Walk on the Grass

Our urban planners love to build footpaths for us to walk along, but I avoid them wherever I can. It is not natural to walk on a hard flat surface all the time.

I have been trying to explain this to doctors but as you probably already know, western medicine is not interested in prevention, just more ingenious drugs and procedures to keep us upright and sentient after the incidence of illness or injury and not much before.

What I have been trying to explain is that walking on an undulating surface of varying degrees of traction and density exercises the body and mind far more naturally and thoroughly than walking on concrete.

When walking on grass, for example, you cannot see the mild variations in the terrain below. When you take a step your foot senses the terrain and begins a whole of body adjustment that is phenomenally fast. It is not just a couple of muscles in the foot that makes the adjustment. The correction flows through all of the major balance and control muscles in the body, and this is happening with every step. Body balance is a marvellous thing.

The enjoyment in walking on natural terrain is also a communing with nature that we all need. I get great satisfaction in walking on natural surfaces. And even when it is rocks, what you lose in cushion you gain with marked variation of slope.

I love walking on an undulating grassy surface. And I enjoy what my body can do so cleverly as it continually senses and adjusts using its complex, almost magical system of balance. I know this is doing me good.

So ignore those signs and keep on the grass.