What walking make to your mind and beyond

For many people walking can be just moving physically from one place to another. A tedious and boring activity, with no purpose. For many others this can be a way to burn calories and work our legs, increase heart rate and lower blood pressure. For me it is much more than this, it can be a metaphor for a larger life journey. Things you’re walking towards are goals and dreams. Feelings you’re walking away from are fear and negativity. Bear in mind, that this can be applicable to any kind of exercise. Particularly those in which there is a transition from one location to another; for example cycling, swimming, running, climbing or canoeing.

The advantages that walking (or other sports) on a regular basis can bring to your body are quite obvious. Even if you are in the first category of people who see no point on walking, your body will experience benefits anyway. But taking it to the next level implies something else. Using your brain in cooperation with our bodies can be an incredibly helpful for the development of a fit and healthy mind. Let's investigate how can we make the most of our walking routine:

Use that wonderful gift: your imagination

I would recommend that you connect this idea with those that you can find in the Personal Development section of this blog. Spend a few moments identifying things you would like to walk into and things you’d like to walk away from. Then, with each step, see if you can release gently things you would like to walk away from. Now let's try and walk towards the better part of you. Each step embodying the qualities, traits and goals you wish to fulfill.

I'm going provide you with another method you can use to engage your imagination in order to make you exercise more towards a better impact on your day-to-day life. The effort we have to put into walking is also a metaphor of the sacrifices enable us to overcome our challenges. They can be both huge or minor, but can work in many cases. The feeling of success on the day that we were walking and having the temptation to give up. Because we decided to keep moving can prove to be very useful. It can work as a trigger to make the extra mile at work or to control our temperament dealing with our relatives and friends. If we learn how to use our imagination while we are doing our walk we will be able to enjoy this exercise and improve our performance. Not only can this happen in the precise moment, but we can also transfer these emotions to other aspects of our life.

Protect your memory and thinking skills

In a study undertaken at the University of British Columbia, researchers found that regular aerobic exercise, the kind that gets your heart and your sweat glands pumping, appears to boost the size of the hippo-campus, the brain area involved in verbal memory and learning. We can try to increase our heart rate, especially by walking faster or even jogging.

There are two methods in which exercise helps memory and thinking, through both direct and indirect means. The benefits of exercise come directly from the ability to reduce insulin resistance and inflammation, the growth of new blood vessels in the brain, and even the abundance and survival of new brain cells. Indirectly, exercise can improve mood and sleep, and reduce stress and anxiety levels.

Many studies have suggested that the parts of the brain that control thinking and memory (the prefrontal cortex and medial temporal cortex) have greater volume in people who exercise versus people who don’t. 

Practice an alternative way of meditation

Sometimes it could be difficult to find that hidden place to sit down and practice meditation. Walking can also clear the mind and make you more focused and productive. Practice focusing your attention on the act of walking itself. Having the mobility, strength and neuromuscular control to walk is a gift we often take for granted. Instead of letting the mind drift carelessly, focus on your breathing and look at what’s going on around you; notice the color of the trees, the clouds in the sky, architecture in your neighborhood, how it feels when your touching mother earth, the sounds around you. You’re likely to notice many things that might have passed your attention. You will notice how calmer you feel.

In this way, walking empowers you to unite your mind, body, heart and soul in a way that supports your dreams and desires.

Empower your coffee breaks

As we've just seen, when we walk, our body falls into a rhythm, the heart starts pumping a little harder, blood flows faster and the brain works in a much more improved way. Walking can help to get ideas flowing easier. 

I consistently feel refreshed and more alive after a walk. Not only does it get me out into the fresh air, it gets part of my brain working again after being stagnant. Ideas come easier and I think more clearly. If you want to better focus in the afternoon, trying going for a stroll rather than sitting and doodling.

So what should you do? Start exercising! Stop making excuses! I don’t know exactly which exercise is best for you, but find what motivates you and go for it!

Language Immersion

Immersion versus Classroom is a classic debate when it comes to learning a foreign language. You may have read, heard or thought whether being surrounded by a foreign language, or immersed in it, is the best way to speak like a native. Or are traditional lectures with grammar rules and vocabulary list the best way to learn a language.  By learning language I’m not only talking about English or Spanish. The guidelines you are about to discover here can be applicable to the learning process of any language. I believe so at least, but if you want to add something, you can leave a comment of which I could learn from.

Coming back to this debate there are many things we can say. I’ll try to squeeze the whole idea into this paragraph.  There are traditionally two approaches: one is explicit, where the students are taught a lot of information about grammar rules and the other one is implicit, where the students learn the way children do when they learn a native language. That is, by being with native speakers and absorbing the language that surrounds them, generally without a lot of explanation. The obvious and most important question would be: What is the best way to learn a language?

I’ll answer this base on my own experience. Considering that English is a compulsory subject in Spanish primary and secondary schools, I’d been studying it since I was a kid. I used to hate it and always wondered why I have so little talent. To be honest it wasn’t until I started my degree in Tourism that I really learn something, as English was a very tough matter and I had to do whatever it took to pass my exams. The key factor for this real learning process was that for the first time in my life I need the language for communication purposes. I’d never forget my first exchange with Kyle, a guy from North Carolina (USA). My mind was completely frozen and unable to coordinate a single sentence. But I was determinate to have some kind of interaction, so I grabbed a piece of paper I could use to make some draws to support my lack of vocabulary. At that very moment, a strong desire was born: to improve my English skills. This wish is what push you through a real immersion, what make you create the triggers around you to have as much contact with your second language as you can. Thanks to this mind set you switch everything you do, if you want to watch a movie, chat to somebody, read, and so on; you just do it in English.

After so many years fighting to accomplish this aim more effectively and efficiently, I can say that those periods in which I’ve been immerse in English gave me the crucial boosts to become what I am today. The first time I travelled abroad was to Ireland to make an English course of six weeks. So I combined the two mentioned approaches. Let’s call it the Immersion-style Classroom Learning. It worked well, but it did because I was focus on being exposed to a situation where the communication was absolutely necessary. In my class there were other Spaniards and I told them I was Italian, so if they speak with me (even outside the school) they did it in English. I kept this attitude until the very end. Can you imagine their face the day they found out where I was from when I said bye in my mother tongue?

Let me provide you with a couple of examples where the immersion has been a key point. The first one came at the following year when I had a teacher’s grant to go Malta to do another course. In this occasion I found a job for the evenings so that I can practise it more in real situation. The second one took place three years ago, when I moved to United Kingdom and I avoid making Spanish friends.

All these cases allow us to understand that immersion is very important to speed up learning, but we shouldn’t confuse the fact of going to a foreign country with proper immersion. Nowadays with the resources available (especially on the Internet), anyone can be more immerse into a second language than someone surrounded by English speakers but who doesn’t interact with them. Obviously, being in this context is a bonus, but you need to make the effort to achieve what you want to achieve.

The capacity to successfully use language requires one to acquire a range of tools including phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and an extensive vocabulary. They can be learned in a classroom, but if you really want to consolidate this learning you need to find ways to put these skills into practice.

Personal Development

If you are taking the time to read these words you are already on the right track! Wherever you are, whoever you are, whenever you are looking for personal growth, you are at a point from which you can make a start or take a step forward. Now is the best moment to assess your skills and qualities, consider your aims in life and set goals in order to realize and maximize your potential. Early life development and early formative experiences within the family and school help to shape us as adults, but personal development should not stop there.  

There is no better day than today for a new beginning

Although your personal development isn’t like a race where you have a start and a finish line. It’s a lifelong process for you to be as happy as you can be. What we are talking about here is a cyclical process of transformation which takes place every single day throughout one’s life. So the present moment is a given gift to add momentum to this cycle. This concept though, looks very abstract (and it is indeed), but let me pose here a question: have you ever wondered why people from the most diverse backgrounds, ethnic groups, religions and societies speak about happiness as their final purpose? 

Nothing is as important as happiness

From my point of view, everything else is in service to this very goal. Not necessarily more or less important, but within it. Let’s leave this topic for other articles now. I just wanted to make the point that personal development has happiness as its purpose. Since this is the most important thing we need in our life whoever we are, it is really worthwhile to focus on our personal development.  

This blog may help you to identify some of the skills you need to set life goals which can enhance your employability, raise your self-confidence and lead to a more fulfilling, higher quality life.  If you plan to make relevant, positive and effective life choices for your future, you will empower yourself. 

Personal Development Plan

Personal development involves mental, physical, emotional and spiritual skills. You can work on each of them independently in order to cultivate them in our mind, body, emotions and spirit. However, they are all interconnected in such a way that the achievements you’ll attain in one will have a positive impact in each of the others and vice versa.

If you have this motivation to improve yourself and start a PDP (Personal Development Plan), you may be thinking: ‘how can I get started on my own journey of personal growth?’ Or if you have already started to consciously pursue personal development, you may be thinking, ‘how can I get to the next level?’

There are so many ways of doing it. You could even create your own way. Actually, that would be ideal, as we are talking of a development that is individual and unique. No two PDPs are the same. In fact, there are potentially billions of them, as many as human beings in the world. Nevertheless, we can follow certain patterns that will allow us to get straight to the point. This can be as simple as making a list of goals. So the very first step would be to answer these questions: who do I want to be? What do I want? What experience do I want in my life? How do I want to grow? How do I want to contribute to the world? 

Be specific

Once you set your aims, be careful! Don’t confuse goals with strategies. Being happy could be a goal but we need to describe our goals in more detail. If what are to achieve our aims, it is crucial that we focus on the strategies. The more specific a strategy is the easier it is to reach what we want and that would be a boost for our next task. This means that once we answer the previous questions (and write them down), we need to reply the following ones: how can I become the person I want to be? How and when can I get what I want? What resources do I need? 

In following articles I’ll be revealing my personal answer to these questions. What about you?