Three ways to walk | The Press

Walking is putting one foot in front of the other and starting over. But it can be more than that. Researchers are looking at ways to make walking even more beneficial for mental health. Here are three ways to do it.

Walk in awe

Here are two articles that the New York Times devotes to a way of walking called awe walk.

There really isn’t a translation for the word. awe in French. It is a mixture of awe, admiration and wonder that we feel when faced with something bigger than ourselves that we do not immediately understand. We hear a little emotion in the way of pronouncing this word: “aaaaa”.

Still, the awewhich we will translate as admiration, is a positive emotion which, according to a handful of studies, has health benefits (greater well-being, less anxiety, less inflammation).

It was Virginia Sturm’s team who thought of testing the effects of a “walk in admiration”. The researchers divided elderly people into two groups. The first (the control group) was asked to go on regular walks. On the second, the researchers explained what the awe and gave this instruction: go for a walk looking at the world with the eyes of a child, appreciating the wonders and the details, and using all your senses.

Result ? Participants in the second group reported feeling higher levels of “prosocial” positive emotions, such as compassion, admiration and gratitude, concludes the study, published in 2020 by the American Psychological Association. “These are effects that were also reported on days when people weren’t doing awe walking,” she notes.

The researchers also asked participants in both groups to photograph themselves during their walks. Interesting fact: in the photos of those who walked “in awe”, the smiles were wider, and the silhouette of the walkers took up less and less space in favor of the surrounding landscapes. Which evokes, according to Virginia Sturm, a feeling of “little self” – the fact of being connected to others and to the wider world.

You can start simple, paying attention to the shades of green or blue, the textures or the little creatures you come across, suggests Virginia Strurm. Better to walk somewhere you’ve never been, she said. It is easier to feel admiration in nature, but the architecture of cities, museums, art, extraordinary performances can also generate it, notes the professor. “It’s just about spotting inspiring details, no matter where you are,” concludes Virginia Sturm.

walk barefoot

Gabrielle Proulx is a walking enthusiast, a real one. She walks almost every day. She lives near the river, in Montérégie, and her parents live in the Laurentians. “So I walk everywhere! sums up the 30-year-old woman.

When she is hiking in nature and the ground is clean, she sometimes takes her shoes off. And she is not the only one to do so: on social networks, there are several photos of people walking barefoot in nature.

Is it a good idea ? Physiotherapist Blaise Dubois, who advocates a minimalist approach, sees it as an “excellent idea”. “We have an emerging science that demonstrates the interest of the bare foot, among other things on the fact of having a tolerant, more robust, more muscular foot. And there’s a direct correlation between having a more muscular foot and injury prevention,” says the founder of the Clinique durunner, who nevertheless points out that you have to go gradually, so as not to stress a foot used to maximalist shoes.

Walking barefoot helps develop proprioception, and therefore balance, notes Gabriel Beaudoin-Côté, president of the Association des podiatres du Québec, but you have to be careful about excess (“it’s a question of dosage”) and the risk of injury, he says. Walking barefoot in nature is not recommended for everyone, believes the podiatrist, who is thinking, for example, of immunosuppressed people (vulnerable to infections) or diabetics (who may have a loss of sensation in their feet). The shoe, he recalls, has a protective role.

Can the contact between the foot and the ground (grass, lawn, earth, sand, etc.) have benefits for overall health? This is suggested by a group of researchers studying the earthing – or connection to the earth, in French.

We know that the body is a conductor of electric current. According to their hypothesis, the body would benefit from the negative ions on the surface of the Earth, because these would decrease inflammation.

According to research by Quebecer Gaétan Chevalier, a graduate in engineering physics at the École polytechnique, the earthing reduce inflammation, pain, improve sleep, energy level… “These are little known and surprising benefits,” says Gaétan Chevalier, director of the Earthing Institute, joint in California.

Blaise Dubois found the concept of earthing “attractive”, but the scientific evidence, “far from convincing”. In 2012, the magazine MIT Technology Review had qualified the earthing (and derivative products that are sold) of pseudoscience. “It’s a normal growth of a new field of research, with limited capacities”, responds Gaétan Chevalier to criticisms concerning the lack of data.

Gabrielle Proulx can’t explain why, but she feels good when she walks barefoot. And that’s what matters to him. “We feel it inside us, something changes between the start and the end”, assures the hiker.

walk and meditate

Psychologist Joe Flanders is also a big fan of walking. And in his eyes, it is an ideal activity to practice mindfulness meditation.

“Most of the time when you try to meditate, it’s indoors, in a bedroom,” he notes. It’s boring. We are left just with our thoughts. “While walking, he says, you can focus your attention on the sensations in the body, the song of the birds, the wind on your skin…

Joe Flanders also establishes a link between mindfulness and the two walking techniques discussed above. Both bring us back to the present moment. In the feeling under the feet, or in the details of the world around us.

You can walk mindfully in a very informal way, according to Joe Flanders.

Joe Flanders agrees: it is easier to cultivate mindfulness in nature, because the stimulations there are subtle, natural, gentle. “In the city, it’s much stronger, more sudden,” says the psychologist, who still manages to meditate when he walks in town. His clinic, Mindspace, is near Mount Royal. “Avenue de l’Esplanade, I look at the mountain. I perceive what is around me, how beautiful and incredible it is, and I come to forget my identity a little bit,” he says.