Your body is the first line of defence signalling danger. So creative people really need to learn to listen to their bodies, because often their heads are slower to catch on to something suddenly wrong. We tend to want to lead with our heads. We tend to say, “That’s not rational.” And actually our intuition — which we access often through walking — our intuition is our early warning system.

As far as doing something physical, can it be anything, or is there something about walking that particularly refreshes your soul?

I think walking is a spiritual practice, an ancient spiritual practice for a good reason. There is something about walking that really integrates the body, heart and psyche. I experience sort of a physical shift when I walk. I can literally feel it in sort of the back of my brain at the top of my head.

It’s as though I go out on a walk worried and somewhere, maybe 20 minutes into it I suddenly am in the moment. And I’m not saying that skating or roller-skating or running doesn’t work but I think that Aborigines and native Americans go on walk-abouts and vision quests for a reason. And also walking is easy; you don’t need any special stuff.

Anybody can do it. You can do it at any place, you could do it in the centre of Manhattan, you can do it in Los Angeles — although people stare at you when you don’t drive your car. You can do it in New Mexico, you can do it in Chicago, you can do it in Des Moines. — Beliefnet.com