Walking with the Seasons (eBook)

How Happiness Leads to Joy

How often have you been frustrated—perhaps with yourself, co-workers, or a family member—and announced, “I need to take a walk”? And when you do, when you get outdoors among the blooming chestnuts trees or the emerging spring flowers in your neighborhood, you seem to walk away from negative thoughts and arrive at a better state of mind. Even with the first few steps you can feel yourself physically move out from a negative state into a positive one, from unhappy to happy. It turns out there is a science to this.

We are significantly and quantifiably happier after walking in nature. There is a marked difference in the quality of experience between ten minutes of walking through a park, among sunlight and birdsong, cherry blossoms and May breezes, and an equal amount of time spent on a treadmill in a windowless gym. Myriad scientific studies by psychologists, neuroscientists, and physicians around the world offer evidence demonstrating how walking in nature affects our happiness, and some of it is quite startling.

A few years ago, a research team from Stanford University discovered walking for about an hour and a half in “non-urbanized settings” lessened depression, stress, and anxiety, as well as quieting persistent negative thoughts. Not only did these walks diminish ruminative thinking, but they also lowered the risk for mental illness both in the short and long term. Interestingly, the same amount of time spent in an urban environment (think concrete and traffic) had no impact on negative thoughts and very little on depression. Consider this the next time you feel stuck in a pattern of self-doubt or sorrow—seek out somewhere flourishing and green to walk.

There is something even more surprising about walking than simple happiness—joy! In her book, Words for the Heart, Maria Heim describes joy as “… different from happiness in that it seems to come from outside and hit us unawares … unlike happiness it is a short-term episode and strikes unexpectedly.” I would add that we can seek and find happiness if we apply ourselves, but joy—that moment of interconnected and unexpected bliss and presence—is a gift.

Aim for joy in your walks—take unfamiliar routes, allow yourself to be surprised by the new and the new ways of seeing the familiar. Sometimes those astonishing moments of joy can come from things we have seen many times—a favorite forsythia bursting into bloom, a pair of swans we have watched all spring swimming past with their fresh-hatched cygnets, or the way samaras whirl down from a beloved maple tree.

“Joy shakes me like the wind that lifts a sail …”

Clarissa Scott Delany, “Joy”

A Joyful Walking Meditation

As you walk, imagine yourself as a sail. Allow yourself to be filled with the winds of joy, carrying you in unexpected directions and back to your delightful self. As you receive this joy, offer it outward in what Buddhists call mudita or “taking joy in the joy of others.”

Consider the words of meditation teacher Sharon Salzberg: “One way to cultivate greater sympathetic joy is to connect with happiness in our own life … Like any kind of generosity of spirit, joy for others depends on the feeling of inner abundance that is distinct from how much one has materially or objectively in this world. The knowledge that our lives are worth something releases our capacity to care about others and rejoice in their success.”

Dogs Are Our Best Teachers

In her memoir What Is a Dog? Chloe Shaw has “felt many a problem solved in the quiet steady transmissions through a leash … walking a dog is like walking your heart.” Dogs are our best teachers when it comes to walking with the seasons. They pay attention to everything—from intriguing smells (some prettier than others) to elusive squirrels—and are usually far more interested in the journey than the destination.

Every dog I have ever loved has been happy to be wherever they are, whenever they were. Taking the dog out is an entire subset of walking and applies to all the seasons, but it seems spring is the most exciting time for dog walks. Stinky things have thawed! New puppies in the neighborhood! Puddles! Poop! (Everything is italicized and has an exclamation point when spoken in Dog—at least, that is how we translate it in our house.)

There is a difference between walking our dogs and solitary walks (or walks with human companions, which, of course, have their own benefits). When psychologist Amy Jackson-Grossblat and her colleagues at Andrews University studied the therapeutic benefits of dog owners interacting with their dogs, they uncovered some expected—and startling—results. Not only did spending time together appear to promote mindfulness and heightened awareness of the environment in humans, but people who walked mindfully with their dogs also experienced heightened self-awareness, which they were then able to transfer to other human relationships. This means more satisfaction within themselves, a greater connection with others and, also, a deeper sense of belonging and significant meaning within the cosmos.

“In walking dogs, my heart endures.”

Chloe Shaw, What Is a Dog?

Jackson-Grossblat’s conclusions teach us that a genuine therapeutic benefit can come from establishing “a sense of self as part-of-nature” and that the dogs we walk can be an extension of, or even a conduit to, that nature. The study goes even further by suggesting that walking the family dog offers “a direct and practical means of developing new life meanings, to address the problems of life, and confront existential issues.”

A Sensory Experience

When it comes to paying attention and interacting with nature and other-than-human beings (or human ones, for that matter) dogs have a distinct advantage—they have millions more sensory receptors than humans. Their sense of touch is enhanced by their paws, muzzles, and noses, which are full of nerve endings. And, for most breeds, their ability to hear is far more developed. Dogs can hear far higher frequencies—often three times as much as an average adult human—which means they can pick up on sounds too subtle for human ears, like mice squeaking or moles moving below the ground, humming insects, a familiar car driving toward your home, or even approaching earthquakes.

Of course, when it comes to smell, dogs have the greatest advantage. They have far more olfactory receptor cells than humans, and a snout better designed for detecting scents and interpreting them. Not only can they pick up on the aroma of things we would expect—like cats, pollen, or a pocketful of treats—but human emotions too. It is up for debate whether dogs can smell danger, but they can certainly smell fear, and perhaps even joy, via chemicals like pheromones and hormones like adrenaline, which mammals (including humans) release when frightened, excited, or attracted.