Can We Normalize Meditation Breaks on Family Hikes?

When hiking, I used to power walk to the top for a breathless peek at the view. Then, my toddler taught me to exhale along the way.

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(Photo: Canva)

For three euphoric months, a newly opened climbing gym near my house allowed me to bring a dozen rowdy toddlers from my kids’ friend group to strap into their sit harnesses for a brief, adorably awkward clamber up the rock wall. Alas, all good things must come to an end, especially the ones that should never have been allowed in the first place.

Just as we were gearing up for new enrollments, the gym owners informed us that their insurance agent cautioned them against welcoming such young aspiring mountaineers into their space. As a twin toddler mom suddenly left with an adventurous activity void and a gaggle of rambunctious littles, I set out to find the one guide in San Miguel de Allende who would agree to pivot, taking a nature-loving group of families, with children ages two to four, out into the wilderness.

Before officially gathering folks for the next outing, I chatted over coffee with Aleph—the only brave leader who agreed to adapt his “bioenergetic” hiking tours for our little ones. Youthful and energetic, but not yet a parent himself, his eyes widened as I explained that whatever calculations he had for time and distance needed to be doubled, scrambling was out of the question, and “beginner” routes should be considered “intermediate or advanced” when contemplating how to structure the day. Three hours later, we had a plan, and before I left the café, 15 families had agreed to join us for the first experimental family hike.

Things got off to a running start; our tiny trekkers traced their hands along rows of delicate, papery scarlet sage, marveling at small insects. As predicted, many of them needed to be carried through the steep, slippery patches, and the more timid children asked to be hoisted onto a parent’s shoulders for longer stretches.

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Three-quarters of the way back down the mountain, after we somehow recovered all the missing socks and mandarin skins tossed aside as the kids cooled off under the trickling waterfalls, one of my sons randomly plopped down on a rock and closed his eyes.

Aleph and I had lost the group and were pulling up the rear by quite a distance. Slightly irritated, overheated, and eager to be in a seated or prone position at the journey’s end, I turned to him and sighed, “What are you doing, love?” Squinting at me in his monk-like stillness, he replied quietly, as if it were blatantly obvious: “I’m meditating, Mamá.”

Aleph and I erupted into laughter, mostly at our own expense. Just minutes before, we were alternating carrying my child down the mountain to hurry things along (though he was keen to walk on his own), anxious about having fractured the pack. We looked at each other, dropped our bags, and stopped trying to text the others. Instead, we sat down on the neighboring rocks.

“How do you do it? Can you show me?” Aleph asked my two-year-old son sweetly. “Oh yes, it’s easy,” he told us. “You just breathe in and out. If you want, you can put your hands like this.”

Copying him, we touched the tips of our index fingers to the tips of our thumbs and extended our remaining fingers in Gyan Mudra (The Mudra of Wisdom). We “locked” our energy in, just as he was doing, and I swear to you, prana began to rush through me so forcefully that I nearly wept. “My sweet little Buddha baby,” I whispered to my son as we all eased out of spontaneous meditation.

When we arrived at the bottom, long after the others, nobody cared. My husband and my other son were practicing call and response with a herd of cows off in the distance. Some families had gone home. The ones who stayed were delighted to see us and swore that it hadn’t felt like a long wait at all. All that anxiety in my head was for nothing.

Mid-hike meditations are my family’s new favorite pastime. Not even that well-earned sigh at the end of the odyssey (the one where you finally reach the parking lot) can compare. Sometimes you just need to stop, breathe, and take it all in.