A very effective, safe and cheap way to improve health is to walk systematically. You can forget about fashionable gyms and fancy sports equipment. Marches not only improve physical condition, but they also affect better well-being, improved mental condition, shedding unnecessary kilograms. Thanks to this motor activity, you can avoid many civilnization diseases and even cure them.
So how does walking affect our mental state?
Alternating leg movements, stretching the muscles of tendons not only strengthen the body, improve the circulatory system, reduce the risk of diabetes, but also stretch our. . . Brain. The impact of this prosaic activity on our ingenuity was studied by researchers at Stanford University. They did an experiment. One group of participants, as you can guess, solved tasks for creative thinking, sitting, the others did it while walking on a treadmill.
The first test involved inventing unusual applications for ordinary, simple items such as a tire or button. The second task was to guess a word that connects to three other words. Participants were given, for example, the words: country, Swiss, cake. The desired answer in this case is cottage cheese, Swiss cheese, Cheesecake. It turned out that the first task of walking went much better – they came up with more interesting and unique solutions, and the second a little less. Researchers assessed with pre-developed indicators that the creativity of walking people improves by 60%. Perhaps the result would have been even better if the experience had been conducted outdoors?
Previous studies have shown that, in general, physical activity also improves brain function and creativity. Another study, in turn, has found that if we “reset ourselves” and rest close to nature, it also increases the ability to think creatively. One publication in the Social Psychology Bulletin showed that learning about other cultures and foreign customs broadens the horizons of our ingenuity. There are many ways and, as you can see, all pleasant!
It is not known from today that “movement is health”. But not everyone has to love running, swimming or intense cycling or even practicing yoga. The absolute truth, however, is that in order for our body to function well, it is fully healthy, efficient – it must be on the move every day. According to wise scientific papers and theories preached by scientists, we should move at least 30 minutes a day. If we no longer like to force our self to play sports during the holidays, then maybe we will think about daily walks?
What is the Evidence?
Studies and experiments have often shown that the level of cortisol (stress hormone) is significantly higher among the inhabitants of the so-called concrete jungles than among people living in urban areas. An interesting fact is probably that the reduction of stress and improvement in concentration are influenced by videos or images depicting nature. Roger Ulrich of the University of Texas found that after watching stressful films, those who were then shown videos with scenes taken out of nature grew faster than those who watched stressful films in which urban landscapes prevailed. The brainwave readings of the volunteers in this experiment were unambiguous and demonstrated how soothing the images of nature are.
Gregory Bratman of Stanford University was also intrigued by this theory. He gathered a group of volunteers tasked with completing questionnaires determining the degree of persistence of their thoughts and then checked brain activity using scans, that track blood flow through the brain. Greater blood flow to the brain usually signals greater activity in the areas. The participants in the experiment were then divided into two groups.
One group of people walked on a green, quiet area, while the other group walked along a noisy, busy highway. The participants walked alone and could not listen to music. After 90 minutes, they returned to the laboratory, where tests and a questionnaire were repeated.
The researchers then benchmarked these readings. As you might expect, walking along the highway did not calm people’s minds. Blood flow to the brain was still high and indicated high arousal, and the results of the questionnaires remained unchanged, as opposed to green walkers whose brains were decidedly calmer. Nor did they dwell on the negative aspects of their lives as much as before walking. Being in nature has been soothing to the psyche.
However, as Gretchen Reynolds, author of How Walking in Nature Changes the Brain, points out, experience leaves a few questions open, such as how much time should we spend in nature to produce satisfactory results for our mental health? What aspects of the natural world are the most soothing? Greenery, the rays of the sun, the smell of the earth or something else?
Various substrate for walking
By far the best way to walk on natural soft surfaces such as grass, sand, natural substrate in the forest. Then we use more energy, because every time the foot delves into the soft ground, more muscle work is needed to move in such terrain. You can wander almost anywhere, especially parks, forests, mountains, any green areas, because contact with nature positively affects mental well-being. Moving at speeds of up to 5 km/h is defined as a walk, while in the range of 5-7 km/h it is defined as a fast walk.
A few ideas that will help turn a boring walk into an interesting adventure:
Visiting the area – perhaps there is something in your village that you could visit or see, and in the summer, it was too bad for it, or it was simply too hot. Now is a good time to make up for it. Even if there is nothing special where you live, you can always make yourself a themed tour – maybe you decide to see all the fountains in the city or all the parks, monuments, shrines, intersections with lights, construction sites. . . You don’t have to do that one day. It can be a plan of walks for a week, two or even a month. Take a picture of yourself all over the place, like real tourists. Later, based on these photos, you can make your own book, for example – draw a cover, add comments, make a promotion among your loved ones.
Get to know more about public places. Go to the post office, to the town hall, to the hospital, to the bus or bus stop, go to the fire station or police station. You probably won’t be able to get in everywhere, but interesting things can happen under the building itself – you can see parked police cars, maybe you can see a fire truck. By the way, tell your child about the operation of these institutions or remind them of the emergency numbers. And if there is nothing left in your village that can be visited, you can always come up with a plan to count all the houses with a red roof or find the longest fence in the area, or the largest tree. You
can also try to find as many things as possible, e. g. in blue or on the letter “r”, or . . . There are a lot of possibilities.
A walk with a list is another way to diversify your usual walk. You just need to prepare a list of things to find in advance. For younger children, of course, picture lists will work better. But if children can already read, it is enough to write on a piece of a few things that the child will have a chance to find on a walk. If you are going to the city, let’s put, for example, in the list a mailbox, a bus or a toy store. If we go to the park – let it be different types of trees or leaves, milks, maybe a squirrel. But you can also choose a different topic – types of cars, animals or birds. The fun itself is simple – we need to find everything that is on the list. What we find, we delete right away, and we cannot go home until we delete everything.
