Walking: the Creative’s Brain Cure.

Walking. Forward ambulation. I don’t know how to promote it enough. 

Come to think of it, I don’t know how to promote it at all. It’s just walking.

I’ve spent a long time coming up with temporally-based justifications for the things I write. This meditation story? There’s a meditation forum-thing coming up. Why elephants? Pachyderm month. There’s nothing new about walking. 

But it’s the thing I rely on the most as a freelancer and a creative. Every morning, for years, I went for a walk. The only time I have stopped was during a double-whammy: long Covid+ankle injury. It took me out for two weeks. The depression took me out longer. 

I remember the first time I went out for a walk, years ago; I walked for an hour around the suburbs. I was fucking amazed that I could go for that long. Not because I’m not fit; I was long distance running at the time, and playing Aussie Rules footy. 

I thought walking would be too boring. 

It’s not. 

Walking is a brain-bath. It’s a fire-hose of molten creativity into your skull, attached straight from the street. 

Walking is a brain-bath. It’s a fire-hose of molten creativity into your skull, attached straight from the street. 

‘Boring’ is not the right framework. Quiet isn’t even the right framework; I listen to new music when I’m doing it. In comparison to writing, all other sports are selfish and self-focused. There’s nothing wrong with being selfish, as you know, but here’s what I mean: sport takes and gives. Walking gives and gives. I didn’t know why. But it’s something like this: walking reverses time. In the same way that reading reverses time. In reading, every half-hour is worth fifteen hours, fifteen days, half a lifetime in the life of a book. When walking for two hours I can achieve the inner-work of a week, the idea-generation to last days. I can get a new perspective on my relationship. I can be open to receiving (or remembering) some piece of information that I’ve been exposed to during my life, because my brain has been saving it. I find solutions. I can make it about me. I am better on the other side. 

Also sometimes I call people who are smarter and kinder than me.

For the last few years, while I was living in the small country city I walked out my front door, down a steep hill, across town from the side and up to the monument on Monument Hill on the other side of town. That and back was about 8k-ish. On the weekends I would continue past the monument at the top of the other-side hill and continue on, up the mountain to the top, for a total of sometimes 30k, round trip. 

Yes, I get obsessed. Yes, just doing a normal thing normally is not satisfying; I have to take it further.

One time, I took a wrong turn on the way back after hiking to the top of the mountain (it was a mountain, not a hill, I lied - yeah, I’m more obsessive than I implied, and a poet) and only realised when it was too late. I quickly started the hike back knowing I had only a certain amount of time, and not enough energy to probably make it. (This is a good time to remind you that I have RRMS). I had to coach myself back without water. I threw myself a little party every time I made it to the top of the next ridge.

At the bottom of one gully I woke up. I was standing up, mid-stride. I was so thirsty and tired, I’d fallen asleep.

(I got back. Etc.)

(Safety hack: It’s better to stick to a pre-planned route; it’s necessary to take more water than you need. Make someone else your walking buddy if you must, but I like the benefits of walking alone, so share your location with someone you trust, and flick them a message that you’ll be back by a certain time. Snacks. Snake bandage. Snake venom moves through the limbic system (skin), not the veins, so if you get bit, wrap it firmly from bite to extremity and back to stop limbic flow.)

I began walking for mental health, and to keep myself occupied when I began online dating. (I needed something to keep me from texting dates without ceasing. More on Attachment theory in a later blog post.) 

It more than worked. 

Someone recently called walking forward ambulation - I think it was Bobby Lyte in his podcast, Flow State, quoting another theorist. When I find it I will add it below. 

The idea of forward ambulation is, I believe, similar to the process my sleep podcast, Nothing Much Happens, uses to send me to sleep. The brain needs an easy track to stick to so that it can relax, and go into… well. Sleep mode.

Even the brain basically needs a nice, slow walk, to sleep.

If for no other reason, it’s good enough for Stephen King. On Reading wouldn’t have happened without it. (High-fives self.)

Anyway, If you don’t already, try walking. It’s pretty good.

Photo by Matt Flores on Unsplash