As you begin your daily walking practice, try to walk outdoors for at least thirty minutes a day, at a comfortable pace that can quicken or slow with your mood, your fitness level, and your surroundings.

In your walks, try to move without interruption, over a variety of terrain and in varying locales around where you live. Since walking affords us both health enhancement and personal and environmental exploration, it is important to walk equally as exercise and as a search for new perspective. Your walks should be slightly challenging physically, but also enjoyable, enriching, and rewarding emotionally – a chance both to exercise and to experience and be part of the world around you.

After walking for a few weeks, you may want to begin to walk even more – at least an hour a day – and then to consider making extended walks of several hours at a time (with rest breaks) a regular part of your life. If you do this, you will soon discover how physically invigorating and emotionally compelling longer daily walks and even more extended multi-day walks can be. You will also quickly discover how walking-friendly the world immediately around you is, or is not, and may need to consider what new walking routes and even home locations might be healthier and more preferable for you (in doing this, you make a first foray into HumanaNatura’s practice of natural living).

Walking is so basic and natural for people that most of us need little coaching in it, but there are a few important things to consider before and while you walk:

1. As you start your walking practice, match the intensity of your walks to your personal level of stamina – take time to build your strength and endurance gradually so you can walk for life. Don't overdo your walking, especially at first, and increase your risk of injury.
   
   
2. This matching of your activity level and stamina applies both over time and day-to-day. If you are tired or not feeling at your best, it might be a day to rest or scale back your walking for that day. Just as the body needs activity, it also needs rest, especially after a day or series of days of relatively intense exercise or activity.
   
   
3. Always consider your safety – you need to walk where you are safe. This means ideally walking well away from vehicular traffic, or at least on footpaths and facing traffic. It means taking great care at intersections, along the outer edges of curves in roads, and in areas with uneven terrain. Ensuring our safety while walking means avoiding natural and human-made dangers in our walks. It means being conscious of and carefully selecting the time of day when we are walking and the places we are walking to and through. It may mean walking in groups to promote safety. And it might even mean having a map and carefully planning your route for longer walks. Always be safe to walk another day!
   
   
4. Comfort and protection from harsh natural elements are essential. You will need comfortable boots, shoes, or sandals that do not irritate your feet or expose them to harm. You will need layered clothing you can wear or carry so that you are neither cold nor hot as you walk. You will need a hat and other protective clothing when walking in the sun, in the cold, and in precipitation. You will need water and food when on extended walks, so that you stay hydrated and nourished. And you will need one or more packs to carry your things in, so that your hands and arms remain free as you walk.
   
   
5. As you begin regular walking, pay close attention – especially at first and then periodically – to the manner in which you walk. Your stride should be comfortable, your hands and arms free and swinging naturally in harmony with your stride, your head level and back straight, and you should breathe freely through your nose.
   
   
6. As your stamina builds, add variety to your walks – including both the distance and intensity of your walking routes, to enhance your level of fitness, range of experiences, and overall enjoyment from walking. Including hills in your walks is an especially good way of improving the health-promoting and experiential benefits of your walks, as is walking and hiking in natural terrain and inspiring natural places.
   
   
7. If you are in good physical condition, as an option, you can work “wind sprints” into some or all of your daily walks for added natural conditioning. To do this, first walk for at least ten minutes. Then, in an area free from hazards, pick up your pace anywhere from a slow jog to a fast sprint for five to thirty seconds. Then return to normal walking for a few minutes and catch your breath. Repeat this until you are moderately winded, but do just a few gentle wind sprints at first, as they can be very challenging!
   
   
8. If you are ready, and live in or can travel regularly to an area near wild nature, you can graduate from walking to true hiking in natural terrain as your principal walking practice. Hiking is just walking in nature, providing all of the benefits of walking, but generally with much richer experiences of the natural world and far more intensive natural conditioning. A commitment to hiking often requires additional equipment and added care to ensure our safety. It encourages us to forge new friendships, so that we can enjoy the safety and support of group hiking. And it may perhaps require or inspire us to move to wilder areas to make the most of our natural hiking practice. If you do begin to hike in natural terrain, regularly or periodically, consider the use of lightweight hiking poles – for added stability and safety, to employ more muscles in your hiking and reduce lower body joint strain, and for a much more complete and intensive full-body work out.

Walking is one of the most natural, and strangely common and extraordinary, of all human physical activities. With practice and persistence, and with personal openness and curiosity, walking unfolds in our lives as a rich new form of personal expression and means of discovery, offering learnings and insights for us almost every time we walk, much in the way the landscape continually emerges and offers new perspectives for us.

In time, you may find that after natural eating, regular and deliberate walking is our greatest and most important means of naturally revitalizing ourselves, a reliable and yet always surprising and open-ended means of restoring ourselves and our ancient human connection to the natural world – and one that, again and again, helps us to feel, think, and act more creatively and progressively in our lives.

Please enjoy your walks, and the world that unfolds before you as you walk. Walk purposefully, even when your only destination is progressive natural health. Who knows – as you reach new levels of personal health and vitality, you may one day see bold new horizons, in the land or in your life, that call your renewing spirit forward and into them.

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