Devoted walker and self-proclaimed saunterer Henry David Thoreau said that walking is not so much a physical exercise as a deep practice to promote thinking and self-cultivation. “You must walk like a camel, which is said to be the only beast which ruminates when walking.” (Thoreau, Walking). Walking has long been appreciated as a catalyst for robust cognitive and creative activity. Aristotle lectured as he walked, and thus his school was named the Peripatetic School. Studies show that walking enhances cognitive function in terms of memory, cognitive control, creativity, preventing cognitive decline, improving mood, and, when done in nature, reducing stress (Keinanen, 594). Mia Keinanen, in her 2016 article “Taking Your Mind for a Walk,” explored this powerful connection between walking and thinking and introduced a way of walking called “walking for thinking” that improves our cognitive skills while strengthening our hearts, a manner of walking that we at The Sauntering Society might humbly call “Sauntering.”
Keinanen followed nine academics in Norway over a short period of time and interviewed them to discover how walking-for-thinking worked as a catalyst to stimulate thinking among these academics who regularly walked in order to better think. All nine of the participants said that there is a specific kind of walking they have developed on their own that has improved their cognitive skills and their ability to associate thoughts and make mental connections.
Key to this specific type of walking-for-thinking were rhythm and speed. Each participant over time had developed an optimal pace. While the pace varied for each, the consensus was walking-for-thinking must be not too fast, but not too slow. The most productive thinking was achieved when the walkers’ bodies were engaged and stimulated but not overtaxed, which varied depending on one’s cardiovascular fitness level. Walking too slowly allowed the mind to wander to the environment around them, rather than concentrating on their inner thought flow.
As for rhythm, the act of repetitive bodily movement seems to help walkers concentrate on their coming and going thoughts and form associations among them. Studies show that multitasking in our frenzied society is detrimental to thinking, but the rhythmic movements of walking may help us focus our minds. The repetitive, consistent bodily movements achieved in walking-for-thinking may have the same effect as a repetitive mantra in sedentary meditation. The main task, according to Keinanen, is to find one’s own speed where “thinking flourishes” (599). This optimal pace and rhythm for thinking was often experienced in as little as fifteen minutes.
Keinanen also discovered that those involved in walking-for-thinking experience what she calls “thinking as a place.” In some fashion or another, the study participants each described walking-for-thinking as occurring in a “place” as they walked. One called the experience a moving place where “new light” from the environment is thrown onto old problems. Another said he sees things from new perspectives when walking. Another described the ability to get behind thoughts and then “catch them.” Thinking while walking was experienced as an embodied, interior process where “life is stimulated” and “I remember the most important stuff” but “don’t get lost in a lot of details” (601).
Perhaps more profoundly from what we could call a spiritual perspective is that walking-for-thinking is experienced as gestalt, the notion that all the many parts connect, make sense, and are bigger than the parts themselves. One participant called the experience a “moving gestalt,” where one’s breathing, heartbeat, and ambulation interact with the surrounding landscape that creates impressions that helps one process thoughts, make connections, and remember these new associations (601).
Keinanen’s findings on walking-for-thinking lend support to a long-held belief of veteran saunterers that sauntering aids a sort of gestalt knowing on the part of devoted walkers. Sauntering is not exclusively associated with rational learning but primarily with knowing and learning intuitively, knowing beyond rational thinking and sensory experience. While this is not the explicit conclusion of Keinanen’s brief study, the notion of “moving gestalt” sounds akin to the experience of those nineteenth-century New England Transcendentalist saunterers who described their insights and awakenings in spiritual terms, as an inflowing of a Light from beyond that feeds the mind, body and soul.
Sources:
Keinanen, Mia. “Taking Your Mind for a Walk: A Qualitative Investigation of Walking and Thinking among Nine Norwegian Academics.” Higher Education,vol. 71, no. 4, 2016, pp.593-605., www.jstor.org/stable/24756959. Accessed 23 June 2021.
Thoreau, Henry David. “Walking.” https://www.thoreau-online.org/walking.html. Accessed on 23 June 2021.