"Walking" a Walkthrough For You!!
During the lockdown, the natural thing left for me to be in motion was an occasional run and a regular walk. The regular strolling made clarity in my thoughts, untangled my emotions, and all of a sudden I was feeling the resonating positivity. This sense of achieved calmness, ecstasy, and gained second wind encouraged me to dig deeper into it. A simple walk made me learn a lesson for life, and my wandering mind starts looking for an answer. I began my search, start looking at some fascinating research papers, and learned a new mind-body connections. Hey readers, in this blog you'll read about how a simple walk could solve some most consequential problem of your life. How a walk could help if your mind is stuck in neutral, and can manage your emotional bursts of lockdown.
Walking
What is it about walking, in particular, that makes it so amenable to thinking? The answer begins with changes to our chemistry. When we go for a walk, the heart pumps faster, circulating more blood and oxygen not just to the muscles but to all the organs—including the brain.
Our Mind On Walking
Walking on a regular basis promotes new connections between brain cells, shed off the usual withering of brain tissue that comes with age, increases the volume of the hippocampus (a brain region crucial for memory), and elevates levels of molecules that both stimulate the growth of new neurons and transmit messages between them.
Tempos Of Walking
I love to walk with earphones plugged in, listening to playlist according to mood. One morning I was preparing myself for a run, feeling off tracks, inert, and depleted. I hit myself with beats of Rocky IV Going Distances, I remember that morning I broke my personal best. Consequently, I found the connection between mind, mood, and body.
The way we move our bodies changes the nature of our thoughts, and vice versa. Psychologists who specialize in exercise music have quantified: listening to songs with high tempos motivates us to run faster, and the swifter we move, the quicker we prefer our music.
But Walking at our own pace creates an unadulterated feedback loop between the rhythm of our bodies and our mental state that we cannot experience as easily when we’re jogging at the gym, or running outdoor, or any other kind of locomotion. When we stroll, the pace of our feet naturally oscillates with our mood and the cadence of our inner speech; at the same time, we can actively change the pace of our thoughts by deliberately walking more briskly or by slowing down.
''Walk'' it Out
Take some time out for a walk, and soon it will become a habit. Walking will provide an escape from a daily hustle-bustle of life and also calm your ever racing mind. Just a regular, stress-free motion of your body will do wonder to you. You will have time for self-talk which will change the way you look at yourself and it will sequentially elevate your self-confidence.
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3339577/
- https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20890449/
- https://www.pnas.org/content/108/7/3017.abstract
- https://www.pnas.org/content/108/7/3017.abstract
Labels: Health, Psychology
