bewilderbrain

Walking goes beyond exercise and it goes beyond nature. It is deeper magic – from before the dawn of time…

Everyone knows it’s good to go for a walk. Fresh air, exercise, nature – a lot of neat health and wellness boxes ticked.

They know. But they don’t always know.

Because the magic of walking cannot be captured so neatly.

A little surge of images showing people walking in everyday places in all sorts of weathers recently carried the caption “Me, going for my stupid mental health walk”

They were powerful, because they highlighted the way in which those with mental health concerns or neurodiverse brains need to make space in their lives for every lifeline available to them.

They also reinforced the acknowledged therapy of walking – the idea that, like it or not, our brains need to be taken outside for their own good…

And it is… tremendously powerful medicine.

But walking is more than an obligate therapy.

Walking is connection, transformation, empowerment.

It heals because it realigns us to deeper, more primal pathways – it brings us both out of ourselves, and back to our true natures.

The extraordinary roaming capacities of our feet are informed by our ancestors…

Around six million years ago, a persistent case of bipedalism began to spread across the planet.

Perfectly well climbing early humans started to swing from trees a bit less, developing a peculiar upright form of movement that allowed them to balance on their leg-ends, and then started using this rather eccentric mode of locomotion to explore their landscapes.

We only actually started staying in one spot when someone invented agriculture, which fuelled the Neolithic revolution of living in villages, corner shops, and the local pub.

But this was a historically insignificant blip of just 10,000 years ago.

Before this, our hunter-gatherer ancestors were Nomadic – following the course of the land they inhabited to track the pathways of game and seasonal fruits, seeking food, seasonal shelter, refuge, as the changing natural environment demanded.

Walking for our ancestors wasn’t a health pursuit, or a conscious exercise, it was autonomic, like breathing.

They walked so they could eat, hunt, find warmth, stay alive.

Although my brief history of human evolution is somewhat cursory, the point I’m making is that we were designed for movement.

Our feet, our senses, evolved for moving, roaming beings, living in harmony with the landscapes around them.

Inertia therefore, is anathema, to the human brain and body.

When we walk, calm is generated by a change of perception…

Tuning out, and tuning in…

We know that exercise can help us to calm our brains by releasing feel-good chemicals, but something beyond that, something subtle and intangible, happens with walking.

When we walk outside, with the intent to do just that, we inadvertently observe the world around us differently.

You could call it mindfulness. You could just call it magic.

The simplicity of the movement slows our thoughts, filtering out some of the noise of the day, of the responsibilities that too readily surround us when we are inside.

And the different distractions we find outside, particularly if they are natural sounds like birdsong, channel our brainwaves into calmer patterns.

Unlike when we commute, when we set out with a walk as an intent in its own right, a curious osmosis occurs with the world, the weather, and the tiny details around us.

We absorb differently, we soak up our environment, connecting to it, feeling its nuances, and little by little, our outside environment, with every surprise twist or turn it may offer, shifts to mindfully controlling, and calming our senses…

(See also Two Bats and a Squirrel – The Birth of an ADHD walking diary)

Walking starts a creative waterfall…

It starts as a drip. The first tiny cool notes of calm tinkling gently through to our frazzled beings.

As our pace settles, and our mind calms, the water of a mind at peace begins to flow.

When we walk for a while, creativity seems to pour into us, from the inspiration of the landscape around us, from the steady rhythmic movement, and from our now unleashed and flowing thoughts.

How many arguments or puzzles solved? how many ideas germinated? novels born? from the flowing clarity of thinking that walking generates…

Why walking makes us warriors…

Sometimes, often, actually, if I’m being honest, going for a walk makes me feel like a warrior.

On some level, it’s a recognition of me doing the right thing for my brain, and levering myself out of the house, which requires mental effort and energy.

I am winning a silent fight against apathy, inertia, and General Furr Brain.(Formidable character – questionable dress sense)

To walk is to overlay the chaos of my thoughts with life, movement, colour, and surprise.

Some days, its hard to do.

But twenty steps from your front door is meaningful if that is what is manageable for you…as long as it’s done with intention, and awareness…

I think that anyone should consider themselves a warrior for consciously walking, whatever their ability, whatever the route, whatever the distance.

It is also the sense of the unknown that makes me feel warrior-esque.

I am out, unarmed, exposed to the elements, and it’s just me and nature versus the day ahead.

No walk from your front door will ever be quite the same as another. Even on the same route, the weather, the seasonal moment, the wildlife, the people, the sights that await, are ever-changing.

It doesn’t require scaling mountains or white water rafting to engage our explorer brains.

(See also The 10 second brain spa – micro mindfulness to calm and fuel the brain)

Going out for a walk, any walk, is a journey into the unknown, and something about the open-ended possibility fuels a new (or very old) brain function. Expedition mode.

Walking is an exploration of environment, an exploration of mind, and an exploration of the liminal meeting space where the two converge…

We need to explore. It’s good for us.

It fills a deep primal need to connect with, and to understand our environment.

When we walk near to our homes, depending on our lives, we may tread the paths of our ancestors.

Regardless of where we have settled, we certainly tread deeply through the threads of our local history. At its most intrinsic level, the formation and geology of the earth itself in our own patch of the world, but layered over this – stories, past lives, lost industries or communities, and those being born or re-emerging.

Walking your local landscape is becoming part of, and weaving a moving tapestry. Witnessing, respecting, exploring the foundations of the ground beneath your feet while forming and evolving your own connections.

Walking is an all-encompassing connection, to our landscape, our ancestral heritage, and our fellow humans…

We need to understand our landscape, to root and connect ourselves. To the day, to the season, to our own bodies – to the very contours of the land around us – to feel grounded – to feel real.

My Nan used to say that we should go for a walk after Sunday dinner, we rarely did, which is a great shame.

For one thing, we should all be aware by now of the time-honoured wisdom of Nans in general – and listen to it.

But in this context, for her generation, as well as its most trusted function as a digestive aid, walking simply brought people together.

Before the distractions of modern life were quite so rampant, walking together, as families, with friends, would have been par for the course – simply something you did.

Being outside, moving together, unconsciously connected to others.

Finding our way back to this simple joy is a conscious act of connection in an attention scattered world.

And even for those of us who most often walk solo, it is a rare walk that doesn’t contain at least one conversation with a fellow human, animal, or even tree, should you be in that sort of mood.

Those small exchanges and connections while walking might seem insignificant, but every one of them fortifies us.

They are tiny warm veins joining individual with community and landscape.

Walking is the ultimate everyday escape…

As we walk, we form our own completely unique relationship with the landscape around us – special – and separate from the rest of our lives.

Interest, distraction, inspiration can be found even in the most ordinary of wanders down the road.

Each expedition can be an escape from four walls, from indoor responsibilities, from the noise and normal trains of our thoughts.

If we are lucky enough to be able to venture into any sort of nature on our walks, the true warrior spirit rises.

The tiniest drops and glimpses of green, of woodland, of flower, leaf or bird, can strip off our social trappings and fuel a softer, wilder energy.

If we let the experience in, walking is a breath of everyday magic.

It is achingly, wonderfully simple.

A few steps towards engagement, nurture, escape, inspiration, empowerment…

A battle cry against inertia, apathy, detachment and stress – and a gentle surrender to nature’s wild and soothing embrace.

Putting your shoes on. At once an act of war and peace.

Anyone coming?