[InDubioProRubio]

? Go for a walk. Walking is what our ancestors did, to go into "finding" modus. Find a route to water, find prey, find adversaries to find you and find out. Or at least find the way home.

All senses get stimulated, a moving mind in a moving body. The great outdoors, fresh air, i shite being Scottish.

If you have a problem you need to solve, but don't know how, just walk up to a overview point and look down on the problem every day.

[331c8c71]

Maybe walking will work for me when I am older but it is not intense enough now. Cycling seems to be perfect as the scenery changes much faster and there is more opportunity to challenge myself (;

[stuaxo]

I don't know, it let's your mind wander - especially if you can walk near water or better, the sea.

[thoutsnark]

Try walking while carrying a heavy load.

[andai]

That's just regular walking. Life is hard!

[readyplayernull]

I walk quickly in ellipses when I'm power-thinking.

[331c8c71]

Ah the infamous farmer's walk!

[TN1ck]

I guess you don’t have any hills/mountains in your area, going up there can be quite intense.

[dfreire]

And… you’re doing something.

[hnuser123456]

I think the intention is to not even try to identify solutions, or even identify problems. If you're opening this page on your computer or phone, presumably, you have nothing 100% critical pressing right now. Now take it to the extreme, and see if you can quiet your brain for a minute or so. Walking is not as "pure nothing" as sitting and letting your brain wander anywhere as long as it's not reminding you of obligation stress. You might even start to daydream a pleasant setting.

[LeifCarrotson]

I like to go for a run or a bike ride.

On a walk, you can still carry and even use a phone, listen to a podcast or music, or have a conversation. When you're doing a workout, you might wear a watch, but otherwise it's a time when you can't really get distracted or interrupted by anything, you just move, observe, and think.

[my_brain_saying]

This is excellent advice. Spending 5 hours on a weekend cycling is extremely relaxing, not only because you are intensely using your body, but because you are completely and utterly distracted.

When I cycle, the first twenty kilometers are usually fairly painful: I am tired, I feel my knees, back, and muscles hurt, and am generally uncomfortable. After those twenty kilometers I enter a meditative, gelatinous phase, were I no longer really feel my body. I just ride. This is when I _think_; the same style of thinking I experience when lying, comfortably, in bed.

After maybe 60–90 kilometers (depending on my current fitness level), I enter the pain stage. This is when I start feeling my body again. Believe it or not, this is definitely the most therapeutic stage. This is when I cannot think. My mind stays blank, and I do — in a manner of speaking — nothing.

This lack of thought, meaning lack of stress, of worry, of hectic, etc., is what motivates me to go on 150 or 200 kilometer bike rides. You feel physically refreshed and exhausted. You feel that you were able to think in peace and purely, as well as having been void of all negative, stressful thoughts.

To anyone who has never tried an endurance sport like cycling: I highly recommend it. I started when I was 14, and it was one of the greatest decisions I ever made. It spared me hours of depression, fear, and stress. It also encouraged me to think and meditate in peace. I would not be the person I am today, if it were not for my dear high-school friend who showed me the world of cycling (as well as the world of communism; I owe much to this friend). Thank you.

[gffrd]

I really identify with the phases and experience you describe above. The act of being engaged as your body moves through them is powerful.

Writer Haruki Murakami, a distance runner, was asked by an interviewer what we thinks about when he runs. Murakami responded that he basically doesn't think of anything. He runs not to think, but to _not_ think. That He runs specifically to create a void. (from his book "What I Talk About When I Talk About Running")

I would also encourage anyone who hasn't experienced this before: find an activity that demands this from you. You will learn a lot about yourself.

[a_t48]

This sounds like the cycling version of runners high. I’ve never felt it.

[t_mahmood]

I love both cycling and walking. But cycling is what gave me the best of all.

Riding for 7-8 hours even once a week just gave me a boost that would let me cope with everything that I had to face in daily life, and now after I've diagnosed with ADHD, I realize it was also helped me a lot to keep myself somewhat sorted. It's kinda therapy for me.

It's relaxing, and clams the racing mind so much.

Now I don't get a chance to ride anymore, but I miss it so much. And I feel ADHD affects me more now

[ChiefNotAClue]

On a walk, you can truly take in the details of your surroundings—the kind of details that you would otherwise whizz past on a bike. Two different kinds of paces.

[SoftTalker]

I can't really use a phone outside on a sunny day. Even at max brightness the screen is unreadable.

[seadan83]

Interesting you mention walking as what our ancestors did. Until about 100 years ago, food and energy scarcity was the norm. Our ancestors would have been lean and would not have typically expended energy for just pure leisure. In other words, everyone was busy trying to not starve. There was plenty of physical activity in the day, lots of chores and things to do.

I say this to demonstrate how un-adapted we are now for what is relatively recently a radically different lifestyle.

[abdullahkhalids]

This is not supported by anthropological facts in the slightest.

First of all, the argument conflates hunter gatherers, nomadic tribes, and farming societies. The mean and variance in food supply in all three across the world and time varied quite a bit. Were the numbers so bad uniformly that people had no time for leisure activity!?!

Across history, there is evidence of people having huge celebratory festivals, involving excess food, dancing, and other rituals. People have been building for thousands of years humongous temples and pyramids and other structures requiring decades of continuous work, most of them without slave labor but voluntarily. Spending significant part of the day praying to the gods has also been the hallmark of humans. Do any of these strike you as low energy activities?

Or take a look at biology. Most animals with some intelligence spends a non-trivial amount of its time in play. Why would humans not?

[wrycoder]

Do what humans usually did - hunt some dinner, hang around, maybe go aggravate the neighboring tribe a bit, if you’re feeling feisty.

[seadan83]

How do you hunt for dinner in a cold winter? I appreciate your glibness, I was equally glib when I wrote "everyone"

[wrycoder]

Well, you put on your furs and go hunting. Tracking is easier in the snow. Or you stay in your shelter and eat some jerky. And, I'm not being glib - life was simple and you did what I said.

[seadan83]

Okay, and when your feisty neighbors take all your jerky and have hunted all the animals that are not in hibernating - then what?

While "simple", that does not equate to abundant nor easy. Or, would you agree that there was plenty of abundance even during northern winters?

If there was such abundance, and things were as simple as hunting every now and then- why so many famines in history [1]? Surely any cause of famine could be remediated by going out and doing a little more hunting?

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_famines

[seadan83]

Not in the very slightest? Didn't most early american colonies die of starvation and disease?

I feel you completely discounted this: "Our ancestors would have been lean and would not have typically expended energy for just pure leisure." And instead responded to only the following simplification as if it were an absolute point: "In other words, everyone was busy trying to not starve"

Though, let us both stop nitpicking. It is hard to convey the full nuance, particularly when tapping this out on a phone.

In fairness, I did conflate a few concepts and did not convey some nuance. Though my point that humans are not adapted for our current lifestyle remains.

(1) serfs were not voluntarily lifting weights for leisure.

(2) humans were not historically jacked. They were lean. They looked like thru-hikers, or marathon runners. It is the reason why having fat was a beauty standard. Onky the rich could have that many excess calories and not be M tan from working. The body does not choose to put on unnecessary levels of muscle without training and constant nutrition

I did not mean to convey as was read into my statements that humans did zero leisure. It is an absurd claim. Though, running a marathon for the hell of it is likely well out of the cards for most people, particularly in a winter climate. To which my point, the need to go for intentional walks was less than what it is today. Not zero, but less.

As for the conflation, the lack of nutrition was particularly salient in WWII when most Americans were not getting enough calories.

"LeBlanc argues that the U.S. military’s interest in nutrition research exploded in the 1940s, after it began seeking healthy recruits to deploy in World War II and found a male population physically weakened by years of malnutrition during the Great Depression." [1]

Celebrating during a harvest makes sense. A lot of that food is liable to go bad. It is a time of plenty,in contrast to long winters before canning was invented.

My point is the need for recreational leisure amongst adults was less than compared to present day in "post industrial countries" for two reasons: (1) substance living intrinsically involves physical activity. (2) food scarcity. Yeah, it is easy to strawman my argument as if there was no excess expenditure of energy. I'll re-iterate my point is that subsistance living is not conducive to a lot of excess calorie expenditure. Second to that, the number of people who were at a subsistence level was historically far higher. Third, a lifestyle where time is measured more in months and seasons, where one needs to do "everything" manually - is fundamentally different then the lifestyles of today (where with $100, today you can eat as well as did the King of France)

[1] https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2019/01/historian-traces-m...

[lainga]

Petrarch climbed a mountain for fun in 1336.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ascent_of_Mont_Ventoux

[seadan83]

My summary statement saying "everyone" should be taken into context rather than strawmanned. Fwiw, and also across most of europe in a similar time period: "The Great Famine of 1315–1317 (occasionally dated 1315–1322) was the first of a series of large-scale crises that struck parts of Europe early in the 14th century. Most of Europe (extending east to Poland and south to the Alps) was affected." [1]

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_of_1315

[tweetle_beetle]

Wasn't he effectively some version of upper middle class though? With enough money for servants and safely patronised, his time was protected from basic human needs.

[noncoml]

The peripatetic school of Aristotle. ~335BC

Take walks to stimulate the mind

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peripatetic_school

[zkmon]

Totally agree. Even in my childhood, if anyone was seen walking without work or running without being chased by dogs or thieves, they would be seen as lunatic. Why would anyone spend their precious energy except for some absolutely needed work? People perfected minimalistic energy spending and question any unnecessary walking. They ride on buffalos while coming back from farm, use farm animals and tools for harder work, have 24-hour servants, have more children, and have large family, get everyone, including women and children out to farm work.

I think the leisure walking, jogging, gym are all products of availability of too much food in return for less work. We are simulating work by cheating the body to think that these leisure activities are actually work.

[nativeit]

“We’re here on this Earth to fart around, don’t let anybody tell you different.”

~ Kurt Vonnegut

[groby_b]

Thoreau, Humboldt, Goethe, Descartes. da Vinci, St. Francis of Assisi, Hildegard of Bingen, Li Bai, Seneca, Socrates

Yes, it wasn't as affordable in earlier times, but thinking and walking have been closely associated for millenia.

[0cf8612b2e1e]

Most of those names strike me as particularly affluent or benefitting from a rich sponsor. Which does not really contradict the original point that majority of the population were focused on survival.

[groby_b]

"Yes, it wasn't as affordable in earlier times,"

Thinking in peace and quiet was indeed a luxury in past times.

That doesn't mean there isn't a long tradition of walking if you needed to think. And that was the core point of OP - not that the majority was focused on survival, but that supposedly thinking and walking are a new relationship, previously impossible. And they really aren't. (Even as a subsistence farmer, you occasionally have to think, and doing that during a walk is a pretty common approach)

[seadan83]

> supposedly thinking and walking are a new relationship, previously impossible

Not quite, the relationship between walking and thinking is more salient now. Not previously impossible.

Note OP cites examples of walking that are all practical. Poetically OP states this as a way to "find" answers. That element of finding is no longer a necessity like it used, but arguably taking the time and the method are still important.

Quoting OP: " Walking is what our ancestors did, to go into "finding" modus. Find a route to water, find prey, find adversaries to find you and find out. Or at least find the way home."

My points are nuanced and being strawmanned.

(1) energy scarcity makes walking for leisure less attractive. Can't just pound a bag of chips.

(2) because of the necessity to be active, the time to think and be still was more baked into human lifestyle. Further making explicit intention to do nothing, quietly walk less needed.

(3) our current lifestyle tends to be the opposite of (1) & (2). We can readily get cookies (high calorie foods) and don't have movement baked in.

(4) humans are evolved for (1) & (2). That we are at (3), and are not adapted for that lifestyle, underscores why leisure walks would be more important now than ever before.

[throaway89]

They're still somebody's ancestors!

[saghm]

Yeah, Thoreau in particular didn't really "live off the land" when writing Walden; his mother came to do his laundry for him.

[nativeit]

Is your mother doing your laundry somehow disqualifying? I’m not sure I follow your logic.

[olalonde]

Showers also tend to be effective.

[331c8c71]

I find that cold showers are magic for clearing my mind.

[frakt0x90]

I agree but I need to find an alternative. I live in texas unfortunately and walking is miserable for 4 months out of the year. I should just move but can't currently.

[theultdev]

The weather is perfect right now, take advantage!

Also it's perfect most of our "winter", unlike many places where it snows / gets too cold.

No place other than California will have perfect weather all year, but then you live in California...

During the summer my wife and I run inside, or very early in the morning outside.