Walking in the forest is much more than a simple walk without a particular goal. By its setting, it provides us with such calm that
we no longer find in our technical world.

What happens when we take a good step forward, punctuated by our light pilgrim's staff? It sets in spontaneously at a pace of 4 to 1: after each time four steps, our stick will come to rest again next to the left foot - if we are left-handed and hold the stick in this hand, for example.

The movement of the arms (and therefore our rib cage) occurs at a frequency of 1 to 4 compared to that of the legs. However, human chronobiology knows an identical relationship between respiratory rate and heart rate. Researchers consider a nocturnal (regenerating) synchronization between the heart and lungs around the integer 4.0 (the "pulse-respiration quotient") to be ideally balanced and a reflection of good health. When we walk briskly, we take about 100 steps per minute, in strides of about 0.75 m, depending on our body size. During each minute, we will therefore inhale and exhale deeply 25 times.

A curious and little-known fact, but probably much more important than it seems in explaining the benefits of walking: at this speed, the heart rate does indeed adjust - like that of steps - around 100 beats per minute. By this walk, we are thus in an active process of readjusting our heart rate to our respiratory rate in their ideal ratio, and this during all the hours that our hike may last. Is this the reason why this fundamentally human activity paradoxically gives us such energy?

Another curious fact, affecting what some call “sacred geometry” and the dimensions of Man in relation to those of the Earth: - if we walked at this average speed day and night for a year, our steps (from 0.75 m) would cover a distance of 39'420'000 meters, or 39'420 kilometers, or practically the circumference of the Earth on which we live (which is almost exactly 40'000 kilometers, since it had served at the time definition of the meter as the unit of measurement).

By its active character, Walking in the nature gives us the means to
re-harmonize our vital rhythms and to put us in phase with this beautiful Earth which hosts us and with Creation encompassing the infinities of a constantly evolving Cosmos.

This is probably part of the reason for the success of Japanese forest therapy under medical supervision - the shinrin-yoku, or "forest bath" inspired by Shinto and Buddhist practices - a therapy which is increasingly popular outside of Japan as well.

By an active immersion in nature, by an approach calling on all the senses and by a personal thought connecting the perceptions and the observations to each other and to the whole of which they are a part, I realize that the fact of living the world and of it. thinking puts me in a subtle connection with the Spirit that animates it.