Walks
“If you are in a bad mood go for a walk. If you are still in a bad mood go for another walk.” -Hippocrates
“Do you want to go for a walk?”
This has to be one of my favorite questions of all time. It means casual strolls through our neighborhood with family members or a close friend. It means stretching my legs and getting a change of view, some fresh air, dappled light through the trees. Sometimes it can mean a deep, meaningful conversation with someone or, if I’m asking the proverbial question to myself, it means time alone to think through stuff that’s going on at the moment.
I don’t know about you but I seem to do some of my best thinking when I’m walking. That’s one perk, but according to a report issued by Harvard Medical School there are many more. The report says that walking can actually do more to combat disease and various health issues than almost any other preventative. For example, they found that walking just two and a half hours a week (that boils down to roughly 22 minutes a day) could reduce your risk of heart disease by as much as 30% (McManus, 2021).
While most of us are engaging in more and more screen time every day, less and less of us are walking regularly. It’s becoming easy to forget what we could do away from Netflix and videogames, Tik Tok and Instagram. So much time spent with technology also means that we get disconnected from our own bodies. Walking brings us back to earth and connects us with ourselves at the same time. It roots us.
Author Virginia Woolf wrote beautifully about the way that being in our own home reinforces who we are and how we perceive ourselves to be. While walking though, Woolf says, “We are no longer quite ourselves… we shed the self our friends know us by and become part of that vast… army of anonymous trampers.” Walking, she would point out, allows us to “shed ourselves” and join the current of the larger world.
But here’s the beautiful, cosmic catch: walking also makes our community more real to us. When we walk where we live, we get to see the homes of the people who live around us. We might get to see the people themselves. Not all homes are built with front porches anymore and a lot of homes have attached garages that prevent neighbors from the natural interaction that comes from seeing each other in passing, but there is still yard work to be done. There are still golden moments to be caught if you happen to be walking at the right time.
Walking is good for the body and the heart. We need to hear the laughter of the little kids three houses down from us and wave to the man who always sits out on his apartment balcony with a newspaper. Who knows who we might meet or what we might see. Walking is a way back, to ourselves and to our community. Perhaps Gandalf said it best when he said, “You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to.”
References:
McManus, M. R. (2021). What you should know about the most underrated form of exercise. CNN Health. Retrieved from https://www.nbcnews.com/better/health/why-walking-most-underrated-form-exercise-ncna797271
Steinhilber, J. (2017). Why walking is the most underrated form of exercise. Better by Today. Retrieved from https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/06/health/walking-benefits-exercise-wellness/index.html.
Challenges/Points:
Walking is one of the most easily accessible, widely beneficial forms of exercise that we can engage in.
When we go on a walk we are unplugged from technology and aware of the world around us. We connect more deeply to ourselves and to the community that we live in.
Practice safe walking by staying in well lit areas and with a friend if the place or time is questionable.
Questions:
How much time do you spend in a vehicle each week compared to walking?
What if you set a goal to go on one walk a day for a week?
The next time you want to hang out with a friend, try asking if they’d like to go for a walk! Where could you walk together? Pick some places, look up local parks. Before you know it, you’ll have a favorite place to fill with memories.
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