Go Take a Hike and Why it Pushes Us Closer Towards our Next Passion Project

In my early 30s I started discovering a deep, intuitive connection between hiking, thinking, and writing. Over the years I gradually noticed that the moment my legs began to move on a trail, my thoughts also began to flow.  

I’ve often asked myself what is it about hiking, in particular, what makes it so amenable to think about a new passion project? 

What I discovered over the years was that It’s not hiking per se.  It’s the unconscious creative process that happens while we are focused on something else ei. the hiking trail topography. If I tried to find a solution to a problem and found nothing and it would often become clearer during a hike, it’s almost like our unconscious enters an incubation phase - which could then result in a potential passion project (illumination phase). A kind of  serendipity or Aha moment.

The simple act of hiking (walking in nature) helps organize one’s thoughts, provides a cathartic avenue and organizes the different ideas floating in our mind. It releases the ‘feel good’ endorphins and reduces the stress hormones. You realize the rejuvenation of blurry ideas when your feet move, the thoughts effortlessly flow!

What is it about hiking, in particular, that makes it so amenable to new passion projects? The answer begins with changes to our chemistry. When we GO FOR A HIKE, the heart pumps faster, circulating more blood and alot more oxygen not just to the muscles but more importantly the powerful brain.  

A quick study on Google reveals that thousands of experiments have shown that after or during exercise, even very mild exertion, people perform significantly better on tests of attention. Hiking on a regular basis also promotes new connections between brain cells, staves off the usual withering of brain tissue that comes with age, increases the volume of the hippocampus (a brain region crucial for memory), and elevates levels of molecules that both stimulate the growth of new neurons and transmit messages between them.

The way we move our bodies further changes the nature of our thoughts, and vice versa. Psychologists who specialize in exercise music have quantified what many of us already know: listening to songs with high tempos motivates us to run faster, and the swiffer we move, the quicker we prefer our music. Likewise, when drivers hear loud, fast music, they unconsciously step a bit harder on the gas pedal. Walking at our own pace creates an unadulterated feedback loop between the rhythm of our bodies and our mental state that we cannot experience as easily when we’re jogging at the gym, steering a car, biking, or during any other kind of locomotion. When we stroll, the pace of our feet naturally vacillates with our moods and the cadence of our inner speech; at the same time, we can actively change the pace of our thoughts by deliberately walking more briskly or by slowing down.

SsF

The answer begins with changes to our chemistry. Read about the curious link between mind and feet: http://nyer.cm/I7T2A0x