Why Walking Is Actually a Nervous System Practice

Walking for mental health goes deeper than most people realize — and in this episode, Amanda breaks down exactly why increasing your daily step count is one of the highest-return nervous system practices you're probably underutilizing. From bilateral movement and cortisol metabolism to blood sugar stability and sleep, the science behind a simple daily walk is more connected to your emotional wellbeing than you might think.

3 Takeaways:

1. Walking touches many of the underlying physiological systems that drive how we feel: bilateral movement, cortisol metabolism, blood sugar stabilization, and sleep regulation.
2. The right goal is a stretch from where you actually are, not where you think you should be. 
3. If you're already moving consistently and still struggling, something else needs your attention. 

CLICK HERE for the full show notes, resources, and 3 tangible takeaways!

—

Looking for more personalized support?

•  1:1 Coaching (RESTORE):  Learn more or book a free discovery call (HSA/FSA eligible & includes comprehensive bloodwork)
•  Regulated Living Membership:  A mental health membership and nervous system healing space (sliding scale pricing available). Join here.
• Order my book: Healing Through the Vagus Nerve

*Want me to talk about something specific on the podcast? Let me know HERE.

—

Disclaimer: This podcast is for informational and educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional medical or mental health advice, diagnosis, or treatment.

Website: https://www.regulatedliving.com/podcast

Email: amanda@regulatedliving.com

Instagram: @amandaontherise

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@amandaontherise

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Regulate and Rewire, an anxiety and depression podcast where we discuss the things I wish someone would have taught me earlier in my healing journey. I'm your host, Amanda Armstrong, and I'll be sharing my steps, my missteps, client experiences, and tangible research-based tools to help you regulate your nervous system, rewire your mind, and reclaim your life. Thanks for being here. Now let's dive in. Today we are going to talk about walking. And before you decide that is too basic or too random of a conversation for you to listen to an entire podcast on, stick with me at least through the intro. And let me see if I can change your mind because walking is one of the most researched, most accessible, and in my opinion, one of the most underrated tools that we have for nervous system regulation. Also, I can very distinctly recall that casually and frequently during the most dysregulated decade of my life, you could hear me say something like, What? Why? Why would I walk? Why would I walk when I can run? It didn't matter if it was warming up before a workout, if I was out with my dog, if I was getting from one class to the next, one client to the next. My life was a full-on, never-ending sprint, both figuratively and literally. Now, fast forward to right now. I am postpartum enough. I'm starting to get the itch to run, but got some labs back. Cortisol numbers look a little funky, my adrenals look a little stressed out. And I've been advised right now to keep my workouts consistent, but more moderate intensity until it looks like my system can support higher intensity more consistently. So walking, walking has become a big part of my daily life, a big part of my practice right now. It also just happens to be the monthly habit focus inside the membership. So for so, so many reasons, we are gonna talk about walking today. Specifically, we are gonna talk about why and how potentially increasing your daily step count could be one of the highest return things that you do for your mental health. And I'm also gonna talk to you about the actual science of what is happening in your nervous system when you walk, the bilateral movement, the ways that it metabolizes cortisol, why it matters for anxiety and depression specifically, and then how to figure out if and or how this is a practice that you may want to leverage in your healing journey. So let's get into it. Starting with some of the science. Walking is what we call bilateral movement. So that means that it engages both sides of your body rhythmically and alternately. So left, right, left, right. That crossbody rhythmic pattern has a direct calming effect on your nervous system. It's the same principle behind EMDR therapy, which uses bilateral stimulation to help you process trauma. It is also very similar to the reasons why rocking side to side or swaying can feel really soothing. I've heard a lot of people share, myself included, that some of your best thinking happens when you walk. Your brain responds very favorably to this pattern, as does your nervous system. The regulation that happens when we're walking is physiological and psychological. And we see this across so, so, so many different pieces of research. So, another piece to the conversation around walking is cortisol. So when you are in a stress response, your cortisol rises. That is appropriate, that is expected. The problem is when cortisol levels stay elevated because our stress cycles never complete. And like we talk about all the time, in modern life, most of our stressors are abstract. They are psychological rather than physical. So we activate our stress response constantly and then we just sit there. We sit there at a desk, in a car, on the couch, and this adrenaline and this cortisol that got pumped through our system never fully metabolizes because these threats never really resolve because there's nothing that we are running from or chasing away from us. And so this cortisol accumulates in our system, our activation, it lingers and it builds up and up and up and up. Well, it turns out that walking is one of the most effective ways to metabolize excess cortisol. So you are literally helping your body complete these various started stress cycles, ones that you're aware of and even ones that you're unaware of, because walking being in motion, again, this bilateral movement, this signals to your nervous system that the threat has passed, that you're in motion, that you have some sense of control, is physiologically metabolizing this cortisol response. And so you can come back down to a more regulated state. Research shows that even a 15-minute walk can help you shift out of that fight or flight state in measurable ways that we see on brain scans. Another thing it does is it increases blood flow to the brain, which can trigger and release endorphins, reducing activity in your amygdala. So that is your brain's alarm center. So when we're walking, we are not just burning calories, moving our body. We are literally helping your body close some of these stress loops to metabolize cortisol. All right, next science fact. Another thing that walking influences is our blood sugar stability. So this is one that people don't often connect to mental health, but it matters enormously, especially research shows us for anxiety symptoms. So when blood sugar swings, it has its highs and then it crashes into lows. This has a direct effect on your nervous system state. These crashes can read to our system as threats, as stressors. So these swings between like spike and drops of blood sugar, it tanks our energy and it makes regulation significantly harder. One of the things that we know is more consistent daily movement helps to buffer some of these swings. Even if you do not change anything about the way that you are eating, movement can help to buffer some of the swings. And the effects show up in how you feel emotionally, how you feel physically, if you are struggling with mood instability, irritability, or especially, especially if you feel like you have anxiety that seems to come out of nowhere with no obvious trigger, your blood sugar might be something really worth paying attention to, or even looking into with some functional lab work. So walking in blood sugar. Now, walking in sleep. Walking improves our sleep, especially if you can get outside and get some natural sunlight. Then we're layering not just the actual movement of walking, helping sleep, but the natural sunlight regulates your circadian rhythms over time. Light exposure in the morning or the early afternoon sends specific signals about when to be awake and when to start to wind down. It impacts your melatonin release. So if you've been listening to this podcast for any amount of time, you also know how central sleep is to everything that we're working on. It's not just one piece of your regulation puzzle. Sleep in so, so many ways is the foundation that so many of our other biological, physiological, psychological systems depend on getting enough quality sleep. And walking during the day, moving during the day has been shown to improve sleep numbers. And then the final science piece we'll talk about is the somatic piece. Walking gives emotions and sensations a way to move through the body rather than getting stuck. So something I say that resonates a lot with people we work with is that stress is either processed or stored. So this is a little bit of an echo of the conversation we had a minute ago about cortisol. But when we walk, when we are moving and breathing and engaging our body, we are giving that stored activation somewhere to go, not just in metabolizing the cortisol, but in moving the stuck emotions, sensations. And when we walk undistracted, especially undistracted by music, undistracted by podcasts or phone calls, this can give our thoughts space to process as well in a way that can measurably decrease rumination. Okay. So when I say that the research on walking for anxiety and depression is some of the most consistent data that we have in mental health, that's what I mean. And it is not because walking is some miracle cure, but it is because walking touches so many of the underlying physiological systems that drive how we feel. That was kind of a scientific overview. For those of you who are like, but what does the research say? What are the numbers? What are the studies? I'm going to spend the next probably three minutes data dumping at you, and I will link these in the show notes as well. So, in I'm going to talk about four different studies. So there was a meta-analysis involving almost 100,000 adults that showed that higher daily step counts were associated with fewer depressive symptoms. So it showed that reaching 5,000 steps a day was tied to reduced depression symptoms, while 7,000 steps or more was linked to lower depression risk in long-term studies. So 5,000 steps showed reduced depression symptoms. 7,000 or more steps showed a little bit of a greater effect. Second study was of about 8,600 participants. It showed that walking significantly reduced both depression and anxiety symptoms. And the effects of walking were comparable to other interventions like structured exercise programs. So if you are somebody who's been told like exercise helps depression and a formal exercise routine has felt intimidating or inaccessible to you, this research showed that walking significantly reduced these symptoms comparable to more structured exercise programs. So it's not to say that that may not want to be or need to be an eventual goal to work out more intensely or structured, but walking can be just as effective for many people. Third study, an fMRI study, found that a one-hour nature walk decreased amygdala activity. So a reminder that your amygdala is your brain's stress and threat detection center. And this study showed that women had a particularly significant reduction. So it suggested that women may derive even greater stress regulation benefits from walking in nature. Then the last study I'll talk about it was a 100-day 10,000-step-a-day workplace challenge. And it showed small but consistent improvements in depression, anxiety, stress, and overall well-being scores. And notably, the mental health benefits appeared regardless of whether participants actually hit their full 10,000 steps each day. So why I included this study is because I think it validates what we'll talk about a little bit later on, which is this idea that any increase can count. Any increase in movement in step count, whether you're hitting the hallmark 10,000 steps a day or not, it can be helpful. So overall, the general consensus of walking for mental health, it is more is better, but some is better than none. And consistency matters more than perfection and intensity. So with this research, I spend a lot of time comparing how many steps, wherever. The research does not point to a single magic protocol, but there are some clear and consistent kind of thresholds or guidelines that are worth knowing about. So for those of you who are like, okay, tell me my numbers, tell me my numbers, what do I need to do? Give me the box to check. In general, for those of you who want those specifics, folks who logged at least 5,000 steps a day were less likely to experience depression symptoms. With again, the greatest results happening for those who logged more than 7,500 steps a day. They were 42% less likely to suffer depression symptoms. Then there's a group of adults who reached the full 150 minutes per week, they in general have a 25% lower risk of depression. Now, this feels like an appropriate place to put in my usual caveat, which is what I am not saying. I am not saying that walking will magically heal your anxiety or depression. If your nervous system is dysregulated because of unprocessed trauma, a chronically overflowing stress bucket, hormonal imbalances, whatever, whatever, whatever, whatever, whatever. Walking is not what fixes those things. But what the research shows is that it can have a meaningful impact in reducing symptoms. But remember that symptoms and the root cause of the greatest amount of our struggling can be different things. So my invitation here is if you are already walking consistently and you're still really struggling, use that as information. This means that there are other levers that need your attention. But if you are struggling and this is not a lever that you are currently pulling, the research is clear that it might be something you want to consider. All right, let's spend a couple more minutes talking about the number that comes up most often for daily step count, which is 10,000 steps a day. And I want to give that number a little bit more context. That number didn't come from thin air. It is well, well researched, but not only around psychological well-being, better mood regulation, but that's the number where we start to see measurable improvements in cardiovascular health, reduced inflammation, improved longevity outcomes. And the thing I like most about that number is that with modern day life, where we really, in so many ways, have written movement out of our daily experience. We drive, we sit at desks, we order things to our door, which is such a vast contrast to most of human history, where daily movement was just life. You moved to get your food, you moved to get to a place, to move to get to safety. Like you just moved. And your biology has not caught up with the convenience of modern day. Your nervous system still expects you to move. And what I like about this 10,000 steps a day is that for most of us, we actually have to try. We have to try to hit that. We have to be intentionally off our butts. We have to go for an intentional walk or two a day. It for me in my daily life often looks like a morning walk. If I'm taking my kids to the park, I might sit on the bench for a little bit, but then I'm up and I'm moving. At my son's soccer practice, where I could totally be sitting and resting, it means I'm often moving and I'm walking around. In order to hit that 10,000 steps a day, for me, when I do for my work spend a lot of time sitting at a computer, it means that in the other moments of my day, the other activities of my day where sitting is more optional to choose to move. I also want to say here and reiterate that the research shows that even 5,000 steps a day, even half that, can improve your mental health. So if you are like, where do I start? Where do I start? Number one, do you have some kind of way to track your steps? And if you don't and you aren't interested in that, I'll give you an alternative in a minute. But for me, I'm a counter. I like to be accountable. I like to see a number. I wear an aura ring. But I learned recently, aura rings don't count my steps when I'm pushing a stroller because it depends on the swinging motion or if I'm on my walking pad while I'm typing on my laptop, doesn't count any of those steps. So I actually just bought like an old school pedometer off of Amazon. I'll link the one in my in the show notes that I bought and I'm wearing. I like it because it actually gives me a more accurate step count. If you're not using a walking pad, if you're not pushing a stroller, your Apple Watch, a wearable, some fitness tracker should should work for you. But those are some caveats for me where a clip-on pedometer has made tracking my steps recently more accurate, which feels more motivating for me. So if you do have access to your numbers and you look at it and you are currently hitting 3,000 steps a day, your goal is not 10,000 steps right now. That is not going to be a sustainable habit change approach. Your goal might be 4,500, maybe 5,000 steps a day, like adding 1,500 to 2,000 steps. That is a stretch that is likely real and reachable and sustainable. And then when that becomes your new daily baseline, then maybe you increase it another 1,000, 1,500. Now, if you have no idea what your current daily step count is and you have no interest in tracking, in counting, and buying a pedometer, I know also for some folks in our membership, they express this month because this is kind of our fun community habit that we're focusing on. How tracking or looking at numbers actually really stresses them out. It brings up anxiety for them. Definitely don't want that. The alternative to that is just add one walk a day. So if you know that you are likely falling short of an optimal amount of movement for you, something that would be pulling this lever to support your physiology in service of your psychology, improving your mental health, then what does a reasonable goal look like for increasing your step count without necessarily counting them? So maybe that is adding a 10-minute walk to your morning or to your evening after dinner and how you go about increasing whether it is steps that you're counting or just saying, I'm going on an extra 10-minute walk a day. For some of you, and I think many of you, the move is to set a specific time, maybe morning, lunch, or evening, to get in a considerable walk. Maybe that's a 30-minute walk. Maybe you're like, I'm gonna walk a mile. I have this, we call it kick pull. It's really just this pole at the end of the trail that my son and I like to kick when we get there and we turn around. But I know from my front door to kick pole and back is two miles. So that's a walk that I'll do with my kids on their bike pretty consistently. So if you have the option to build something that's a little bit more structured, that maybe bookends your day, that could be the way to go. For others of you, taking an approach that's more of an accumulation. So maybe splitting it up works better. You're gonna do a short walk in the morning, another one at the evening. Maybe you're gonna take a lunchtime loop. Maybe you want to get more steps in by parking further, by taking the stairs, by pacing back and forth in your living room as you're talking to your friend, if you're on a phone call. Can you take a walking meeting? All of it counts. Accumulation is the whole point, just to keep your body in motion. Walking is walking, movement is movement. Ideally, this also gets you outside a little bit more often. But if outdoor walking isn't accessible for any number of reasons, whether your environment, physical limitations, a treadmill or a walking pad laps around your living room, again, all of it totally valid. Bilateral movement, the cortisol, metabolizing. So many of these physiological benefits don't require being outside. So again, being outside, natural sunlight, nature exposure, change of environment, those layer in additional benefits, but they're additions, not requirements. And then for those of you who maybe are already hitting your 10,000 steps, maybe you've just listened through because you just like to listen to me talk sometimes. One of the things that I invited a lot of our members to do this month who are already really consistent and diligent about getting their steps in every day is to spend if they aren't already a chunk of dedicated walking time to being undistracted. So meaning no podcast, no music, if possible, no kids, not always possible. And to just let those sweet thoughts spiral. And this was actually a specific recent invitation to me from my own therapist. So we have been talking a lot about how so much of my life in the last handful of years is just going through the motions. I've gone from one pregnancy to the next. I wrote a book, I launched this podcast, and I've spent a lot of time just like making sure things got done, that life stayed afloat, that babies stayed alive, that like I didn't, and I haven't built into my life a lot of. Of just open space, open thinking time to reflect on is this working for me? Is my current work-life balance working for me? What do I want? Like, what's working for me in my marriage, in my relationships, in my motherhood, in my work, and what's not? What might I want to shift? And if I want to have answers to those questions from a place other than survival mode, I need to give myself time and space to think through that. And so my walks are now where I'm letting a lot of those questions play out. And not only is it just giving me time and space away from the incessant touching and questions of my children, but there is something real about being outside and engaging in this bilateral movement that allows me to think about things that might ordinarily bring more stress or anxiety up for me in a more neutral way. It also is allowing me the time and the space to not just spiral about and ruminate about the same things over and over and over again, but it's giving me the space and the internal environment where I'm able to actually find resolution in my thinking. And so for me, at least three times a week right now, I'm trying to get out on a minimum of a 20-minute walk, sometimes way longer, especially if I wake up really early on the weekend and my husband can stay with the kids, to just go and walk and think. And I would say if I'm doing that three times a week, one of them I'm calling them my walk and talk sessions. One of my really close friends and I recently started Marco Poloing again. And we just send each other unhingedly, I don't even think that's a word, but we're using it unhingedly long Marco Polo messages, processing our life and our thoughts and sharing funny family stories and all of it. And when I don't feel like I want to talk in that space, sometimes I'll just talk into my voice memo app. So anybody seeing me is none the wiser. They think I'm on a phone call. But I'm really just talking to myself and my voice memo app because verbal audible processing is really, really valuable for me. And so as I'm walking, not just staying in my own head with my thoughts, but either to my friend in my walk and talk session or to my phone, I am speaking out loud and processing these ideas and talking them through. And so that is another way that you can use the environment that you create in walking to support some of the processing or the deeper work that you are doing. All right, I'm gonna wrap this conversation up with the final thoughts that I've had. Basically, long story short from today's conversation is that committing to a daily step goal or a certain amount of extra minutes walking, it's not just about the physical act of walking. Walking is such an accessible way that I personally have a conversation with my nervous system. And I imagine that this conversation while I'm walking sounds something like, you know, hey, hey, nervous system. I know that you ran for a really, really long time. And for a lot of that time, you had to run. You had to run. And then it became a habit, and then you just kept running because you you didn't know, you didn't know different. But we don't have to run anymore, or at least not all the time anymore. So let's walk. Let's walk in a culture that glorifies sprinting. Let's walk, let's breathe, let's be. And little nervous system, I am here to give you the time and the space to process things and see that we're okay. And then for me, there's the added benefits of bilateral whatever and cortisol and blood sugar, all the things that we talked about. But I sprinted for so long. And so for me, this physical act of moving in a way that is slower than comes naturally to me has been really healing in its own right. And if you are somebody who's been listening to this and thinking, like, yeah, yeah, yeah, Amanda, okay, like I know I should go for a walk, but like I still probably won't, that is one of my primary hopes for what happens for folks inside the membership, is that it helps you bridge that gap from knowing what to do to actually doing it with these fun, monthly, regulated living habit challenges, a built-in sense of community. Doors are opening soon. So if that's something that you are interested in, there's always a link in the bio to learn more. But either way, your invitation this week is to decide where or when you can get in a few more steps. If this is a lever you might want to pull in your efforts to support your mental health. Okay, let's wrap it up. Three takeaways. Number one, walking touches so many of the underlying physiological systems that drive how we feel. Bilateral movement, cortisol metabolism, blood sugar stabilization, sleep regulation. Number two, the right goal for you is a stretch from where you actually are. Not from where you think you should be, not from some number that research tells you what is going to be realistic and possible for you right now. Number three, movement is just one of the many anchors in living a more regulated life. And if you're already moving consistently and you're still struggling, what that can tell you is that something else needs your attention. All right, friends. Until next week, I am sending hope and healing your way.