Aristotle, who was known for the Peripatetic school of philosophy, would discourse with his
students whilst walking around the grounds of the Academy. Emmanuel Kant walked every afternoon, and Rousseau said of his walks, ‘Never have I thought so much, never have I realized my existence so much, I have been so much alive.’ Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, Coleridge and de Quincey were all inveterate walkers. It was estimated by Wordsworth’s friends that during the course of his life he walked 185,000 miles In the English Lake District, which inspired him to ’see into the heart of things’ and to write about:

A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling place is the light of setting
suns,
And the round ocean, and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man:
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things.

The modern Welsh poet, R. S. Thomas, has written of a similar feeling about walking in his poem, ‘The Moor’:

It was like a church to me.
I entered it on soft foot,
Breath held like a cap in the hand.
It was quiet.
What God was there made himself felt,
Not listened to, in clean colours
That brought a moistening of the eye,
In movement of the wind over grass.

There were no prayers said. But stillness
Of the heart’s passions – that was praise
Enough; and the mind’s cession
Of its kingdom. I walked on,
Simple and poor, while the air crumbled
And broke on me generously as bread.

Dickens, Samuel Johnson, Boswell, Ruskin and Jane Austen all used their walks to free the creative mind. Beethoven and Mozart both took to the woods to discover their own ‘creator spiritus’. Would Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony exist but for his walks in the Vienna woods ? Would Mozart have given us The Marriage of Figaro if he had not sought inspiration in the open air? Not only men of genius, but ordinary people, have been discovering for centuries that walking has a special quality about it.

Inner walking frees us from the tyranny of the conscious mind and lets the intuitive mind breathe.

Life is surely about more than simply having a healthy mind in a healthy body. Once you have discovered the benefits of aerobic walking for health, fitness and slimness, you will want to go further and discover the psychological and spiritual benefits provided by inner walking.

‘Know thyself,’ the Greek philosopher Socrates said. ‘If I am not myself, who else will be?’ the walking philosopher and writer Thoreau said.

The longest journey we ever make is the journey within. We may use one of the more traditional methods to come to a greater realisation of ourselves and discover a deeper meaning of life, or we may improvise our own methods using one or all of the above disciplines. The important thing is the realisation that we need to make the journey if we are to be whole.

Some people use prayer, others use meditation and yoga techniques to prepare for the journey inward. The one thing that they all have in common is the need for total relaxation: a letting go of obsessive thoughts and all the clutter and confusion going on in the mind.

So where do we start?

‘The way out is via the door.’ (Lao-Tse)

Walking Meditation

Inner walking is walking meditation, and it begins with relaxation and the feeling of letting go. Inner walking has nothing to do with goals or objectives. Use aerobic walking to get fit, improve your cardiovascular system and lose weight; use inner walking to encounter a deeper self-knowledge, greater concentration and serenity.

You can use walking meditation to break the pattern of obsessive thoughts and tension. You can use it to centre yourself inside your own experience and give yourself an overview of what is happening inside – what is really happening, not what you thought was happening. Walking meditation will put you at the centre of your life and give you control over your life.

So today, right now, walk out into the open air and touch the Earth with this simple walking meditation. This is not a brisk fitness walk; this is a slow meditative walk, where you follow your breathing as you take each step. As you breathe in, count the number of steps you take. Taking three steps, say to yourself: ‘In, in, in.’ Then as you breathe out, say: ‘Out, out, out.’ You might want to try breathing out to the count of four: ‘Out, out, out, out.’ The important thing is to get the rhythm right – the rhythm that feels right for your own body, your own speed and stride length. Experiment until you get a calm rhythm flowing through your walk.

Here’s another simple meditation – a mindfulness meditation. As you walk, bring your awareness into your feet and breathe as if you were breathing from the soles of your feet. Feel the connection with the Earth beneath you and let your awareness flow into each movement you make. Walk tall and imagine a white thread pulling your whole body upwards, stretching it. Then imagine a white light coming up through the ground and filling your whole body with this calm, healing light.

Today, tread softly on the Earth, for the Earth is your friend and the Earth will heal you.

‘All walking is discovery. On foot we take time to see things whole.’
Hal Borland