Let your daily ten thousand steps benefit your Mental Health.
Many health-conscious people believe walking ten thousand steps a day would benefit their physical health. There is a secret few people know. Walking while paying more attention to your steps, your daily ten thousand step not only benefit your physical health, it could also benefit your mental health.
The Key is the Attention. If you pay attention to your walk, you can get mental health benefit as you walk. You shift attention to your walk, or you shift your attention away from the walk make a world of difference.
Everyone pays attention to their steps to some degree, otherwise we would trip over and fall for every uneven surface on our paths. It is a common belief that as long as I did not trip and fall, I have paid enough attention to my steps. What more attention I can pay to my walk? And what is the benefit of paying extra attention to my steps? If no benefit, why should I waste my time in attending my walk? I would rather use that time to think, to plan, to talk to my friends, to read news, messages on my cell phone, or listening to podcasts while I am walking.
Many trips and falls occur while the persons are thinking deeply, arguing with a conversation partner on the phone or listening to a very interesting podcast. The more interesting or exciting the activity is, the less we pay to the surrounding of our walking. Have you seen someone talking on the phone or watching the screen of their cell phone while walking across a busy street? Whatever they are talking, listening or watching the screen on the phone, that was so interesting that they cannot spare a split of a second to glance around the traffic in front of him? He trusts that there would never be a driver also talking on the phone or watching the screen while they were driving. This is an extreme case. Most of us, when we sense our feet step on the curb, we drop everything to watch for the car from the left and from the right. Is that paying enough attention to the walk? Yes, that meets the minimum safety standard of crossing the street. Attention can benefit us more than just keeping us walk safely.
Our Brains are overloaded with digital information
When we are at work, our brain is constantly bombarded by information, busy with making judgement and decisions. after work, we watch news and read text messages on social media. our brains are much busier than our parents’ ten years ago.
In this automation era, we need daily walk to exercise (deactivate) the under used leg muscles, on the other hand, we need to de-activate the over active brain. I see there is no better time to thousand steps benefit us because it activates the leg muscles which do not get activated during our eight or more hours of sitting position at work. On the contrary of inactivation of our leg muscles, our brains are activated every second while we sitting down at work! Along the same principle of activating the under-activated leg muscle with ten thousand steps, we need de-activate the over activated brain for the duration of the ten thousand steps. What is the better time to de-activate our brain while we activate our leg muscles? We value the importance of Physical strength, do we not equally value the importance of mental health?
Thinking is a blessing, thinking is a curse
What happens when the brain is not deactivated after a hard day of mental work? Just to name a few:
Have a hard time falling asleep at night. More irritable, lacking tolerant for stress, avoid simple mental activities: when your children ask you to help him/her homework. You don’t want to help them or being inpatient while helping them. And you might feel the urge to Engaging in addictive behavior. When the brain cannot stop rehearsing negative thoughts, thoughts about our embarrassed moments, thoughts of the events which bring up feeling of guilt, memory of regretful events, memory of loss love, thought that evoke sadness. These thoughts run like torrents; you have no power to stop them. That is the time we run for escape in the thoughtless state of intoxication, height on drug, or the comfort of pornography for men, romantic fantasy, relationship addiction for women, or seek out the excitement of gambling. All these shield us from our thoughts. Thinking is a blessing, thinking is a curse. We pride ourselves as quick thinkers, nobody but you know whether you have an effective brake for thinking or not. To able to Activate thinking is importance, equally importance is to able to deactivate thinking.
How to deactivate thinking?
There is a less well known principle: sensation, motor behavior and thinking are mutually inhibit. the more you move, the less you think. the more you feel, the less you think. So if you want to deactivate your thinking brain, move more and feel more.
you can feel more by direct your attention to the sensation created by your movements: walking. Feel your toes, arches, heels, achilles tendon, the calf muscles, the thigh muscles, the shoes, the ground surface. the hips, the free swinging of your hands, the change of the curvature of your spine. When you direct your attention to these moving body parts, you think less!