Walk for good health (24-Dec-2022)

Walking is considered good for health and is a low-cost activity.  One has to wear comfortable clothes and step into a good pair of shoes.  A cap fits in right if the sun is shining bright.  For someone like me who walks on roads in Bangalore, even though in the quiet neighbourhood, a small hand-held baton helps to ward off any street dogs that typically move around in packs.

A conscious effort to walk is the need of the hour given our modern-day sedentary lifestyle.  Hours and hours at the desk on the computer, or in front of the television set watching the favorite channels are the triggers for obesity, diabetes, heart conditions, and other lifestyle diseases.  An intervention in the form of conscious decision making with a high degree of commitment to staying physically active by an individual is the best way forward.

Somnambulism – not a desired state of walking.  In continued impaired consciousness, an individual when woken up from sleep may start walking which may be the result of an underlying condition and is termed somnambulism.  This disorder involves walking or other motor activities while still asleep.  Medical intervention with observing signs and symptoms, an acceptance to seek medical help, proper clinical diagnosis, and ensuing treatment with the help of qualified doctors is the best way forward.

Let us get back to our waking-state walking in a conscious manner.  Is there any time of the day that suits it best to go for walking?  Getting the feet moving in the first place is overcoming the inertia, and it doesn’t matter what time of the day.  Once this becomes a habit, then an early morning walk has its own benefits with clean air and pristineness in the surroundings to fill our lungs with oxygen.

For someone like me with multiple tasks packed into a morning schedule, what has worked best for the past five years is an evening schedule set aside for a minimum of one hour.  I have managed not to take a break even for a day, because like brushing our teeth and bathing ourselves I have put walking up there on my list as a hygiene factor.  Come annoying rain or radiating shine!

The man and the woman, the rich and the poor, the tall and the short, the obese and the lean, the gym-walker and the road-walker – all can have the same reason to be out there walking.  For an improved blood circulation, better heart health, increased mobility in the limbs, enhanced clarity of mind, are but a few benefits of walking.  There are short-and-medium-and-long-term benefits with many health parameters like cholesterol, blood pressure, sugar levels and others showing marked improvement.

The best one I have experienced is the unique way it influences the mind.  It improves the clarity of mind, gives creative wings to the thinking power, solutions to simple and complex situations – all within a matter of minutes as one starts moving, right under the blue skies and the green canopy of trees in the midst of the golden-brown earth that infuses calmness to the mind.

People spend an arm-and-a-leg for gym equipment or membership plans, a bomb for a nice bicycle, unlimited gear for mountaineering and rappelling, a high price for their motorbike, and so on and so forth while an investment in a good pair of shoes is all that is a real necessity for walking.  On a day when one cannot go out due to rains, a few steps within the four walls or even stationary walking helps to get the body moving.

Get the feet moving and feel liberated from the rigmarole of daily life.  Take a deep breath before you get started and feel the freshness that the inhale infuses into your own body.  Watch out for everything on your route from the animate to the inanimate.  There is a life lesson in everything that you come across on your path which is to learn to imbibe and blend more with nature.  The feeling of togetherness in the birds and the animals, and the silence in the stones and the boulders is a mixture of emotions and experiences to bring into our system.

The people of various kinds that one see and encounter in itself is a visual delight.  While some are constrained in their thoughts with a dead face, there are others who are gregarious with a smile on their face to attract attention and a conversation.  Nevertheless, I use the daily walk to fathom the deep insights into life and its crevices and be able to build a modicum of a framework for my next write-up.

Needless to say, that my last walk along a scenic route in the silence of the evening in a serene neighbourhood gave me the reason for this write-up.  I felt rich by gleaning the experience of each walk that made my next walk even more interesting.  This write-up was obviously first written in my mind in all of the 10,000 steps in an 83-minute session, recently.

Walk like you have never done before for a clear mind and a sound body that defines our health as a wealth to treasure.