Walk to Save Your Life

Walking, I must say, has for me been an exercise of health and even joy.

Let me first talk about the health part. I used to think that exercise is effective only if it's strenuous or hard. Like playing basketball or swimming, workouts in the gym, and so on. But walking?

It can be puzzling to believe. When I checked the medical and health books, they rated walking as a "best" exercise. It prevents circulatory and heart diseases. It aids to digestion. It controls weight. It can remedy respiratory disorders. It aids in cutting down smoking or alcohol consumption. It helps to better sleep.

Praise God, I get these benefits when I take regular walks. Especially, the good sleep part.

Setting out on a walk is also a joy. Something good happens for the mind and spirit when I take a walk. It's like having a psychological and spiritual vacation.

A walk provides rest from the larger world and its madness. It gives me a break from my own immediate concerns. The household and its pressing chores. Computer, desk and papers. Meetings, conferences. Work. Children, spouse, relatives.

A walk can bring back energies or restore one's joy for living. Physicians tell that "action absorbs anxiety." They know it from both objective, medical evidences and personal experiences.

For me, it does not matter whether I walk near or far. I may be walking for a day or for less than an hour in the mall or in the nature park. While I am walking, I feel like a spirit separate from the ordinary world. I get freer then to be closer to God as I walk.

Friend, take a walk always to save your life. Listen to our two best doctors, our left leg and our right.