4 Benefits of Walking In 2021
#1 Walking as a ritual to reconnect with the natural world
I’ve never been very good at making New Year’s Resolutions. I have enough trouble maintaining old resolutions. Mark Twain’s definition of the New Year’s Resolution resonates a little too well with me: “New Year’s Day: Now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual.”
But this year I’m actually going to make a new one: walk more.
Jogging works too, of course, or any embodied journey across the landscape really. In my experience, walking has always been a great source of well-being, allowing me to take some time to shift my focus away from digital screens and ahead towards an unfolding path in front of me, or to more distant objects on the horizon.
In his book, The Power of Ritual: Turning Everyday Activities into Soulful Practices, Casper ter Kuile writes about the benefits of walking in the context of an ancient ritual: pilgrimage.
Pilgrimages don’t need to be journeys of hundreds of miles to other end of the earth, says ter Kuile. Our mental and physical well-being can still greatly benefit from ‘mini-pilgrimages’: a short walk to a nearby park in our neighborhood, or even just a brief visit to a friendly tree in our…
