Why walking is good for creativity

Most societies are now becoming increasingly sedentary.

By Karin Arndt

Published: Tue 18 Sep 2018, 8:00 PM

Last updated: Tue 18 Sep 2018, 10:43 PM

Walking can be a surprising antidote to loneliness. The fear of being alone can be scary and it is important to feel comfortable in our own company. And walking can be far more rewarding than you can imagine. Walking as a mere means of getting from place to place or walking purely for the sake of exercise is different from true walking which is an intentional, contemplative practice.
Most societies are now becoming increasingly sedentary. Screen time, which is estimated to be over ten hours a day for the average citizen dominates our daily lives. Many of us have forgotten what other activities we might engage in if we're not planted in front of the television, computer, or smartphone. Many of us feel disconnected from our bodies, disconnected from our self-generative imaginative capacities (due to the chronic bombardment of pre-fabricated imagery), and disconnected from the real. Walking - whether it's a country ramble or an urban peregrination - presents us with a potential pathway toward reconnection.
How does walking do this? Let's turn to a great Walker, Virginia Woolf, to break this down a bit. In 1927, Woolf wrote a beautiful essay called Street Haunting: A London Adventure in which she describes a walk on a winter evening through London in order to buy a pencil. The simple pursuit of a pencil becomes a grand adventure for her, though any observer of Woolf's activities would simply see a woman taking a walk from her home to a store and back on a winter night. She heads out with the intention to keep her eyes open and describes how she progressively transforms into "a central oyster of perceptiveness, an enormous eye." She follows this with the exclamation: "How beautiful a street is in winter!"
Walking with her senses alert and attuned to her environment allows her to experience the street in a more vivid and enchanted way. Present to her surroundings while on her walk, she is profoundly affected by what her eyes, ears, nose, and skin are taking in. Her evening walk becomes an exercise in sensation and perception which enables her to enter more fully into the stream of life. Walking helps her wake up.
Walking returns her to her senses as well as stimulates her creative imagination. She is able to step into other versions of herself and also wonder about the lives of the others she passes on the street and the goings-on behind the shutters of the houses she passes.
Walking fuels a return to the senses, activates our imaginative capacities, and helps us to forget ourselves. It also helps us access the real in an increasingly virtualised world. Taking a walk around the block helps us get to know the real neighbourhood and our real neighbours - not only the humans but also the animals, trees, and buildings we live amongst and the living breathing landscapes in which we are embedded. Even if we never say hello to those we pass, being present to the human and non-human. Others who live in our neighbourhood can help us feel less alone. Regularly "shedding the self" and experiencing the permeability of our boundaries while walking works to combat a sense of separateness. And it is precisely that sense of separateness that leads to feelings of loneliness.
It's important to understand the cultural history that disallows women from walking and to walk despite of - indeed, because of - that knowledge. Walking is a political act. While there are obviously very real safety issues to consider when setting out on a walk, I nonetheless want to encourage women to claim their ramble. So head out. Head out as if you just arrived in your neighbourhood for the first time and don't know what to expect - because you don't. See what you can see. Attend to both inner and outer landscapes. Get to know the neighbourhood. Let yourself return the gaze of others walking toward you if you wish, but only if you wish. Let yourself wonder about the lives of those who live behind the shutters of that particular house. And feel the air on your skin as you walk along. Savour what your body can do.
In the words of poet and essayist Annie Dillard, "Spend the afternoon. You can't take it with you."
-Psychology Today
Karin Arndt is a clinical psychologist practising in Washington DC