Shane O’Mara—a professor of experimental brain research, focusing on stress, depression and anxiety; and learning, memory and cognition—has written a new book titled In Praise of Walking. The Guardian did a feature on in him. Some quotes:
- Guardian: “He knows this not only through personal experience, but from cold, hard data – walking makes us healthier, happier and brainier.”
- O’Mara: “Our sensory systems work at their best when they’re moving about the world.”
- O’Mara: We can see “from the scientific literature, that getting people to engage in physical activity before they engage in a creative act is very powerful. My notion—and we need to test this—is that the activation that occurs across the whole of the brain during problem-solving becomes much greater almost as an accident of walking demanding lots of neural resources.”
- O’Mara: When you’re walking “there are all sorts of rhythms happening in the brain as a result of engaging in that kind of activity, and they’re absent when you’re sitting. One of the great overlooked superpowers we have is that, when we get up and walk, our senses are sharpened. Rhythms that would previously be quiet suddenly come to life, and the way our brain interacts with our body changes.”