, given to us by Diogenes in the late 5th century BC. Since Aristotle and his 3rd-century BC peripatetic school – peripatetic meaning 'of walking' or 'given to walking about' after the peripatoi (walkways) of Athens' Lyceum – rambling and rumination have always gone hand in hand. Compare Thoreau's journal declaration of August 1851: 'How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live! Methinks that the moment my legs begin to move, my thoughts begin to flow … A thousand rills which have their rise in the sources of thought burst forth and fertilize my brain.' In the same vein, I love proto-existentialist Kierkegaard's letter to his niece of 1847: 'Above all, do not lose your desire to walk: every day, I walk myself into a state of well-being & walk away from every illness. I have walked myself into my best thoughts, and I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it … But by sitting still, & the more one sits still, the closer one comes to feeling ill. Thus, if one just keeps on walking, everything will be all right.' As a depressive, when the black dog descends, I feel as if I cannot move. My boyfriend's solution to this was to provide me with an actual dog so that I had to take the pooch for walkies. I'm no nature fetishist, and never understa){kind=link}
A long stroll outdoors is one of the best ways to put your mind at rest
The quest for mental health has gone walkabout of late. The worried well and the angstily anxious are being asked to do nothing more elaborate than get off their backsides and sally forth. Forget Freud’s talking cure, the answer to our assailed brains lies in a walking cure.
First, there’s the “awe walk”, advocated by Berkeley psychology professor Dacher Keltner, author of the bestselling Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How it Can Transform Your Life. Keltner argues that walking in pursuit of “wow moments” allows our sense of self to be supplanted by something greater, a spin on the Romantic notion of the sublime.
Or you could sample the self-care-focused strolling of amiable Mancunian TikTokkers @softgirlswhohike, inclusive ambling demonstrating that “hiking doesn’t have to be hard”.
You might go “disorienteering”, allowing yourself to become lost and thus embarking upon an adventure, or consider blindfold forest-walking: you start with breath work, then developing the other senses, which yields a drug-like, hyper-visual state once the blinkers are removed. While, for repressed menfolk, there’s the Proper Blokes’ Club. Founded by a football coach, this organisation hosts nine London-based evening walks a week for men to get things off their chests, or simply march matters out, no pressure to ‘fess up.