In Praise of Walking

When was the last time you took a long, unhurried walk—one not dictated by errands or clocks, but by curiosity and breath? In In Praise of Walking, neuroscientist Shane O'Mara invites you to rediscover this most natural human act as not just movement, but a profound key to understanding how we think, feel, create, and connect. He argues that walking is more than exercise—it's the foundation of our physical health, emotional well-being, social life, and even our civilization. Walking is the rhythmic dance between the body and the brain that shapes what it means to be human.

O'Mara contends that walking upright on two feet—our distinctive adaptation known as bipedalism—is what set humanity apart from the rest of the animal kingdom. It made our minds mobile, sparked our migration across continents, and freed our hands to build, gesture, and create. Yet, despite this evolutionary gift, modern life has pulled us away from it: we sit for hours, travel in cars, and design cities hostile to pedestrians. The result is a silent depletion of health, creativity, and connectedness.

Walking as Evolution’s Masterstroke

The book journeys deep into evolution, showing how walking emerged as a brilliant solution for movement in a complex world. O'Mara compares humans to sea creatures like the sea squirt, which digests its own primitive brain once it becomes stationary—a vivid reminder that brains evolved for movement. When our ancestors stood upright, they gained the ability to walk vast distances, hunt, gather, and imagine beyond the horizon. Walking didn’t just change our posture—it changed our consciousness.

From the fossil footprints of “Walking Eve” in South Africa to the tetrapod tracks found on Valentia Island in Ireland, O'Mara connects the dots of our deep past. He explains how bipedalism reshaped our anatomy—from the repositioning of the foramen magnum at the base of the skull to the arch of our feet. Walking created the conditions for tool use, language, and society itself.

A Prescription for Mind and Body

Beyond evolution, O'Mara reveals the surprisingly vast scientific evidence for walking’s effects on mind and body. Walking improves cardiovascular health, lowers stress, enhances memory, generates new brain cells, and reshapes mood. He describes studies proving that even short bouts of daily walking increase blood flow to the brain and stimulate the release of neurotrophic factors—natural fertilizers for neural growth. In one study, older adults who attended simple walking groups reversed age-related decline in memory regions such as the hippocampus. Movement, he insists, is medicine—no pill compares.

He mixes scientific findings with vivid narrative: stories of his own walks through Belfast or Glendalough, of sea squirt brains and alpine explorers, to show how walking grounds us in the world again. He reminds us of the mental clarity Rousseau felt when wandering, or the insight Einstein described when walking with thought experiments in mind.

Walking as Cognitive Freedom

A major idea running through the book is cognitive mobility—the notion that when you move your body, you move your mind. The brain evolved to work “on the go,” constantly integrating sensory information from sight, balance, and movement. Experiments show that attention, creativity, and learning all improve when people walk. Even the brain’s navigation systems—the hippocampus and surrounding regions—activate most robustly at walking speed.

Through that lens, walking is not passive transport—it’s active thinking. The mind works differently while pacing a forest path than when sitting still. Mental maps form. Ideas recombine. Emotions settle. As O'Mara says, “We are minds in motion.”

Walking, Society, and the Future

Finally, O'Mara brings the discussion home: walking knits society together. From ancient migrations to modern protest marches, from evening passeggiatas in Italian towns to children learning their first steps, walking is the thread that binds communities. It’s also a civic issue. Cities built for cars trap us in sedentary isolation. Cities designed for feet—those that follow EASE principles (Easy, Accessible, Safe, Enjoyable)—promote creativity, health, and equality.

In the age of digital distraction and urban sprawl, In Praise of Walking reminds you that the simplest act—placing one foot before the other—can restore both body and soul. Walking awakens ancient rhythms of the brain, enriches our sense of place, improves health, deepens creativity, and reconnects us to others. O'Mara’s message is both scientific and spiritual: walking is not a minor habit but a central human practice, one that shapes who we are and how we live. When you walk, you are quite literally thinking with your whole being.

Shane O'Mara dives deep into prehistory to trace how walking became humans’ defining advantage. He begins with creatures such as the sea squirt, whose life cycle shows that brains evolved for movement. When the sea squirt settles on a rock, losing the need to move, it digests its own brain—a dramatic metaphor for the link between mobility and cognition. Movement, O'Mara reminds us, is the seed of intelligence.

From Sea to Savannah

Over millions of years, evolution refined movement into walking. Our distant aquatic ancestors like the little skate already had the genes that produce rhythmic limb movements. These genes, known as Hox genes, control development patterns and remain strikingly similar across species—from fish to humans. According to O'Mara, walking genes first evolved underwater, not on land, and became the framework for coordinated limb motion. Once early tetrapods ventured onto the sandbanks and riverbeds some 380 million years ago, the blueprint for walking was ready.

O'Mara evokes the fossil record to bring this story alive. On Valentia Island off Ireland’s coast lie the oldest tetrapod tracks ever found, 380 million years old. In South Africa’s Langebaan Lagoon, a set of 117,000-year-old footprints—those of “Walking Eve”—captures one of our ancestors midstride. These prints prove not just movement but consciousness: the deliberate act of walking across a landscape, choosing direction and purpose.

The Birth of Bipedalism

When our lineage rose upright, everything changed. Standing erect freed our hands for tool use, carrying, and communication. The repositioning of the foramen magnum at the skull’s base allowed a vertical spine, and our pelvis narrowed to support upright balance. Each step became a small act of physics: muscles flex and extend in complex sequence, the spinal cord operates rhythmic neural circuits called central pattern generators, and the vestibular system in the inner ear keeps the head level. Walking is engineering elegance refined by natural selection.

Walking Out of Africa

With bipedalism came migration. O'Mara estimates that a family walking five kilometers a day could traverse Africa and Eurasia within a human lifetime. This slow expansion carried language, technology, and culture across Earth. It wasn’t speed but endurance—our ability to walk long distances efficiently—that powered human success (Anthropologist Daniel Lieberman at Harvard echoes this point in Exercised).

Walking shaped not only our travel but how we think. Our brains are optimized for processing information at walking speed—roughly three to five kilometers per hour. It’s the tempo of perception, the rhythm of attention, the measure of conversation. To walk is to engage the ancient collaboration between body and mind that made civilization possible.

By showing that movement preceded thought, O'Mara overturns the mind-body dualism of Western philosophy. He argues that to understand human intelligence, you must start with our feet. Walking made brains possible, societies stable, and imagination endless. Traveling from ancient tetrapods to modern city dwellers, he concludes that our evolutionary partnership with walking continues today—if only we allow ourselves to step into it.

Walking may feel automatic, but beneath its grace is an orchestra of neural precision. O'Mara explains that every step involves complex coordination between the brain, spinal cord, muscles, and senses. Our brains are built to walk—and walking engages them fully.

The Brain’s Rhythmic Machinery

Deep within the spinal cord are central pattern generators—neural circuits that produce rhythmic motions like breathing and walking. They’re why newborns can make stepping movements before they learn to walk, and why headless chickens can still run briefly. These patterns set our pace automatically, freeing the brain to think while body mechanics handle the rhythm.

O'Mara describes how sensory systems keep us balanced: the vestibular system in the inner ear detects rotation and tilt; proprioception—the “sixth sense”—tracks joint angles and muscle tension; and visual optic flow, the movement of scenery across the eyes, helps regulate speed and direction. Even without sight, humans can navigate through space using a cognitive map formed by these silent senses.

The Brain’s GPS: Place and Grid Cells

O'Mara pays homage to Nobel Prize-winning discoveries of place cells and grid cells. John O’Keefe and the Mosers found that neurons in the hippocampus fire when an animal occupies specific locations. These cells form internal maps—our mental GPS. Head-direction cells act like a compass, boundary cells mark edges, and grid cells measure distance. All activate most powerfully when we’re walking and exploring. In one moving story, O'Mara recounts the case of patient HM, who lost his hippocampus and could no longer remember routes, living in a perpetual present tense. Without movement, memory collapses.

Walking as Cognitive Activation

Recording studies show rhythmic theta waves in the hippocampus appear during active exploration—both in rats and humans. These waves synchronize thought and movement, making walking the brain’s ideal engagement speed. Every step sparks feedback loops between sensory input and spatial memory. Virtual reality experiments even replicate how we form cognitive maps and correct navigational errors, revealing that the brain predicts routes and recalibrates constantly while walking.

By unpacking this neuroscience, O'Mara bridges biology and experience: walking activates your memory circuits, keeps your orientation calibrated, and synchronizes perception with rhythm. The brain, far from being static, hums with electric harmony when your feet hit the ground. As he writes, “We are minds in motion”—literally wired to learn through the act of walking.

O'Mara turns from biology to psychology, revealing how walking shapes emotion, personality, and well-being. In a sedentary world, walking becomes a natural antidepressant. Hippocrates said 'walking is the best medicine,' and modern neuroscience agrees.

Metabolism and Mood

The author describes how sitting for long periods degrades muscle and alters brain chemistry, while standing and walking quickly restore cognitive function. Experiments show even brief standing improves attention and impulse control. Regular walking boosts blood flow and brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), promoting neural growth. As he puts it, “movement is medicine—no drug can match it.”

Nature as Therapy

Where we walk matters. Drawing on research from Canada and Japan, O'Mara explains that walking outdoors, especially in nature, has measurable effects on mood. Forest bathing—known in Japan as shinrin-yoku—lowers cortisol, the stress hormone. In a study from Dundee, residents of greener neighborhoods had healthier cortisol patterns and lower stress. Our bodies and brains, he writes, are “nature-dependent technologies” thriving on exposure to trees, light, and open air.

A Behavioral Antidepressant

Major studies link even one hour of weekly walking to reduced risk of depression. O'Mara cites psychiatrist Samuel Harvey’s eleven-year study of 33,908 adults: those who walked regularly were less likely to develop major depressive disorder. Gregory Simon calls walking “a broad-spectrum antidepressant prescription.” Movement’s positive feedback—walk, feel better, walk more—creates upward spirals of health.

By integrating neuroscience and lived experience, O'Mara reminds you that walking doesn’t just lift mood—it changes who you are. It reverses negative personality drift caused by sedentary living and fosters openness, extraversion, and agreeableness. In short, moving your feet moves your spirit. Walking reconnects you with vitality—your most human rhythm.

Walking, O'Mara shows, is not only good for health—it’s the ignition switch for imagination. He places himself among thinkers like Nietzsche and Thoreau, who believed that walking unblocked thought. The act of moving through space frees the mind from the constraints of sedentary logic.

Walking and Divergent Thinking

In experiments at Stanford University, participants walking on treadmills or outdoors generated more creative ideas than those seated. Walking stimulates what psychologists call divergent thinking—the ability to produce many possible solutions to a problem. One simple stroll doubles creative output. O'Mara explains this through neural networks: walking activates the brain’s default mode (mind-wandering, daydreaming) alongside its executive mode (focused problem-solving). The interplay between both generates originality.

Rhythm and Flow

He notes that creativity has rhythm. At moderate walking pace, our blood pressure, respiration, and brain waves synchronize into a state of effortless focus—what psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls flow. Time perception shifts; difficulty becomes joy. Examples abound: Bertrand Russell composed his essays after long walks, William Rowan Hamilton discovered quaternion mathematics while walking across Broom Bridge in Dublin. Each step brought insight.

Mind-Wandering as Fertile Ground

According to O'Mara, walking merges contemplation with environment. The hippocampus, which manages both memory and navigation, supports creative recombination of ideas when engaged in spatial movement. You think differently when you move—you see links invisible at rest. Walking allows the “flickering” between details and big-picture perspective necessary for discovery.

By framing walking as cognitive mobility, O'Mara transforms the old notion of the peripatetic thinker into a neuroscientific truth: creativity thrives on motion. If you want new ideas, he suggests, don’t just brainstorm—go for a walk.

Human beings, O'Mara insists, are social walkers. We move together—as families, as pilgrims, as protesters. Walking isn’t just locomotion; it’s communication. Each stride is a signal of shared intention.

Origins of Collective Walking

He traces this trait back 19,000 years to fossilized footprints near Lake Laetoli in Tanzania—an ancient group walking across mudflats together. These traces show cooperation and care, perhaps the earliest evidence of community in motion. From migration to hunting, walking together built civilization.

Synchrony and the Social Brain

Modern neuroscience reveals the magic behind this coordination. Two systems—the mentalizing network and the mirror neuron system—help us predict others’ actions while matching our own. When groups walk, their steps, breaths, and heart rhythms synchronize, producing empathy and cohesion. This synchrony feels good; it’s the biological root of connection. Even marchers in protests or singers in choirs experience heightened well-being, a psychological “effervescence.”

Walking as Political Expression

O'Mara explores walking’s social power—from Gandhi’s marches for independence to civil rights demonstrations. Walking proves unity in motion. Autocrats, he notes, suppress free assembly because public walking embodies dissent. Large coordinated steps dissolve the illusion of individual isolation. To walk together is to affix presence to purpose.

Walking unites the physiological, psychological, and political dimensions of humanity. We bond through rhythm, find freedom through movement, and express solidarity through shared stride. In O'Mara’s vision, walking is both primal and progressive—a human language older than speech, still capable of shaping the world.

The final chapters turn into a manifesto. O'Mara argues that if walking is central to health, creativity, and social life, then our cities must be rebuilt around it. He calls for a “charter for walkers” enshrining design principles to make urban environments serve human mobility again.

The EASE Framework

Using the acronym EASE—Easy, Accessible, Safe, Enjoyable—O'Mara sketches the foundations of walkable design. Streets should invite walking by offering clear routes, green spaces, safety from traffic, and sensory diversity. Walkability indexes, pioneered in urban studies, show that cities with higher pedestrian accessibility have lower obesity rates, better mental health, and stronger social ties. The book compares San Francisco’s vibrant sidewalks with the car-bound sprawl of San Jose, noting how “where people walk, cities thrive.”

Cities as Living Rooms

Drawing from planner Jeff Speck’s work, O'Mara calls streets “outdoor living rooms.” He advocates for green corridors like London’s Hyde Park or Dublin’s Phoenix Park—spaces that function as communal lungs for the city. Aging populations benefit especially from walk-safe designs: lowered curbs, rest benches, shade, and pacing sounds that help movement synchrony. (He even notes experiments showing that heartbeat-paced rhythms improve crowd coordination.)

Walking Policy and Political Change

To institutionalize walking, governments must treat it as public health infrastructure. “Doctors should prescribe walks,” O’Mara writes, citing initiatives in Shetland where physicians already do. Policy should favor permeability between spaces—encouraging strolling between shops, schools, and workplaces. Informational campaigns must appeal not just to logic but to emotion and story: walking makes life better, not just longer.

O'Mara ends with a humanist call: walk your city, walk your thoughts, walk your way to connection. Walking, he insists, is our evolutionary inheritance and future solution—restoring vitality to bodies, minds, and societies. The world will be healthier, smarter, and kinder when we design it to walk again.