I’ve been reading about the importance of rituals and decided to start a new one: walking in the morning. When I first moved to Florida I began doing it and enjoyed the alive feeling I had each day I did it. But once I started regular working hours, drifted away from the practice. 
I came back to it while working on a limited basis by doing short walks in between seeling clients. I say limited because my “walks” involved walking around the block (four blocks total) before the next person arrived. This usually took between six to ten minutes depending upon how fast I walked, but I always arrived back somehow refreshed.
So refreshed in fact that I began to wonder what caused this effect and did a little research on the activity. What I learned is that walking is an almost perfect exercise in that you use pretty much all the major muscle groups (butt, hips, thighs, and quads), and exercise physiologists now believe we don’t have to do hours and hours of physical activity in order to get real benefit. Time frames as low as ten minutes can produce maximum results.
But what about that refreshed feeling from such a short time span? The answer to that question brought me to “active rest”. When we are actively involved in work, it requires intense concentration and our brain has to really focus. Our natural inclination when we grow tired mentally is to force ourselves to keep going without realizing that our effectiveness continues to fall.
Think of your brain as a giant machine that is constantly moving, taking in and processing information. Growing mentally tired is a signal that the machine is running hot and information is building up faster than it can now process. That five or ten minute walk where your brain is only required to focus on a repetitive activity (walking) shuts off part of the process and gives the machine time to get caught up. Studies have even shown that stepping away from a task for short periods aids in greater memory retention and enables larger creative bursts to take place.The same applies to things like knitting, running, and even basket weaving, anything repetitive helps our brain go into this trance or rest cycle. Walking is just higher on the list. Keep in mind I’m not talking about walking with someone discussing the problem you just left, but more like meditative distance.
And so, my walk this morning was more than enjoyable. I returned home full of energy and loaded with ideas and had sorted out my thinking for later in the day!