The Virtues of a Good Long Walk.
— “it is solved by walking.” This phrase refers to the 4th century Greek philosopher Diogenes’s response to the question of whether, Thor motion is real — he got up and walked. “It is solved by walking.” As it turns out, there are many other problems to which walking is the solution. For instance: In our culture of overwork, burnout, and exhaustion, how do we tap into our creativity, our wisdom, our capacity for wonder, our well-being and our ability to connect with what we really value?.
By walking we move through the world not just physically, but also spiritually. Often by “taking a walk” we mean that we’re not walking to get anywhere in particular. But even when we are walking toward a destination, when we’re walking to connect two places, the in-between — the space, the interval — can be more important.
By Arianna Huffington, Contributor
Founder, The Huffington Post; Founder and CEO, Thrive Global
Solvitur ambulando — “it is solved by walking.” This phrase refers to the 4th-century-B.C. Greek philosopher Diogenes’s response to the question of whether motion is real — he got up and walked. “It is solved by walking.” As it turns out, there are many other problems and paradoxes to which walking is the solution.
For instance: In our culture of overwork, burnout, and exhaustion, in which we’re connected and distracted 24/7 from most things that are truly important in our lives, how do we tap into our creativity, our wisdom, our capacity for wonder, our well-being and our ability to connect with what we really value? Solvitur ambulando.
In my own life, for almost as long as I can remember, walking has frequently been the solution. When I was a girl growing up in Greece, my favorite poem was “Ithaca” by the Greek poet Cavafy. My sister Agapi and I had the poem memorized long before we could actually understand what it really meant. It opens: When you set out on the voyage to Ithaca,
pray that your journey may be long, full of adventure, full of knowledge.
Over the years, I came to realize that a journey — one that can also be full of adventure and knowledge — doesn’t have to involve planes and cars and passports. The benefits of a journey are always available simply by walking.
There are, of course, many takes on the virtues of walking.
For Thomas Jefferson, the purpose of walking was to clear the mind of thoughts. “The object of walking is to relax the mind,” he wrote. “You should therefore not permit yourself even to think while you walk. But divert your attention to the objects surrounding you.”
For others, like Nietzsche, walking was essential for thinking. “All truly great thoughts are conceived while walking,” he wrote in Twilight of the Idols. For Ernest Hemingway, walking was a way of developing his best thoughts while mulling a problem. “I would walk along the quais when I had finished work or when I was trying to think something out,” he wrote in A Moveable Feast”and “It was easier to think if I was walking and doing something or seeing people doing something that they understood.” For Jefferson, walking was also “the best possible exercise,” while for Henry David Thoreau, walking wasn’t just a means to an end, it was the end itself:
…the walking of which I speak has nothing in it akin to taking exercise… but is itself the enterprise and adventure of the day. If you get exercise, go in search of the springs of life. Think of a man’s swinging dumbbells for his health, when those springs are bubbling up in far-off pastures unsought by him!
Less subjective are the scientific studies that increasingly show the psychological benefits of walking and other forms of exercise to be very tangible. “It’s become clear that this is a good intervention, particularly for mild to moderate depression,” said Jasper Smits, a psychologist at Southern Methodist University. The results are so clear-cut that Smits and a colleague have written a guidebook for mental health professionals with advice on how to actually prescribe exercise for patients. And there is no page-long list of side effects accompanying this prescription. This tool for dealing with depression is no small thing when you consider that, according to the World Health Organization, over 350 million people worldwide suffer from depression, and that since 1988 prescriptions for antidepressants have gone up 400 percent in the U.S.
Psychologist Laurel Lippert Fox has taken the idea one step further (pun slightly intended) and actually has walking sessions with her patients. As she says, “It’s so much more dynamic than sitting in your Eames chair.”
Research has also shown similar benefits to simply being around nature. One study showed that spending time in natural settings makes us more generous and more community-oriented, a conclusion that has “implications not only for city planning but also for indoor design and architecture,” according to the study’s co-author Richard Ryan of the University of Rochester Medical Center. Another study by Dutch researchers showed that those who live within one kilometer of a park or wooded area suffer lower rates of depression and anxiety.
If we don’t live amidst trees and greenery, we can always take a walk through them. When scaled up, this practice could have real societal consequences. “As health-care costs spiral out of control, it behooves us to think about our green space in terms of preventive health care,” said Dr. Kathryn Kotrla of the Texas A&M College of Medicine. “This highlights very clearly that our Western notion of body-mind duality is entirely false. The study shows that we are a whole organism, and when we get healthy that means our body and our mind get healthy.”
On the flip side, it turns out that sitting is as bad for us as walking is good for us. Just take a look at this terrifying infographic, entitled, appropriately, “Sitting Is Killing You.” Among the key statistics: Sitting for six or more hours a day makes you 40 percent more likely to die within 15 years than someone who sits for fewer than three hours a day. Sitting is also implicated in weight gain, as sitting down slows down enzymes that help burn fat by 90 percent.
After two hours of sitting, your good cholesterol drops 20 percent.
And those with sitting jobs have twice the rate of cardiovascular disease as those with standing jobs. Perhaps our prelude to telling someone some bad news should instead be,
“Hey, are you standing up?”
But the benefits of getting up and walking go beyond our health. A 2010 study shows that walking three times a week at one’s own natural pace for 40 minutes increases brain connectivity and cognitive performance and helps combat the effects of age. And according to Art Kramer, a psychology professor at the University of Illinois who led the study, higher brain connectivity leads to increased executive control, which we use for things like planning ahead. So it’s not just the ruminative, creative type of thinking that’s enhanced by walking — it’s the focused, get-things-done type, as well.
Even more intriguing is the link between the act of walking and thinking. A study in the European Journal of Developmental Psychology found that cognitive performance was increased when the subject was actually walking. “We conclude that the interaction of walking and cognitive performance is influenced by sharing resources between two tasks,” the report states, “and that performance improvements in cognition may be caused by an exercise-induced activation of resources.”
Though he didn’t have the science to back it up, Henry David Thoreau was onto this truth long before the scientists. “Methinks that the moment my legs begin to move, my thoughts begin to flow,” he wrote. More recently, in Wanderlust, author Rebecca Solnit noted the connection between the act of walking and how we experience the world. “Walking shares with making and working that crucial element of engagement of the body and the mind with the world,” she wrote, “of knowing the world through the body and the body through the world.”
This touches on a concept I became fascinated with during a trip to Japan this past spring. For someone interested in traditions and spiritual practices that intersect with mindfulness, Japan is, of course, an amazing place — from the elaborate tea ceremonies to the ubiquitous local shrines. But one that I was particularly captivated by was the importance in the Japanese aesthetic of the concept Ma, which can be loosely translated as the essential space or interval between things that exists most fully when it’s experienced.
By walking we move through the world not just physically, but also spiritually. Often by “taking a walk” we mean that we’re not walking to get anywhere in particular. But even when we are walking toward a destination, when we’re walking to connect two places, the in-between — the space, the interval — can be more important.
In The Art of Looking Sideways,
Alan Fletcher talks about the idea of space as something more than a void:
Space is substance. Cézanne painted and modeled space. Giacometti sculpted by “taking the fat off space.” Mallarmé conceived poems with absences as well as words. Ralph Richardson asserted that acting lay in pauses… Isaac Stern described music as “that little bit between each note — silences which give the form.”
Walking is how we move through our world; language and writing are how we articulate that experience.
“Words inscribe a text in the same way that a walk inscribes space,” writes Geoff Nicholson in The Lost Art of Walking:
The History, Science, and Literature of Pedestrianism. “Writing is one way of making the world our own, and walking is another.” But to fully experience the world around us, we first have to be able to free ourselves from the distractions that are constantly begging for our attention. Even the supremely focused Henry David Thoreau struggled to stay in the moment:
I am alarmed when it happens that I have walked a mile into the woods bodily, without getting there in spirit.
In my afternoon walk I would forget all my morning occupations and my obligations to Society.
But it sometimes happens that I cannot easily shake off the village. The thought of some work will run in my head and I am not where my body is — I am out of my senses…. What business do I have in the woods, if I am thinking of something out of the woods?
“Shake off the village” — what a great way of expressing a vitally important human need. Since Thoreau’s time, the village has grown exponentially bigger and become more intrusive and seemingly intimate — giving us the semblance of connection without any of the real benefits of connection. Technology has enabled the village to become exceptionally good at not allowing us to shake it off.
With the advent of the smartphone, getting away from it all is no longer as easy as simply getting up and walking away. And, increasingly, people are making the choice not to even try to shake off the village — surrendering to a life of distractions, with the result that, as Thoreau put it, we are living much of our lives out of our senses.
Wayne Curtis calls them “the digital dead[,] shuffling slowly, their eyes affixed to a small screen in their hands.” He cites a University of Washington study that focused on a single intersection in Seattle. The study found that one in three pedestrians were distracted, by either typing or talking on a phone or with earbuds in their ears. And it took those who were distracted almost 20 percent longer to cross the street. Another study found that those texting were 33 percent slower getting to a planned destination.
This slowness and distraction can have detrimental effects.
According to an article by Jim Gorzelany, “the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission says 1,152 pedestrians were treated in emergency rooms during 2011 after being injured while using a cellphone or some other portable electronic device.”
In trying to lessen the hold of technology on our lives, we need all the help we can get. Some among us are able to switch their devices on and off, go cold turkey for periods of time or go on periodic digital diets. For those without that kind of willpower, technology can sometimes be used to help us deal with technology. Curtis writes about an app called Serendipitor, which, the developers explain, “is an alternative navigation app… that helps you find something by looking for something else.” It does this by introducing “small slippages and minor displacements within an otherwise optimized and efficient route.”
Curtis’s verdict: “In an obscure kind of way, it actually helps me stop and pay attention.”
But even better is leaving all technology behind, forgoing ersatz connection for the real thing. “I suspect the greatest mental benefits of walking are explained not by what it is, but by what it isn’t,” writes Oliver Burkeman. “When you go outside, you cease what you’re doing, and stopping trying to achieve something is often key to achieving it.”
When I was living in Los Angeles, many of my best ideas were conceived while hiking. Whenever I could, I would have hiking meetings instead of sit-down meetings. I also had a regular group of friends I hiked with, and our rule was that whoever was in the best shape would do most of the talking on the way up, and the rest would do the talking on the way down. Silicon Valley executive Nilofer Merchant calls this method “walk the talk.” Meaning, if you’ve got to talk to someone in person, why not doing it while walking? “What I love is that you’re literally facing your problem or situation together when you walk side by side with someone,” she said. “I love that people can’t be checking e-mail or Twitter during walking meetings. You’re awake to what’s happening around you, your senses are heightened and you walk away with something office meetings rarely give you — a sense of joy.”
How many times have you had a sense of joy in a stale conference room while half-listening to an endless PowerPoint presentation? Maybe the connection between our minds and our legs is that one of them is going to wander. Sit still and our minds want to ramble — get up and start walking and our minds can slow down and be focused.
Perhaps forcing the brain to process a new environment allows it to engage more fully.
In Iconoclast: A Neuroscientist Reveals How to Think Differently, Gregory Berns writes that “new insights come from people and new environments — any circumstance in which the brain has a hard time predicting what will come next.”
So it truly seems like there is no end to the problems that can be solved by walking. It makes us healthier, it makes us fitter, it enhances every kind of cognitive performance, from creativity to planning and scheduling. Best of all, it reconnects us to ourselves. And there is nothing paradoxical about that.
Walk in Nature: A walk in the park may soothe the mind and, in the process, change the workings of our brains in ways that improve our mental health, according to an interesting new study of the physical effects on the brain of visiting nature.
Most of us today live in cities and spend far less time outside in green, natural spaces than people did several generations ago. City dwellers also have a higher risk for anxiety, depression and other mental illnesses than people living outside urban centers, studies show.
These developments seem to be linked to some extent, according to a growing body of research. Various studies have found that urban dwellers with little access to green spaces have a higher incidence of psychological problems than people living near parks and that city dwellers who visit natural environments have lower levels of stress hormones immediately afterward than people who have not recently been outside.
But just how a visit to a park or other green space might alter mood has been unclear.
Does experiencing nature actually change our brains in some way that affects our emotional health?
That possibility intrigued Gregory Bratman, a graduate student at the Emmett Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources at Stanford University, who has been studying the psychological effects of urban living. In an earlier study published last month, he and his colleagues found that volunteers who walked briefly through a lush, green portion of the Stanford campus were more attentive and happier afterward than volunteers who strolled for the same amount of time near heavy traffic.
But that study did not examine the neurological mechanisms that might underlie the effects of being outside in nature. So for the new study, which was published last week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Mr. Bratman and his collaborators decided to closely scrutinize what effect a walk might have on a person’s tendency to brood.
Brooding, which is known among cognitive scientists as morbid rumination, is a mental state familiar to most of us, in which we can’t seem to stop chewing over the ways in which things are wrong with ourselves and our lives. This broken-record fretting is not healthy or helpful. It can be a precursor to depression and is disproportionately common among city dwellers compared with people living outside urban areas, studies show.
Perhaps most interesting for the purposes of Mr. Bratman and his colleagues, however, such rumination also is strongly associated with increased activity in a portion of the brain known as the subequal prefrontal cortex.
If the researchers could track activity in that part of the brain before and after people visited nature, Mr. Bratman realized, they would have a better idea about whether and to what extent nature changes people’s minds. Bratman and his colleagues first gathered 38 healthy, adult city dwellers and asked them to complete a questionnaire to determine their normal level of morbid rumination.
The researchers also checked for brain activity in each volunteer’s subequal prefrontal cortex, using scans that track blood flow through the brain. Greater blood flow to parts of the brain usually signals more activity in those areas.
Then the scientists randomly assigned half of the volunteers to walk for 90 minutes through a leafy, quiet, parklike portion of the Stanford campus or next to a loud, hectic, multi-lane highway in Palo Alto. The volunteers were not allowed to have companions or listen to music. They were allowed to walk at their own pace.
Immediately after completing their walks, the volunteers returned to the lab and repeated both the questionnaire and the brain scan. As might have been expected, walking along the highway had not soothed people’s minds. Blood flow to their subequal prefrontal cortex was still high and their broodiness scores were unchanged.
But the volunteers who had strolled along the quiet, tree-lined paths showed slight but meaningful improvements in their mental health, according to their scores on the questionnaire. They were not dwelling on the negative aspects of their lives as much as they had been before the walk. They also had less blood flow to the subequal prefrontal cortex.
That portion of their brains were quieter.
These results “strongly suggest that getting out into natural environments” could be an easy and almost immediate way to improve moods for city dwellers, Mr. Bratman said.
But of course many questions remain, he said, including how much time in nature is sufficient or ideal for our mental health, as well as what aspects of the natural world are most soothing. Is it the greenery, quiet, sunniness, loamy smells, all of those, or something else that lifts our moods? Do we need to be walking or otherwise physically active outside to gain the fullest psychological benefits? Should we be alone or could companionship amplify mood enhancements?
“There’s a tremendous amount of study that still needs to be done,” Mr. Bratman said.
But in the meantime, he pointed out, there is little downside to strolling through the nearest park, and some chance that you might beneficially muffle, at least for a while, your subequal prefrontal cortex.
Spend Time in Nature to Reduce Stress and Anxiety.
Keep Outside in Mind for Less Stress!
Spending time in nature can help relieve stress and anxiety, improve your mood, and boost feelings of happiness and wellbeing. Whatever you call it – forest bathing, ecotherapy, mindfulness in nature, green time or the wilderness cure — humans evolved in the great outdoors, and your brain benefits from a journey back to nature.
Get Out: Have you been feeling down lately? A little sluggish, stressed out, or maybe wondering, “What’s life all about?”
Here’s another question: How much time have you spent in nature lately?
The answer to these two questions might be more closely related than you’d think.
The modern way we live has changed radically from life in the savanna, but our brains have mostly stayed the same. We still have a deep connection with nature, and research shows that if we don’t nourish that bond despite our technological advancements, we may suffer in many ways.1
Feel Better: If you’re able to, get back to nature to energize your mind and body.
Depressed: If you’re feeling blue, try going outside to green, natural spaces. A stroll in the woods has been shown to help combat depression, and even just the view of the forest from a hospital room helps patients who are feeling down.2 Head for the hills if you need a boost to your mood.
Stressed: Nature presents scenes that gently capture your attention instead of suddenly snatching it, calming your nerves instead of frazzling them.3
Anxious: You probably know that exercise is good for your state of mind. But did you know that working out in nature helps to reduce anxiety.4 Among other benefits, even more than going to an indoor gym?5 Consider hitting some trails to get the best mental bang for your buck.
Self-Involved: If you dwell on your problems and just can’t stop, a walk through a meadow might put the brakes on the thought train circling through your head. Research shows that a 90-minute walk in nature lowers activity in the part of the brain linked to negative rumination.6
Fatigued: Are you constantly multitasking at work as you switch between customers and phone calls, or click from spreadsheets to presentations? Even at home, you might face a combination of kids, chores and devices vying for your attention. Your prefrontal cortex can only take so much distraction before it needs a recharge. Luckily, time in nature has been shown to restore mental abilities like short term memory and processing 3D images based on drawings.7
Uninspired: Changing the scenery is a great way to get the creative juices flowing, and nature offers stimuli that you won’t find while staring at a screen. In one example, spending four days in nature improved problem-solving skills by 50%. If you haven’t found a way to tackle that next big project at work, or an obstacle that’s impeding your personal goals, try noodling on it in the great outdoors.7
Antisocial: Time in nature can help with your personal relationships, too. Natural beauty results in more prosocial behaviors, like generosity and empathy.8
Disconnected: One of the most basic human needs is to feel that you belong and you’re part of a larger tribe. But studies show that this concept goes beyond human relationships alone. Time in nature results in a sense of belonging to the wider world that is vital for mental health.9
Angsty: At times, you might feel lost, and begin to wonder what life is all about. A dose of awe might remind you just how wondrous the world is. Nature provides trees that were hundreds of years old before you were even born, towering mountains that touch the clouds and a sky full of uncountable stars. When it comes to awe-inspiring awesomeness, nature leaves our jaws dropping and spines tingling, and rekindles the realization that we’re a tiny part of an incredible universe. What’s more powerful than that?10
Consider seeing a mental health professional if your symptoms are serious, but if you’re feeling a tinge of any of the blues listed above, try something like:
Add a daily walk on a local hiking trail to your regimen.
Go on a bike ride around your neighborhood.
Sources:
1 Capaldi C, Dopko RL, Zelenski J. The relationship between nature connectedness and happiness: a meta-analysis. Frontiers in Psychology. 2014. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00976.
2 Morita E, Fukuda S, Nagano J, et al. Psychological effects of forest environments on healthy adults: Shinrin-yoku (forest-air bathing, walking) as a possible method of stress reduction. Public Health. 2007;121:54–63. doi: 10.1016/j.puhe.2006.05.024.
3 Pearson DG, Craig T. The great outdoors? Exploring the mental health benefits of natural environments. Frontiers in Psychology. 2014;5:1178. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2014.01178.
4 Mackay J, James G&N. The effect of “green exercise” on state anxiety and the role of exercise duration, intensity, and greenness: A quasi-experimental study. Psychology of Sport and Exercise. 2010;11:238-245. doi: 10.1016/j.psychsport.2010.01.002.
5 Thompson Coon J,Boddy K, Stein K, et al. Does Participating in Physical Activity in Outdoor Natural Environments Have a Greater Effect on Physical and Mental Wellbeing than Physical Activity Indoors? A Systematic Review. Environmental Science & Technology. 2011(45);5:1761-1772. DOI: 10.1021/es102947t
6 Bratman GN, Hamilton JP, Hahn KS, et al. Nature experience reduces rumination and subgenual prefrontal cortex activation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 2015(112);28:8567-8572. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1510459112.
7 Atchley RA, Strayer DL, Atchley P. Creativity in the Wild: Improving Creative Reasoning through Immersion in Natural Settings. de Fockert J, ed. PLoS ONE. 2012;7(12):e51474. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0051474.
8 Zhang JW, Piff PK, Iyer R, et al. An occasion for unselfing: Beautiful nature leads to prosociality. Journal of Environmental Psychology. 2014;37:61-72. doi: 10.1016/j.jenvp.2013.11.008
9 Mayer F, Frantz C, Bruehlman-Senecal E, Dolliver K. Why Is Nature Beneficial? The Role of Connectedness to Nature. 2009;41:607-643. Doi: 10.1177/0013916508319745
10 Joye Y, Bolderdijk JW. An exploratory study into the effects of extraordinary nature on emotions, mood, and prosociality. Frontiers in Psychology. 2014;5:1577. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2014.01577.
Related: A Short Walk on the Beach Can Improve Your Mental Health, Study Suggests
One helpful trick to keep yourself from getting burned out may actually be as simple as taking a short walk in nature, according to a study by the University of Michigan.
The study, published in Frontiers in Psychology, suggests that taking 20 minutes to stroll in nature can reduce your stress hormone levels.
The study coined this remedy as a “nature pill.”
The study rounded up participants, asking them to take a walk for 20 minutes or more, at least 3 times a week. Levels of the stress hormone cortisol were measured using saliva swabs both before and after the so-called “nature pill.” The study found that after the walks cortisol was cut by 10 percent on average.
“Participants were free to choose the time of day, duration, and the place of their natural experience,” said Dr. Mary Carol Hunter, Associate Professor at the University of Michigan and lead author of the study. “Building personal flexibility into the experiment, allowed us to identify the optimal duration of a natural pill, no matter when or where it is taken, and under the normal circumstances of modern life, with its unpredictability and hectic scheduling.”
Nature could be defined by the participants as anywhere where they feel they’re interacting with a natural setting. If you live in a city, even a small park, a patch of grass, or any area with trees can suffice.
During the walks, participants were not allowed to do aerobic exercise or use social media, internet, take phone calls, have conversations, or even read.
Also, the “nature pill” had to be in daylight.
These findings are in sync with other studies that propose getting out into nature in order to stay stress-free. One study posited that fishing trips, in particular, are good for your mental health.
But stress isn’t just about your mind. It can also take its toll on the body. According to the American Heart Association, stress “may affect behaviors and factors that increase heart disease risk: high blood pressure and cholesterol levels, smoking, physical inactivity and overeating.”
It’s clear that relaxing makes a big difference in people’s health. Better yet, this makes a good argument for taking a vacation, which could actually help you live longer, according to one study.
What Really Happened In Wuhan (2021) | A Sharri Markson Exclusive https://youtu.be/ysNHE17cxCo via @YouTube
Related: Let’s Dig In To….Flat Earth? (welovetrump.com)
A 2-Minute Walk May Counter the Harms of Sitting
Rethinking Exercise as a Source of Immediate Rewards
How Walking May Lower Breast Cancer Risk
A version of this article appears in print on 07/28/2015, Piece of Nature, Peace of Mind.
Secrets of the Creative Brain – The Atlantic
Al Gore back at it again with Global Warming & Anthropogenic (human caused) effect.
Al how do you know exactly how much Co2 must be reduced?
Are you aware Methane burns hotter than Co2?
Al must need Lecture Series Income.
Al Gore: Be Inconvenient | Real Time with Bill Maher (HBO)
‘China could surprise the world’: Al Gore (yahoo.com)
DEFORESTATION vs. Co2
