Walking

“There are many reasons to walk for exercise,” says Ann Green, M.S., past heptathlon world athlete, yoga teacher and fitness studio owner. “Walking improves fitness, cardiac health, alleviates depression and fatigue, improves mood, creates less stress on joints and reduces pain, can prevent weight gain, reduce risk for cancer and chronic disease, improve endurance, circulation, and posture, and the list goes on…” According to one Stanford University study, “walking opens up the free flow of ideas, and it is a simple and robust solution to the goals of increasing creativity and increasing physical activity.”

How??? How does a physical act, one that we probably don’t get enough of nowadays, result in cognitive gains? It appears that the mental and physical aspect to our lives are linked. There is a great video by CGPGrey (YouTuber) that explains the relationship like a dynamo: either you can stimulate the physical with the mental, or the mental with the physical. Since we as humans have problems “willing” ourselves into a better mood, it is often easier to find the motivation, discipline, social pressure, or self-image forces to get some exercise, thereby executing the latter half of the Grey Dynamo.

Most ideal is to walk in places where there is greenery, no screens, and a place to think. The smells wafting on the winds, the sounds of a dozen different creatures reverberating through the air, and nothing else heard at all are my favorites. Why should this be the case? We work tirelessly to surround ourselves with screens, with entertainment, with friends and family–why to humans have a desire to go off and be alone in nature?

Part of me thinks its a reminder. The same feeling you get when you look up at the galactic scattering of stars on a clear night. The feeling of smallness, or rather, of not being “greater-than” is incredibly attractive. Despite our modern way of life, we, no, I, yearn for that connection to the huge and endlessly complex system called Nature. This isn’t anything new. I’m no Thoreau. Do other animals feel the same way about Nature as humans do? Most dogs do for sure: they are sure to get incredibly excited when one mentions just the word “walk” or “lets go!” in whatever language they understand.

Maybe dogs (and other animals?) love it because of it’s new-ness. Indeed, one can observe the amazingness of Nature at the large scale as well as the small. What is a small bit of algae if compared to a paramecium? It must look like a forest! What is the Amazon when viewed from the moon? It must look like a small bit of algae! What is a human, walking in Nature when viewed/observed/nearby to all the plants, animals, and elements that call it home? He or she must look like an alien, like a young adult returning to their hometown after some time away and walking down an old street after the parents went ahead and sold the childhood home. Can we return? Will it ever be our home again? No, only visit. After all, there must have been a reason we escaped to the safe, steady, prison of civilization from the individual’s perspective.

Walking among Nature, then, is a privilege. I am at a loss to think of any issue more important to our species than maintaining our relationship and responsible stewardship of Nature. Long, long before God bequeathed Moses his Ten Commandments, his first command to Adam was to take care of the creations of God. Since we have not yet attained the capability to reach other planets (which would certainly not be as hospitable as this one), we must find a way to progress as a species and protect the natural world. We probably shouldn’t leave this planet either, until we figure that part out that is.