Getting Fit at the Cemetery: Cemetery Walking

Depending where you walk, go jogging or run the space can get quite congested. Walking in a mall or jogging around a park can overflow with people who get in the way, block, make you wait or stop you from being able to exercise in your own time. Running by the curb through streets can be dangerous having spurts or continuous traffic flow.

So where can you go for a daily walk, jog or run that's less likely to be interrupted by an overflow of people?

Try the cemetery.

There are people doing cemetery walking in small towns whose population already exceeds 30,000. Most noticeably the brisk walkers can be seen following the paths cut by cars on weekends rather than weekdays.

On chilly days walkers dawn coats and jeans while on hot days they'll spring for short sleeves and shorts. When they get tired they may stop and pay a visit to a headstone graciously reading the marker. Gravesites that may never be visited, which would otherwise be forgotten along with the individuals buried in them have a way to be remembered by the passing strangers if only by the words and the individualized look and character of the tombstones.

Cemetery walking is a way to meditate with fewer distractions in a semi-noiseless atmosphere. It can bring in new perspectives on life by allowing one to possibly reach a higher energy within their self perhaps through the irony of being surrounded by death and life.

Cemetery walkers who have a loved one buried in the cemetery from the past that they have never known may feel a sense of closeness and belonging which may say more than what living relatives could through explaining this is your... as they point to a picture.

Cemetery walkers who have a recently deceased loved one buried in the cemetery may find that they are able to walk off grief and the restless nervous unsettling energy that comes with mourning, remembering and loss. It can also help to alleviate feelings other than grief such as anger.

Fitness walkers can even do their part to go green by carrying a small plastic sack or canvas bag and picking up any trash they find in the cemetery. Its also being respectful to those buried in the cemetery.

Cemetery walkers have taken their dog walking with them in the cemetery. This is a great way to give your pet its own exercise workout. But walkers should keep their pet on a leash instead of allowing it to run through the cemetery own its own. This is so the owner can keep their pet from digging, shredding and tearing up flowers and other memorial props and urinating or using the bathroom on gravesites.