“Especially the last few weeks, I’ve started walking my day, clearing my head and leaving my phone,” he says. “Sometimes I get a little woo woo and touch the plants.”
Mendes says walking about 25 minutes a day serves not only as a meditation practice but also as ‘letting the noise fall out of my ears’ so that he is more present with the people he loves. When he remembered the pressure of being in the studio, a photo appeared on my Apple Watch of Mendes holding a guitar.
New episodes of Time to Walk, launched Monday, appear every Monday through the end of April in the Workout app. (The timing for potential future deliveries after ‘this season’ has not been announced.) For Apple Watch users who use a wheelchair, Time to Walk becomes Time to Push, which follows ‘roll’ goals instead of steps.
This is Apple’s latest move to add exclusive content to attract new users to its fitness products and compete with companies like Peloton.
For me, walking has always been my preferred way of moving: low impact and free. Running familiar voices at the same time feels like a personal twist on a podcast (though Apple never uses the p-word). I can even hear Mendes breathing deeply, just like me.
In Parton’s sessions, I hear the background noise of birds as she talks about her Tennessee farm. “During this time, Covid and all that, I know that many of you can not get out and walk as usual, and I’m sure many of you feel limited,” Parton says. “But I know how important it is to be able to walk. Although we can not get out and walk around in all the places we want to this day … I can still walk you on the memory path. Hopefully we feel a little more freedom when we walk together. ‘
She tells me that she writes a lot while walking and the story of her famous ‘9 to 5’ song; I listen intently as she taps on her own acrylic fingernails so that it sounds like a typewriter for rhythm in the background, something I have not known to this day.
When NBA player Draymond Green remembers how the Golden State Warriors celebrated a championship victory, it was Drake’s ‘Big Rings’ that took him back to the locker room. It is one of the three songs he introduces and plays in his episode, which also contains a beautiful story about a walk he took after not having a class and arguing with his mother. He talks about the sounds of the Malibu waves in the distance and the cars on the highway nearby.
Although Time to Walk is no substitute for a walk with a good friend, the intimate narrative is a welcome change to walk alone.