How walking helped to heal me

Maybe each day you should just go for a walk

Said my friend who I was staying with after leaving the family home in the midst of my breakdown.

By myself? I thought?

Without a purpose?

Just a walk?

Not just ‘walk the dog’ or walk to a place, or walk to get to something – just a walk?

Yeah, just go for a walk, it might do you good

And so I did.

Virtually every day. The walks I had done before I had done with a dog, the walks I had done before were with headphones in, the walks I had done before had been for work reasons. Distraction. Functional. Escape.

And at first it was well, a bit awkward. Just going for a walk.

It was a walk through a small edge of city village, through tunnels and there was the cliffs and the sea.

But I realised that I liked exploring, and so I did.

Whilst in the midst of so many clouds, I walked.

Clouds etched on my face, as below you can see. One of very few photos of me. So much pain on my face, looking back, I was a shadow, grey, hiding, pretending to be ok.

This was me.

My friend lived near the sea and the coast, and I started to look a bit closer and enjoy.

Sometimes I used those walking moments to take photos, to phone friends, to try and work out what was going on in my life, to try and understand.

Mind all over the place, busy, thinking, clinging on, trying to make sense of the clouds

Sometimes in those days I wouldn’t be completely present to the space I was in, so I’m not going to say that it was a state of natural bliss as I walked along the north east coastline.

But I walked

in my own cloud at times. But I walked.

Sometimes I walked miles

Sometimes I walked miles to place where there was a coffee shop on the coast.

Sometimes I walked in the rain

I would try and find new routes

New paths, for me

Most of the time I preferred to walk in a circle

Id go early in the morning and get up and see the sunrise

Other times it would be the sunset

There was a bench on the cliffs that I could sit on and watch the sea.

Getting out, by myself.

Beginning to enjoy my own company.

Beginning, the glimpses of beginning to sense a change

Seeing nature. Seeing things. Perspective shifting.

Tiniest specs of change

Im not going to sit here a few years later and say that nature was healing me, but I might say that it was the beginning of something.

Fresh air…the opportunity to breathe, when friends on the phone were saying breath, my air was coastal and by the sea.

I could slow down. With no pressure or expectation. I could explore, get lost in the caves.

Enjoy coffee

Take a book even.

And just be.

Sit on a pebble and watch the sea.

Sit and look at the pebble.

Watch as others walked with their dogs.

Eat bramble.

Throw a pebble into the sea.

Getting hot, too many clothes, or cold with too little, trying to get back before it got dark

Maybe even finding the pub on the way back, or the old bits of railway nearby, that evoked that childhood railway joy

The pub with the railway name too, and pictures

Talking to strangers in the pub. Talking to strangers with their dogs

Me, walking.

There was always something to find, something to see. An angle on life that I hadn’t noticed before.

And I was noticing.

Todays tide was different, the sea was different, the cloud colour was different. No two walks ever the same. the world is different, and so was I.

I was enjoying what I saw, and it was healing to the wounded soul.

I went almost every day.

I was bruised, hurt, confused, and yet walking was doing something, nature was doing something, my eyes were doing something.

Something was starting to awaken.

The silence of the sky, the crash of the waves, they took me away. Took me to the present.

A walk will do you good.

It did. Its the same for all of us..isnt it?

And now I still walk, we all did during lockdown, dont you remember.

We walked and sometimes stopped to see, to feel, to notice, that the world was bigger, and more beautiful outside.

And that we are all wondering like strangers on beach, trying to find our way home, but doing it outside not trapped inside.

I still walk, and now I have a better camera. I still walk and sometimes notice, and still walk and forget to.

I sometimes walk and forget to take myself along, as im elsewhere distracted by the noise of the world. That sometimes I have to be reminded to stop.

And be me.

And notice.

Notice the colour, notice the sky, notice the flower, the bird in the air.

Just see it for what it is.

Walking in amongst the industrial landscape, beautiful rugged, panoramic Teeside, walking along the beach, walking with myself.

Taking myself out for a walk.

Not just going for a walk, but taking myself, me, out.

Nature was healing me, and helping me to see.

As I walked, as I saw, as I felt awe and gratitude for what I could see

Snippiets of moments where my mind could stop.

Now I look, and look intently, and the colour, the movement, the scene, watching the eyes of the birds or dragonflies move.

A walk gives me chance to see the possibility of something that helps me see the work differently, gives me the possibility of stopping, and focussing on something, whether its the camera or the binoculars, to see the world in detail, the smallest detail of the wings of a dragonfly

and be captivated in a moment.

Go for a walk it will do you good

I rarely return from a walk feeling less calm that when I started.

Something has usually given me joy.

Something in me often has shifted.

Walking might be my body way of doing natural EMDR, the treatment my therapist showed me and helped me to do.

Step by step.

Heart beat.

As I walk, dont think…feel.

Feel and walk at the same time. Sense it, sense the feeling like im sensing the sky.

Feel alive, feel bliss, feel me.

Sometimes a walk is just a walk.

Its when I take myself out for a walk

that I start to notice me.