One of the challenges with working/schooling from home is the tendency to stay in the house all day for days on end. A benefit of going to work/school is that it gets us out of the chair and moving, and getting out of the chair and moving is not only great for the body, but great for the mind and spirit too.
Amongst (many) other things, walking has been shown to increase Positive Affect, and decrease your Negative Affect. In short, this means you experience greater joy, energy and enthusiasm and less sadness, lethargy and fear. So with this in mind, my 13 year old and I went for a walk today.
I could pick out any number of great things that happened on our walk but for brevity I will go for 3.
We spoke. That meant that we didn’t touch our phones*. At all. For the entire walk. In fact, hers stayed at home. It doesn’t even matter what we were talking about, it was just great to be able to talk….and listen…and feel the benefits. Listening to each word brings us into that moment and helps us to step away from future/past worries. It really is something to be grateful for.
We had things to talk about. Walking phonelessly outside, we got a break from the screen and saw, heard and even smelled (I won’t go into that but it made us laugh) things that we wouldn’t have seen, heard or smelt (honest), at home. These things stimulated conversation and went off into interesting tangents. Sometimes the home, with all the screens and other distractions, shuts down conversation rather than stimulating it, so going out was a welcome break from the numbing effect of the screen.
We had a laugh. I’ve linked interesting articles above from serious academic research. I could do that here too but I won’t, because when you laugh, and someone you love is laughing with you, it is transformative…for both of you, and we all know that, and it’s great.
*apart from starting a walking app at the beginning.
For the record, we also ended up walking 5 miles according the app, and that means I can have a some custard on my cake at the weekend!
