In Praise of Walking: A New Scientific Exploration
Shane O'Mara
Top 10 Best Quotes
“The core lesson of this book is this: walking enhances every aspect of our social, psychological and neural functioning. It is the simple, life-enhancing, health-building prescription we all need, one that we should take in regular doses, large and small, at a good pace, day in, day out, in nature and in our towns and cities. We need to make walking a natural, habitual part of our everyday lives.”
“Flow is the subjective experience of concentration and deep enjoyment accompanying or arising from skilled performance.”
“Although walking arises from our deep, evolutionary past, it is our future too: for walking will do you all the good that you now know it does.”
“it may therefore be the case that walking at a speed just below that which requires continual monitoring exerts the best possible effect on creative cognition.”
“We speed up our walking, unconsciously competing against others seeking the same resources.”
“We need urban planners and engineers to embrace walkability as the core activity that our cities and towns revolve around and depend upon – for all our sakes.”
“We are still learning the lessons of urbanisation, and how it affects every aspect of our lives. And yet urban design is something owned and practised by architects and city planners rather than by neuroscientists or psychologists. This is a great pity, something to be lamented, because the science and sensibility that psychology and neuroscience can bring to urban design – to improve the liveability and walkability of a city – is significant, as we will see. Urban design that fully and properly takes account of the needs of walkers will make cities much more attractive places to live and work.”
“Walking a city is the best way to get to know it. You can’t get to know the mood of a place, its energy and pace, when you’re driving”
“They also suggest that the standard methods of assessing creativity used through the generations by psychologists and neuroscientists may be underestimating our capacity for creativity, because the environments that we test in, and the postures that we ask participants to adopt, constrain how they perform.”
“The true charm of pedestrianism does not lie in the walking, or in the scenery, but in the talking. The walking is good to time the movement of the tongue by, and to keep the blood and the brain stirred up and active; the scenery and the woodsy smells are good to bear in upon a man an unconscious and unobtrusive charm and solace to eye and soul and sense; but the supreme pleasure comes from the talk.”
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