2023-11-09 04:40:00
Trends expert Sahil Bloom, author of the blog The Curiosity Chronicle, points out that one of Steve Jobs’ secrets to having disruptive ideas was to walk daily and consciously. In fact, inside the emblematic circular building of the Cupertino company there are more than 9,000 trees and numerous paths to put creativity to work. Associating this gentle and healthy physical activity with mental fertility is nothing new. Already in ancient Greece, Aristotle had founded the Peripatetic school, which can be translated as “itinerant”, because this philosopher and teacher used to teach his lessons walking. Among the modern philosophers who picked up this good habit, the case of Kant is famous, who walked every followingnoon from exactly five to six, always following the same route. He then locked himself in his office to write regarding what he had thought. For his part, the novelist Haruki Murakami, recently awarded the Princess of Asturias Award for Literature, confesses in his essay What I Talk About When I Talk About Writing that moving his body every day for more than three decades nourishes his imagination, to the point of point that you cannot sit down to write without that practice.
Regarding this, neuroscientist Sara Teller explains in her latest book that, among many other benefits for the brain, moving the body increases BDNF, a protein that promotes the formation of new neurons and connections, which stimulates learning and memory. As confirmation, a 2014 study from Stanford University, as mentioned by Bloom, investigated what happened with 176 participants distributed in different thinking environments. The conclusion was that those who walked demonstrated in the subsequent tests an average increase in creativity of 60% compared to those who were sitting. This result confirms the observation that the writer HD Thoreau had made in the 19th century, who declared: “The moment my legs begin to move, my thoughts begin to flow, as if I had released a current at the bottom and Consequently, new springs will flow in the upper one.”
To feed these sources, a 30-minute walk outdoors a day is enough. However, to go beyond physical exercise and turn it into a creative impulse, two conditions must be met: we must disconnect the phone alerts, since the walk will not be rich in original ideas if we are attentive to emails, messages and notifications. . It is regarding creating a space of disconnection so that the new can emerge, and second, headphones must be given up. For the same reason. If we listen to a podcast or audiobook, the mind will basically receive that content and will not generate ideas on its own. Creativity experts even recommend doing without music. If we need it to relax, we should opt for instrumental pieces, since otherwise our attention will go to what the lyrics say.
In his essay In Praise of Walking, Shane O’Mara points out that people who walk are happier and less prone to depression than those who have more sedentary routines. In addition to these mood benefits, this professor of Experimental Brain Research at Trinity College Dublin argues: “If we want to encourage freer forms of creative cognition, we need to get people up from their desk, away from your screen and start moving.” In that sense, the writer Rebecca Solnit points out that the fact of not having forests nearby, like Thoreau, should not be an excuse for not walking, since an urban environment is also a stimulating landscape. As she states in her book Wanderlust: A History of Walking: “A city is a language, a repository of possibilities, and walking is the act of speaking that language, of selecting among those possibilities.”
Many people use an application on their mobile phone to complete the 10,000 steps a day to keep their body and mind in shape. However, a study carried out with 226,000 people cited by the BBC shows that even 4,000 steps a day have important benefits for our cardiovascular health. Now we know that walking, in addition to perhaps saving our lives, is an excellent way to get out of mental lethargy and promote a new way of thinking.
The longest walk
— After reading the story of a couple who had crossed the United States on foot, the couple, Jenn Baljko and Lluís L. Bayona, decided to take a walk of more than 16,000 kilometers, from Bangkok to Barcelona. It was 955 days.
— The feat was not without difficulties: from dog attacks to countries where they had difficulties with visas, since they did not have enough days to cross it on foot. The relationship between the couple also suffered ups and downs, and they performed separate parts.
— Your experience, which will soon be told in a documentary, shows that one of the attractions of walking is interaction. That is also nourishing for creativity.
Francesc Miralles is a writer and journalist who is an expert in psychology.
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