Above all, do not lose your desire to walk: every
day, I walk myself into a state of well-being and
walk away from every illness; I have walked myself
into my best thoughts, and I know of no thought so
burdensome that one cannot walk away from it.
Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855),
from a letter to his sister-in-law Henriette
AGE MORE SLOWLY, LOVE MORE, AND SPARK CREATIVITY
Opening a window is good, but going out into nature is even better. It is normal to feel refreshed by a walk outside; it’s a way to dust the cobwebs from your mind, welcome a new perspective on the day or on life, and get the blood flowing. Taking a walk is all about getting a change of scene and, ideally, encountering a little green.
Any kind of walking is good for you, but outdoors is best. You will get even more vitamin D—the sunshine vitamin—from that than from sitting near an open window. You will also experience a better physical and mental workout navigating uneven outdoor terrain rather than the consistent surface of a treadmill. And there’s a bonus! It is hard to be on a smartphone or other device when you are walking outside, so you will also give yourself a break from screens. There are many other benefits to going for a walk. You will be able to greet and maybe get to know other walkers, thereby connecting with people and building community, and you can do your own small part for the environment by picking up a bit of trash to improve the aesthetics of your route.
Chairs are the new cigarettes
Healthcare practitioners are saying that chairs are the new cigarettes. Seriously—too much sitting can kill you! Or, as Kierkegaard put it, “the more one sits still, the closer one comes to feeling ill.”1
Research from the University of California found that sitting for too long—like smoking—increases the risk of diabetes, heart disease, and even early death. The researchers found a connection between sedentary behavior and thinning in parts of the brain that are responsible for forming memories.2 This can be a precursor to dementia and other types of cognitive decline, and middle-aged and older adults should be especially aware of it.
A famous comprehensive study published in the Journal of Clinical Nutrition analyzing 240,000 Americans between the ages of 50 and 71 showed a direct correlation between sitting and mortality.3 The more we sit, the sooner we die. It sounds dire indeed, but the good news is that the converse is also true: By getting up and moving we delay the onset of many age-related problems.
For example, the effect of aerobic and ambulatory exercise on Alzheimer’s disease was studied by scientists at the University of Kansas. Half the test subjects engaged in walking and brisk movement, while the other half did toning and stretching exercises. All showed some improvement in tests for physical skills, but what is fascinating is that “some of the walkers significantly increased their scores on cognitive tests that focused on thinking and remembering. The brain’s hippocampus, the area most closely linked to memory retrieval, had in some cases actually grown.”4 Think about that: We can develop our brains by taking regular walks.
That’s just the beginning. Walking also helps with:
• The reduction of inflammation, osteoporosis, and cardiovascular disease;
• Enhanced balance, posture, and joint fluidity, and even a lowered incidence of vascular dementia;
• Improved digestive health and a colon that functions better;
• “Good” cholesterol levels, and lowers triglycerides or “bad” cholesterol.5
It has an especially significant impact on the vagus, the nerve that connects our brain to our body, branching out to our primary organs (heart, lungs, and digestive tract). It’s the nerve that makes the mind/body connection. When you activate the vagus nerve by walking, yoga, deep breathing, steady stretching, or any kind of rhythmic exercise, it regulates your adrenal gland, which produces hormones in stressful situations, and modulates blood pressure and the flow of blood to the organs, especially the heart, allowing them to function more efficiently and effectively.6
Happier in motion
It’s not just in our bodies that we see the benefi ts of fresh air and movement; with physical fi tness comes psychological fi tness. Poets, painters, scientists, and effi ciency experts have all commented on how outdoor exercise in nature works as a balm for our minds and a way to de-stress. How many times have you taken a walk around the block to cool off? Or sent a whiny child outside to play?
Former competitive racewalker and cancer survivor Carolyn Scott Kortge supports this idea in her book Healing Walks for Hard Times: Quiet Your Mind, Strengthen Your Body, and Get Your Life Back (2010). She reveals how taking a walk is about far more than exercise; it can serve as “a form of stress release and healing that supports medical treatment and emotional recovery.” The basic ambulatory act increases our exhalations and inhalations, causing us to release endorphins—from the term “endogenous morphine”—that trigger a natural opioid effect, making us feel happier and more optimistic, while decreasing our perception of pain. It’s those hormones that cause the wellknown “runner’s high.”
Numerous studies have shown that walking encourages the front region of our brain—the hypothalamus, which controls temperature, thirst, and hunger, and affects sleep and emotions—to manufacture oxytocin, often known as the love hormone. This acts as a neurotransmitter in the brain, stimulating feelings of empathy and affection. And with love often comes happiness. Walking can make us more joyful. A series of studies by the University of Michigan showed that this was true no matter one’s age—from schoolchildren to the elderly.7
These benefits to our health have to do with overriding rumination—our tendency to dwell on troubling thoughts or worry about everything from finances to our child’s hurt feelings. These are the kinds of thought tinged with sorrow that we can’t seem to let go of. Long-term rumination, marked by activity in the part of the brain that controls emotions and the personality (the prefrontal cortex), can lead to depression.
Walking in nature has been shown to decrease rumination. A Stanford University study found that taking a ninety-minute walk through a natural environment as opposed to an urban one reduces rumination and consequently the neural activity in the part of the brain that is linked to the risk of mental illness.8 Findings such as these reinforce why green spaces are so crucial for good mental health, especially for those of us who live in urban areas.
When it comes to happiness, how you walk matters. According to the Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry, people who were instructed to walk in a happier manner, with a lively, energetic gait, experienced more positive thoughts (as indicated by biofeedback testing, which monitors indicators like heart and breathing rate and blood pressure), recalled them more readily, and had fewer depressive tendencies.9 It is like the expression “acting as if”: If you act as if you feel better, you begin to feel (at least a little) better. A simplified explanation is the adage “the neurons that fire together, wire together.” By thinking happier thoughts, we become happier thinkers.
Myriad articles and studies detail the cognitive benefits of interacting with nature, in part because it captures our attention subtly (“Is that a bluebird?”), as opposed to walking in an urban environment (“Watch out for that car!”). This was quantified by researchers from the University of Michigan, who examined memory tests of students after sending them for a brief walk in an arboretum. They showed a 20% improvement in memory after interacting with nature, even in wintry weather, so it was the outdoors and not specifically the greenery that seemed to help.10
A study presented in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2015 supported this. Its researchers found that walking in a park reduced blood flow to a part of the brain that causes rumination, thereby improving positive focus.11 I like to ponder, and perhaps dwell, and sometimes that can get overwhelming, so this study struck a chord for me.
150 minutes per week
The great thing about reaping the benefits of walking is that we don’t have to do very much to change our health for the better. In most of the research I read (and which you can find details of at the end of this book), 150 seems to be the magic number: People who engaged in 150 minutes of walking per week showed marked improvements and benefits. So, if you can, make moving for at least 25 minutes six times a week your goal. Think about walking the dog or strolling to the market, getting off the subway or bus a stop before your destination, taking the scenic route home, running up and down the stairs in your apartment building on rainy days. All these things can change your life significantly.
Of course, the more you walk, the better, but experts say that while it’s good to aim for a whole lot of steps, your focus should be on sustaining consistent daily minimums, not sporadically pushing yourself to reach a record number of steps. A sports tracking device or smartphone app could come in handy with this. It will help you to keep track of time and see how quickly 25 minutes can pass when you’re both in motion and in nature.
Rambles, treks, and wanderings
In his essay “The Etiquette of Freedom” in The Practice of the Wild (1990), the poet and ecologist Gary Snyder describes walking as “the great adventure, the first meditation, a practice of heartiness and soul primary to humankind … the exact balance of spirit and humility.” Recent Harvard University studies on green space and health confirm what he said: that walking heals more than our bodies and minds, but also our spirits, even our creative spirits.
Writers from Henry David Thoreau to Rebecca Solnit, and from Jean-Jacques Rousseau to Jane Austen, have pointed out the link between walking and creativity. Two researchers at Stanford University, Marily Oppezzo and Daniel Schwartz, analyzed this theory and found that walking—whether outdoors or indoors—enhanced creativity, especially when brainstorming new ideas. It didn’t matter whether the subjects walked on a treadmill facing a bare wall or out in nature; test results showed that participants who walked before being asked to find creative solutions to problems performed twice as well as those who remained sedentary.12
Walking outdoors can be especially good for the spirit, which is perhaps why people have always been drawn to pilgrimages such as the Camino de Santiago (popularized during the Middle Ages as a route of Christian pilgrimage, the paths through northwest Spain are still a favorite among hikers of all faiths) or the trail to the Shinto shrine at the top of the Nachi Falls in Wakayama Prefecture, southern Japan. This is a way of embodying the sacred journey, as our inner, mental voyage is reflected and marked by an outer, physical one.
A trudge through a vacant lot can be as beneficial as a stroll through a meadow, if it’s all that is available. Whether it is a pilgrimage or a trip around the block, try to find time each day to engage with the world around you, being present and appreciating the simple beauties of nature. Try taking off your headphones, or—and this is really hard for me, because I like a purpose, whether it is a trip to the market or exercising the dog—try ambling, walking without a purpose or destination in mind.
There are many reasons to recommend the writer and former Zen Buddhist monk Clark Strand’s beautiful meditation on sleep, dark, and light, Waking Up to the Dark (2015). He writes about how our nightly patterns break into three parts when we are removed from artificial light for a significant amount of time: about four hours of deep sleep, two hours of awakened quiet rest, then four more hours of sleep. We’ll go into the reasons for this, and other matters of light and dark, in Chapter 9, but meanwhile one of my favorite things about Strand’s book is his descriptions of walking at night: “If someone asked me why I rise to walk at night, I couldn’t answer except to say that I do it for its own sake, for the sake of rising and walking and praying in the dark. That time of contemplation and communion is its own reward. It creates its own culture in the soul.”13
Ever since I read Strand’s treatise about the things we can see without artificial light, I’ve been taking little walks in the dark—not the mountain hikes he describes, but around my house or into the backyard in darkness. It’s a kind of meditation: By removing visual distractions we can become more present, more mindful of where we are.
The Vietnamese Buddhist teacher and peace activist Thich Nhat Hanh wrote in Present Moment, Wonderful Moment (1990):
The mind can go in a thousand directions.
But on this beautiful path, I walk in peace.
With each step, a gentle wind blows.
With each step, a flower blooms.14
Like exercise, the benefits of meditation are many, and scientists and doctors are always finding new ones, from easing stress to improving focus to facilitating healing on all levels from heart health to immunity. There is a way to combine both exercise and meditation, and you can do it outside in nature, whether that nature is a sylvan glade, a seashore path, or the sidewalk between apartment buildings. Here is a walking meditation practice based on the Zen technique kinhin, which might seem familiar if you have ever intentionally walked a labyrinth. It can be done inside or outdoors, but try for as much fresh air and greenery as possible. It’s best if you plan your route in advance. Knowing your destination means you won’t have to make decisions and can pay attention to each step:
• Stand up straight and take a deep breath.
• Hold your hands in such a way that they don’t swing around but won’t cramp either. I like to fold mine in front of me, the left held in the right.
• Synchronize your breath with your pace. Inhale and step slowly and deliberately, exhale and take another step.
• Begin to walk, paying attention to lifting your foot and placing it on the ground, then lifting your other foot and placing it on the ground.
• Continue to walk in this careful, controlled manner. Don’t force it, but don’t saunter either.
• As with any mindfulness practice, when thoughts arise, look at them and let them go. Don’t ignore, don’t judge.
As you walk, consider repeating this simple nature mantra, often recommended by Thich Nhat Hanh when he teaches:
“Breathing in, I know Mother Earth is in me.
Breathing out, I know Mother Earth is in me.”
