Walking Your Blues Away

HEALTH / HEALING "This book is a prescription for mental wellness that has no bad side effects. Walking, like drawing, is a human activity that calms the brain and induces insight. . . . Buy several copies--you'll be handing this book out to friends." --Betty Edwards, author of Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain Our bodies usually heal rapidly from an illness, injury, or wound. Yet our minds and hearts often suffer for years with debilitating symptoms of distress or upset. Why is it so hard for our minds and hearts to heal? One simple key to healing them can be just a short walk away. Walking--a bilateral therapy that has been a part of human life throughout history--allows people to heal emotionally as quickly as they do physically. Normally the brain converts our daily experiences into long-term memories. However, a traumatic experience can become "stuck" in the brain, unable to be stored as "memory" and persisting in the brain as if it were still a present-time event. Thom Hartmann explains that when we walk, which engages both sides of the body, we simultaneously activate both the left and right sides of the brain. This allows the brain's two hemispheres to join forces to break up brain patterning and allow the sufferer to release these distresses--from extreme but brief upsets to chronic conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder and depression. To achieve these results, Hartmann shows how we must learn to walk consciously, holding an awareness of the distress (or desire we hope to attain) in mind as we move. Using a variety of case studies, he demonstrates that it is possible to dissolve the rigidity of a traumatic memory or negative mind state in as little as a half hour's time. His techniques have proven successful in helping to alleviate rage resulting from a domestic dispute as well as the chronic traumas soldiers experience during war that are often locked away for decades. While the physical benefits of walking have long been recognized, its importance in promoting and maintaining mental health has only recently been rediscovered. Hartmann's deceptively simple, yet potent exercises allow us to create our own walking journeys to restore our mental, emotional, and spiritual well-being as well as rejuvenate our body's health. THOM HARTMANN is the award-winning, bestselling author of over a dozen books, including The Edison Gene, The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight, and Attention Deficit Disorder: A Different Perception. His groundbreaking work in ADD/ADHD and psychotherapy has been featured in TIME magazine, the New York Times, and in media around the world. He lives in Oregon.