Walking Guidelines
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 frequent interruptions, over a variety of terrain and in varying locales around where you live. Since walking affords us both health enhancement and personal exploration, it is important to walk equally as exercise and as a source of new perspective. Your walks should be slightly challenging physically, but also enjoyable, enriching, and rewarding emotionally. Ideally, your walks will be a chance to exercise your body and mind, 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 or hikes of several hours or even several days a regular part of your life. If you do this, you will soon discover how physically invigorating and emotionally compelling longer walks can be.
You will also quickly discover how walking and hiking-friendly the world immediately around you is, or is not, and may then need to consider what new walking routes and even home locations might be healthier and more preferable for you. In considering your optimal home location, we might note as an aside, that you tangibly begin the HumanaNatura technique 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 guidelines to consider before and while you walk:
- 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 thus increase your risk of injury. Go for gain, not strain or pain.
- Matching of your activity level and stamina applies 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.
- Ensure your safety first – you need to walk where you are safe. This means ideally walking on footpaths well away from vehicular traffic, or at least facing traffic. It means taking great care at intersections, along the outer edges of curves in roads, in areas with uneven terrain, and on paths with steep slopes. Ensuring our safety while walking also 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!
- Comfort and protection from harsh natural elements are essential – to master walking, 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, so that your hands and arms remain free as you walk.
- Observe your form and walking style – as you begin regular walking, pay close attention to the manner in which you walk. Your stride should be comfortable, your feet pointing forward, 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. At first, and then periodically, ask a friend to observe your walking and comment on any idiosyncrasies in your form and style. If you have recurring discomfort, seek professional guidance and utilize orthopedic aids (such as shoe inserts) as needed.
- As your stamina builds, add variety to your walks – variety includes both the distance and intensity of your walking routes. Adding each can 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 on natural terrain and in inspiring natural places.
- 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 to warm up your body. 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. When you are done, 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!
- Explore natural hiking and backpacking – if you are ready, and live in or can travel regularly to wild nature, you can graduate from walking to hiking and backpacking in natural terrain. In it essence, hiking is just walking in nature, providing all of the benefits of walking, but with much richer experiences of the natural world and often far more intensive natural conditioning. A commitment to regular and more strenuous hiking requires additional equipment and added care to ensure our safety. It encourages us to forge new friendships, so that we can hike in the increased safety and enjoyment of groups. And it may perhaps require or inspire us to move to live in new areas that better enable hiking and backpacking. If you do begin to hike in natural terrain, whether regularly or periodically, consider the use of lightweight trekking 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 of all human physical activities, one that is strangely common and unassuming, and yet extraordinary and enlarging. With practice and persistence, and with a commitment to personal openness and curiosity, walking soon unfolds in our lives to become a rich new form of meaningful experience and means of discovery. It grows to offer us new learnings and insights almost every time we walk, much in the way the landscape continually emerges and affords new perspectives.
In time, you may find that after Natural Eating, regular and deliberate walking is our most important and immediate means of naturally revitalizing ourselves – a reliable, surprising, and open-ended practice of self-restoration and self-transcendence. Like Natural Eating, walking provides us with a direct connection to our ancient human life and health in the natural world. It is a practice that, again and again, helps us to perceive, feel, think, and act more creatively, healthfully, and progressively in our lives.
Please enjoy and expect much from your walks, as well as the world that unfolds before you as you walk. Walk purposefully, even if your only destination is new natural health and well-being. 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.