Walking is Good for Us.

Walking is good for us. Ferris Jabr writes in The New Yorker that when we go for a walk we do better at memory and attention tests. Trinity College Dublin’s Prof. Shane O’Mara published In Praise of Walking in 2019. He explains that social walking comes from 50,000 years of living as hunter-gatherers. We are hard-wired for synchronising our bodies and minds as we walk together. ‘You can improve your self-esteem and your mood with just five minutes of exposure to nature,’ according to Dr. Jo Barton, Senior Lecturer in the School of Sport, Rehabilitation and Exercise Sciences at the University of Essex. My walk-and-talk experience taps into all of that natural wisdom.

My work captures the way that a person can take challenges in their stride… deal with something difficult easily… not be fazed by it… in fact, not even bat an eyelid. Studying people during my career, I have noticed that this is a major dividing line between happiness and sadness. And we can learn how to do it.

6 Litres

The adult lung has a capacity of 6 litres. How often do you use your full lung capacity? Many of us breathe shallowly for most of the day. But a lungful of fresh air fizzes the blood and charges the brain.

7%

The average American spends just 7% of their day outdoors. You can do better than that… and as a measure of mental and physical health it is at least as good as the number of steps you take or the number of reps in the gym!

18-24 year-olds get this

In a recent Stride/Amarach Research survey of 2400 Irish people it was this younger age segment that saw walking as a way to keep things in perspective. ‘Reflecting on life’ rates higher for them than company, conversation, walking a pet or getting a coffee. ‘Experiencing joy, happiness and gratitude’ was next. And this is the age group that is arguably most disrupted by the recent pandemic.