[readolog_dropcap ]W[/readolog_dropcap]alking is the oldest form of exercise there is, it has been used as meditation for many great minds, walking supports the body in its posture by standing tall, its rhythm and flow by supporting healthy breathing and heart rhythm.  Listed below are five important reasons why walking supports a healthy body and a healthy mind.

[readolog_blockquote ]“Walking is man’s best medicine” – Hippocrates[/readolog_blockquote]

1. The first benefit of walking would be that it is perhaps the best activity for your mental health!

Walking when you are frustrated, or your energy is stale, helps to shake this stale energy. Some personal examples of walking being great for mental health include:

• Fighting with a loved one. Whenever we are getting a bit antsy or our energies just are not clicking, I know that it is probably because our energy is stagnant, the body needs to express itself and shake off stale and negative energy quite often, walking is perhaps the most useful form of exercise to do this.
• Walking improves creativity. Whenever I am blocked creatively I can go for a walk and just relax, whatever creative block I am suffering from usually resolves itself by the end of the walk, at the very least walking helps me to make progress on whatever issue I am stuck on creatively. Walking has been proven to improve creativity in fact. I find that when I am working on any given project or task, I am usually staying in one space, walking allows my body to express itself by covering a larger distance at just the right pace to make it a restorative exercise, helping me to express locked up energy.
• Walking is my favorite active meditation exercise. Sometimes I simply cannot stop and lay still with my eyes shut and just breathe. My mind is just too overactive.   But I find that if I am walking slowly there is enough different sensory stimuli to just veg out and observe nature or the environment that I am walking through. Walking is an amazing chance to just watch and listen in nature, say hi to a neighbor, bond with your dog, or just get out for some fresh air. All of these things have their own positive physiological benefit and help to provide an active meditation experience and to quite your thoughts. I find that once my body and mind have gone on a pleasant walk I can do silent meditation much easier.

2. Walking is perhaps what I could describe as the only absolutely essential form of physical exercise in terms of walking’s benefits.

When people ask me what they should be doing on their “off” days from training, or when I have a chance to help a person start getting active, I would be wasting my breathe if the first thing I said was anything other than to walk for at least an hour a day. The physiological benefits of walking are HUGE!

For some of the reasons mentioned under mental health, walking can help to:

• Reduce blood pressure and strengthen the cardiovascular system
• Improve breathing and bodily rhythms
• Aid in digestion
• Increase bone strength specifically since it is a weight bearing exercise
• Improve muscular endurance
• Improve vision
• It can be great for your posture

If you want to get in shape and you could take one piece of advice from anyone anywhere about exercise but are not sure what plan to follow, do this: walk for a little over an hour EVERY. SINGLE. DAY.

Do not make any excuses because walking is not so high impact that you even need any rest days from it, unless you start logging high miles or are hiking a lot.  So seriously, take the time to walk every single day.  Human beings evolved to walk a moderate to long distance every single day of our lives. The human body is designed to stand upright, and no other exercise can be used to facilitate good posture and health like walking can.

So if you want to lose weight, have more functional muscle, and improved mental health and physiology all around, go for a walk every single day.

3. Improved Posture and Breathing

Posture and the breath go hand-in-hand because without a proper breathing pattern it is difficult to maintain and truly develop good posture.  Deep belly breaths that also expand and lift the chest and stabilizer muscles that assist in breathing such as the diaphragm and ribcage, are the basis of excellent posture.

Walking gives us a chance to stand up erect, and breathe deeply.  Walking is naturally relaxing; it is at a controlled and steady pace for the body.  If just a little extra emphasis is placed on breathing when walking it can greatly improve your lung health and posture.

Try to just be conscious of the following when you are walking:

• Are you slouching at all? If the shoulders are coming forward excessively try your best to pull them back and lift the chest up tall while taking a big breath in all the way to your belly.
• Is your breath going all the way down to your stomach? If you are not taking big belly breathes and really letting go and relaxing on your walk it may not help to facilitate good posture, so use this as a chance to force a couple deep breaths down into the abdominals and pelvic floor until the chest rises.

Sometimes my breathing is not anywhere near perfect so I will stop and just take a few really deep and conscious breaths even if it makes me tired, I find that taking these deep breaths helps to lengthen me out and rid tension from my body, after a while I will begin to notice a chance in my breathing pattern all together.

• Are you using your abdominals and hips/gluteus properly?  When walking it is important that you know how to keep your pelvic floor engaged and your stomach, once again one of the best ways to naturally brace is to breathe deeply! A deep belly breath, while still keeping the core and pelvic floor engaged, puts intra-abdominal pressure against the spine which protects it, while a deep exhale and drawing the abdominals in deeply also protects the back by bringing the abdominal wall right against the spine.

Make sure that you engage the glutes when walking, many people have over-active hip flexors and may need to do a lot of hip stretches and butt strengthening exercises, but a good way to practice is to specifically begin to feel the butt activate even on the tiniest incline or hill, you should always use the glutes when going up hills, they are your powerhouse.

While walking benefits the entire leg musculature it will often lead to tight hips, so make sure that you take big strides at times and do stretches such as lunges and leg swings to help prevent the hips from getting too tight when walking.

4. Walking benefits the body by allowing us to get outdoors more!

Time to get outside! And that usually means we can find somewhere with fresh air and sunshine. Walking is a great way to get a good healthy does of sun and fresh air. This is just another great way walking benefits us. Sun is needed in healthy doses, usually on a walk you walk between shade and sun, which allows the skin to really absorb the sun in an effective way. Usually once you adapt to the sun about an hour or two long walks is the perfect amount of sun exposure I have found.

If you turn walking into a real hike, or even if just in a local park or neighborhood, this gives you an amazing chance to connect with the wildlife and trees around you.  I like to walk and take notice of all the amazing trees that surround us daily.  They often have their own energy that I try to connect to, this really helps to relax me and breathe deeply, and hopefully get some fresh air too!  If you really need fresh air and a chance to mellow out I recommend going somewhere that you can go on a nice long hike through the woods, and maybe even climb a bit of nice rock or mountainous landscape, this really offers a chance to dispel negative energy and let go.  Nature has all the answers and help that we need, we just need to go out and find it by walking!

5. Walking benefits our posture by allowing us to begin transitioning to minimal shoes.

Vibram five-fingers come to mind, but there are many other good shoes that allow for normal foot function. But any shoe without excessive padding will do. This padding actually puts more strain on the body and spine than the extra comfort that it provides.

Without going into too much detail, having excess padding underneath your foot interrupts the perfectly designed nerve endings you have in the bottom of your feet, which are probably the most effectively designed nerve ending and feedback system we have in our bodies.  So imagine you place a two-inch piece of plastic between your foot and the ground, obviously feedback will be interrupted.  Also many of these shoes have too high of a heel and arch, causing the foot to be placed into extension without allowing for proper ankle flexion.

I cannot tell you how many people I know complain of knee and back pain and have gigantic knots in their calves from wearing ineffective shoes like this all day, and if you are a woman wearing high heels, forget about it.

This chronic tightening will cause the calves to get tight, pulling on the knee, and potentially the entire posterior chain and can and often does lead to back pain.

So walking gives us an amazing low-impact, repetitive, opportunity to fix this issue and monitor it.  There is no argument whether minimal shoes are what we should wear and exercise in, there is no debate, it is just how the body is designed and you have to be intelligent enough to understand this and make the proper adjustments.

So with all of that said one of the ways we can make walking benefit our health is by incorporating a minimal shoe.  This will GREATLY improve posture from the ground up; I found that when I went minimal my lower back soreness and discomfort nearly vanished.  I also found that while my feet and ankles and calves often get really sore, I NEVER experience knee/back/hip pain etc. from long hikes or walks.

I’ve climbed mountains in five-fingers and I almost never trip or fall from the improved balance and posture.  My feet just get sore and by the next day they are fine!  So make the switch!

 Some pointers when switching to minimal shoes:

TRANSITION SLOWLY!!! Do not expect that if you were walking or running 10 miles a day in traditional shoes to match that in a pair of five-fingers without a transition period.

You should wear the new shoes until your feet get sore and then switch to your old pair, or keep walking but allow your body to recover and do not walk again until the soreness is completely healed.  This can take time, sometimes a few weeks, maybe a few months.

Foam rolling the calves and massaging them regularly during this transition period would be ideal; buying a foot roller for the bottom of your feet may also be necessary.

You will literally be re-shaping the length and function of many of your feet and leg muscles so breaking up scar tissue and stretching will be extremely important during the transition process, this can speed up the time that we adapt to minimal shoes dramatically.

There you have it, 5 tips about why walking is so great for us, and why we should all walk every single day.  If you follow these five tips and begin walking every day expect to see some amazing changes in your body, and if you already walk you may be thinking of implementing a more minimal shoe, which will also greatly benefit your walking form and overall posture.  Or maybe next time you are walking you make more of an effort to get out into nature for the fresh air and chance to connect, or perhaps it is just to take a few more deep breaths.  Whatever we use walking for and however it is done, it is nearly always a good thing and a good practice.

My recommendation for if you are just getting started with an exercise and walking routine:

About 3-4 miles per day, but if that is annoying to track just shoot for 1 hour of walking a day, this may seem like a lot at first but you will soon be craving your daily walk.  Do not make excuses, you can break it up into two half hours if you need to, or just do 1 full hour.

For an intermediate I would recommend:  Going on some longer walks (4-8miles) and start throwing in some hikes that require you gain some elevation as they are usually very rewarding, challenging, and offer a unique chance to connect with nature.

From there you can just keep doing more challenging hikes and maintaining your walking habit on a daily basis!

Remember that walking is the oldest form of exercise there is, it has been used as meditation for many great minds, walking supports the body in its posture by standing tall, its rhythm and flow by supporting healthy breathing and heart rhythm.

So next time we are frustrated with a loved one, cannot quite the mind, are just a bit restless, or trying to just let go, remember that movement is the expression of life, so go cover some ground and WALK!!!

[readolog_blockquote ]”Few people know how to take a walk. The qualifications are endurance, plain clothes, old shoes, an eye for nature, good humor, vast curiosity, good speech, good silence and nothing too much.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson[/readolog_blockquote]