Move your body to change your mind
How I started walking, running and hiking every day back in 2018 and how it’s changed how I show up in the world
I’ve been walking, running, hiking and exercising in nature every single day since 16 October 2018.
I remember the day clearly. I dressed quickly that morning and placed my remaining things in my carry-on. The yellow light from the bedside table curled itself into my sleepy brain: “It is still dark outside,” it said. I double-checked my watch. Yes, 6:30 AM. Dark or no, time to go.
Despite the early hour, the cool, damp streets lay themselves open before me, and as I noticed within minutes, not just me. Residential buildings, long deep houses that reached down into and below the bowels of the streets, stacked up next to each other like cards. Sidewalks shrugged, rather than trembled, as beeping garbage trucks did their rounds.
He’d said to meet him at his hotel — we’d have coffee —at 7:00 AM, and I had leapt inside at the thought. Yes. He was leaving town and so was I, both back to our everyday lives.
Right on time and sleepy-eyed, he joined me in the hotel lobby. “Hey, how about we take a walk?” he grinned.
“Sure,” I said, “That sounds great.” I didn’t have the heart to tell him that for the first time in my life, I was suffering from lumbago, that it was hard, painful to walk, and that, well, I’d almost not made it to the event due to a bit of a heart scare. Here I was almost 52 and my body was behaving like a rusty, broken-down car.
Sometimes movement, however, is the rightful remedy for injury and ageing.
So back out into the London streets, we went. We wandered in and out of alleyways, watching the sun cast its first rays into shallow puddles that, once lit, smiled up at us. The city’s beeping turned to the tip-tip-tapping of heel armies rushing ahead into the day’s tasks. Hands on tall humans reached down to the hands of smaller ones and snippets of conversations began to pepper the air. Life, it seemed, was teeming again, and we folded, like every other human, into the flow.
We walked and talked and talked and walked. We talked about the event he had led the day before, about his new book (Make Time), about writing, and looking back, I’d say we touched on how we were — or were wanting to — show up in the world.
London has no memory of our steps that early morning. But I remember a slight mention, eased into conversation about other things, that he liked to exercise every morning (which was also a tactic in his book; the tactic named “Don’t be a hero”, which is about daily exercise on our own terms). I also remember feeling energised and happy when the walk was over.
It turns out movement is good, not only for lumbago but lots of other things (e.g. creativity, productivity, cognitive function, mental health). So I decided to try it—every day. I had been exercising two to three times a week for decades but decided to experiment with adding it to my daily routine — and to exercise outside, in nature. Turns out, getting out in nature is even more powerful for the mind.
Starting small on days when I didn’t have a lot of time — at only a 15–20 minute walk, within a year I was designing my days around daily exercise of 30–60 minutes a session. The benefits sold me: I was sleeping better, breathing more deeply, experiencing greater relaxation, getting more creative ideas, connecting with my family (they started joining me on my forest walks and hikes) and it soon felt like all those happy feelings you feel during and after exercising were coursing through my body around the clock.
Today, I run three times a week, hike once in the hills, walk twice with friends, colleagues and family and do strengths training staring at the sea. Is that a luxury? For me, it’s a priority. It’s an integral part of my physical, emotional and intellectual health practice. Am I the same person I was in 2018? Yes, of course. And I’m stronger, healthier and happier, too.
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