When it comes to walking, I’m a madwoman. Ask anybody I know — I want to walk everywhere. I’ve been a FitBit user (FitBiter? FitBitee?) for years, and I’m pretty determined to get my thousands of daily steps.
There are two main reasons I religiously go for walks:
Physical health: According to The Mayo Clinic, the physical benefits of taking brisk walks are myriad, including maintaining a healthy weight, strengthening your bones and muscles, and preventing various health conditions like heart disease, high blood pressure and type 2 diabetes. Research from Harvard demonstrates the correlation between walking and cardiovascular health. Plus, many of us sit in an office chair all day, and going for a walk helps you get up and move around every so often.
Mental health: Not only does going out for a walk every so often get you away from your computer desk, but it gets you out of your office and into a new headspace. You can see the sun and feel the breeze on your face. Pure serenity. Not to mention the documented mental health benefits of walking, such as reducing stress, improving memory and alleviating anxiety.
These benefits are enough to keep me walking every day. But I recently came across an article in The New Yorker that explains how walking helps us think — and ultimately write — much better.
In “Why Walking Helps Us Think,” author Ferris Jabr explains that walking makes our hearts pump faster and circulate more blood and oxygen to our brains (in addition to all of our other organs and muscles). He adds that studies show walking also promotes new connections between brain cells and increases levels of molecules that simulate new neuron growth and message transmission.
But what struck me most was the moving conclusion of his piece:
“Perhaps the most profound relationship between walking, thinking, and writing reveals itself at the end of a stroll, back at the desk. There, it becomes apparent that writing and walking are extremely similar feats, equal parts physical and mental. When we choose a path through a city or forest, our brain must survey the surrounding environment, construct a mental map of the world, settle on a way forward, and translate that plan into a series of footsteps. Likewise, writing forces the brain to review its own landscape, plot a course through that mental terrain, and transcribe the resulting trail of thoughts by guiding the hands. Walking organizes the world around us; writing organizes our thoughts.”
Beautiful! And practical. There’s something to be said for the powerful connection between mind, body and soul. In fact, I wrote much of this post in my head during my recent stroll.
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