color meditation by slowing down your breathing and relaxing your body.
• Close your eyes, then slowly open them, and look gently at the center of a Fall leaf or a colorful object according to your needs.
• Invite the color to travel anywhere into your body.
• Imagine your body absorbing and receiving the color, envisioning it within you.
• Easily inhale and exhale, breathing with the color.
• No rushing or judgment – just notice how the color makes you feel.

If you don't "feel" any new awareness, don't worry. Meditation takes practice. Try again later with a different color and practice until you can visualize the color within to unleash your best self. When you gain color awareness, reciting a coordinating meditation with the color meditation will enhance your practice. Here are some additional ways to use the color to realign and support your inner consciousness.

• Wear certain hues: Dress for the mood you want to have by picking certain colors to change your headspace. When feeling drained or at a low ebb, grab an energizing red sweater. Feeling down on yourself? Rock that love-me-pink scarf. When looking to spark some joy, pop on sunshine-y yellow.
• Redecorate: Select furniture in specific colors, colored lights, or wall paint for ongoing mood and attitude readjusting.
• Take a walk: An awe walk focusing on all the colors around you can include the sky, leaves, feathered friends, or even colorful graffiti!

Continue embracing nature and color as you venture forth, carving out new ways to enrich your mental wellness.

What Trees Provide Us

Long after the majesty of Fall foliage fades, extracts from leaves, tree roots, bark, and fruits used in clean skin care products and body care provide beauty and wellness-enhancing effects year-round. As the trees release the old, dying leaves, we too can release things that no longer serve us, including old skincare routines! Here are a few beautiful examples of how trees continue to give well beyond the last brown leaf falling:

• Horse Chestnut Trees provide Horse Chestnut Extract in our gentle face cleanser and toner, Enzymo Spherides Peeling Cream, SpaTeen® Blemished Skin Cleanser and Moisturizer.
• African Karité Trees provide softening, moisturizing, and skin-protecting Shea Butter in our Rejuvenating Dry Skin Cream, YouthRenew™ Tinted Cream, Radiance Mask Collection, Lip Care, and all of our pro-aging smoothing body moisturizer formulas.
• Orange Trees provide Citrus Fruit and Peel Extracts, plus Sweet Orange Essential Oil and Mandarin Orange Essential Oil in Pevonia’s "C” Complexe with Oxyzomes, Multi-Active Foot Cream, Micro-Emulsified Massage Oil Anti-Stress, and Vitaminic Concentrate, moisturizing, illuminating, stimulating, and smoothing skin, while imparting delightfully refreshing aromas.
• Cinnamomum Camphora Trees, large evergreens native to Asia, provide the cooling, emollient properties of Camphor Leaf Extract and Bark Oil in the Tension Relief Gel and ProCorrective® Clear-Control Mask.
• Argan Trees give us Argan Oil used in our Hydrating Sunscreen Broad Spectrum SPF 40. Argan Stem Cells throughout the pro-aging Stem Cells Phyto-Elite® Collection protect and revitalize our own dermal stem cells, delivering rejuvenating, wrinkle-smoothing results.

Want your healthiest skin ever? Boost skin health with an expert consultation to address your unique needs and concerns. Visit Find A Spa for an oasis near you offering Pevonia!