Here is a brief excerpt from an article by Arianna Huffington for LinkedIn. She reminds me again of countless times in years past when I took long walks in the woods of New England (especially when foliage was in full color) but also of exploring Chicago during my childhood and, more recently, of roaming throughout the Dallas Arboretum. All of us need to spend more time in a congenial environment, replenishing spiritual resources without electronic companions.

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Solvitur ambulando — “it is solved by walking.” This phrase refers to the 4th-century-B.C. Greek philosopher Diogenes’s response to the question of whether motion is real — he got up and walked. “It is solved by walking.” As it turns out, there are many other problems and paradoxes to which walking is the solution. For instance: In our culture of overwork, burnout, and exhaustion, in which we’re connected and distracted 24/7 from most things that are truly important in our lives, how do we tap into our creativity, our wisdom, our capacity for wonder, our well-being and our ability to connect with what we really value? Solvitur ambulando.

In my own life, for almost as long as I can remember, walking has frequently been the solution. When I was a girl growing up in Greece, my favorite poem was “Ithaca” by the Greek poet Cavafy. My sister Agapi and I had the poem memorized long before we could actually understand what it really meant. It opens:

“When you set out on the voyage to Ithaca,
pray that your journey may be long,
full of adventure, full of knowledge.”

Over the years, I came to realize that a journey — one that can also be full of adventure and knowledge — doesn’t have to involve planes and cars and passports. The benefits of a journey are always available simply by walking.

There are, of course, many takes on the virtues of walking. For Thomas Jefferson, the purpose of walking was to clear the mind of thoughts. “The object of walking is to relax the mind,” he wrote. “You should therefore not permit yourself even to think while you walk. But divert your attention by the objects surrounding you.”

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To read the complete article, please click here.

Arianna Huffington is President and Editor-in-Chief at The Huffington Post Media Group. To read her other articles, please click here.