IN THE BIG MENU OF EXERCISE OPTIONS, walking seems to get overlooked. Maybe it’s too simple, slow or low-impact. But according to a trio of voices – speaking to the activity of walking as an exercise, as a soulful journey, and as a mode of investigation – it reaps deep rewards all around.
In a lecture titled “Walking” delivered to Concord Lyceum in 1851, Henry David Thoreau said that when a person is ready to leave their family, possessions, affairs and home, never to return again, then they are ready for a walk.
But let’s not go that far.
The ease of walking is one of its strong suits, according to Ryan Luke, associate professor in kinesiology (the science of human movement) at CSU Monterey Bay.
He says that all exercise, including walking, is a stress that forces the body to adapt to similar stress in the future. Walking is an aerobic exercise that can prevent or manage heart disease, high blood pressure and Type 2 diabetes, fortify the skeletal system and improve lung function, control weight and brighten moods. And it’s free and easy.
“We try to push that exercise is inclusive,” Luke says. “If someone’s had an injury, or is obese, walking is really accessible. A ‘gateway exercise.’”
The Mayo Clinic recommends doing it with head up, relaxed neck and shoulders, arms swinging, back straight, stomach firm and smooth steps that roll from heel to toe.
“The faster, farther and more frequently you walk, the greater the benefits,” Mayo Clinic advises.
But Luke walks that back to a more accessible place: “The American College of Sports Medicine recommendation is 150 minutes of moderate intensity per week; 30 minutes a day, five days a week. That can be broken up into three 10-minute bouts a day [for] the same benefit.”
The idea is to get the heart rate past a threshold that the body is not used to for a while. That’s dependent on a person’s age and resting heart rate, a calculation that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control can help with on their Measuring Physical Activity Intensity website, or with one of many fitness devices, such as the FitBit.
In addition to testifying to the health benefits of walking on a cellular and muscular level, Luke extrapolates that to a macroeconomic level: “If everybody was to walk 30 minutes a day, the [financial] savings would be astronomical.”
There it is: Do it for the economy.
Or do it for the gains in creativity and spiritual energy.
That’s what poet Patrice Vecchione does. Based in Del Rey Oaks, she’s authored a book calledStep Into Nature: Nurturing, Imagination and Spirit in Everyday Life, and has writes a monthly column in the Monterey Herald on the soulful dimensions of walking.
“Endorphins are my drug,” she says.
Until a decade ago she used to cop them by distance bicycling. But at age 50, she got on her road bike, pedaled 100 miles, and never rode again – her arthritis was too bad. She didn’t like gyms, so inspired by her backpacking husband, she started walking at Jacks Peak.
“I was transformed,” she says. “We live in pretty contained spaces. We’re up against walls all the time. There are windows but that’s not the same as air. When you’re out in the environment of natural things – bushes, trees and otherwise – there’s a sense of being in the presence of infinity, a feeling of expansiveness. The mind, spirit, soul and the heart are free.”
She harnesses this freedom into her writing, into releases of emotion including grief for her father who died three years ago, and into anxiety-reducing courage.
One day, walking through another favorite landscape, Fort Ord National Monument, she saw what she thought was a dog – until she got a better look.
“Holy shit, that’s a mountain lion! And I wasn’t afraid. I went into the bushes to get a better look. I’m a different person out there.”
She says that same fearlessness can be channeled into writing, which she teaches to those who attend her Step Into Nature group retreats, the next one taking place in Portal, Arizona; or the OLLI class she teaches at CSUMB called “Hiking the Great Outdoors,” with excursions to Elkhorn Slough and Toro Park.
All you need, she says, is good walking shoes, a wide-brimmed hat, and water.
But to access the intellectual curiosity, community connection, and civic engagement of walking, some people contend that you don’t even need nature.
In his 1998 book Outside Lies Magic: Regaining History and Awareness in Everyday Places,historian, photographer and Harvard professor John R. Stilgoe commands you to “Get out now. Do not jog. Do not run. Forget about blood pressure and arthritis, cardiovascular rejuvenation and weight reduction… Explore… the whole concatenation of wild and artificial things, the natural ecosystem as modified by people over centuries… Outside lies utterly ordinary space open to any casual explorer willing to find the extraordinary… Outside lies magic.”
He prods the reader to become their own investigators and explorers, in the tradition of Thoreau, but the setting is transposed from Massachusetts woods to urban terrain.
“Read this book, then go,” Stilgoe implores. “Go without purpose.”
That’s something like the credo of author/illustrator Kate Pocrass’ graphical and fun-looking travel journal Side Walks: A Journal for Exploring Your City.
“Your front door is your starting place,” Pocrass writes. She uses drawings as charming and precise as emojis to illustrate the suggestions in her book, like a drawing of a penny, with the caption “Spontaneity (always have a coin to flip).”
“I wanted the book to be illustrated in a way that would be accessible to adults, adults with kids, or kids alone,” she says.
There are checklists and empty pages for the reader/explorer to write or draw on, like a children’s activity book. It’s decidedly millennial-generation in look and feel, with pages devoted to trying out new restaurants, letting a passing airplane dictate which direction to walk, instructions to observe “adults holding hands” or a “person singing in a car.”
“Write the name of what you are drinking right now using the beverage’s liquid as ink.”
You can accept or decline some of the more whimsical activities. But the exploration of the urban landscape is an adventure that adds color, depth and understanding to a neighborhood or town; it can awaken the consciousness to that most important of places: your home.