I always found this idea profound on many levels. Profound in its simplicity, in its common sense logic and in its underlying complexity. Walking is a fundamental human experience. And perhaps because of that, it is considered innate and not something to be particularly taught. Yet, most of us walk in a manner that's unhelpful to our well-being. I am starting to realize that all Jenny was trying to teach us in this training was how to be more graceful walkers. Walking is a whole-body experience.
Walking is a skill to be cultivated, preferably on a daily basis. I think it was Aristotle who said: "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit." Same goes for mediocrity or general crappiness. Like how you carry yourself through space, how you hold yourself when you sit, stand, interact, etc. It occurred to me a few years ago, after becoming aware of a particularly strong gripping pattern in my body, that I can do a lot of yoga but if I don't address underlying everyday habits and patterns of rigidity and understand how to incorporate my knowledge into daily life, then it won't make a damn bit of difference. When the integration between the practice and life is missing, yoga becomes a fix, or something you do to "get fixed." Fix however implies stasis as opposed to dynamism. In his "Introduction to Ayurvedic Worldview and Method," Matthew Remski talks about health as homeodynamic balance, that is, health in relationship and within one's circumstance, rather than health as homeostasis, which implies the establishment of a protective bubble for health to exist in. But I digress...
My interest in walking has only grown over the years. My beloved is a walker. I am a walker. When we travel the world, we mostly explore on foot and by ourselves. Although I bike to and from work, I make it a point to have a daily walk during which I try to cultivate walking. My partner always says that walking is the speed at which you are supposed to see and take in the world around you.
Below are a few jots on walking that I have gleaned upon over time from my own walking patterns and that I occasionally hear in my head on my walking adventures. (Please don't take this as instruction or something to follow. We are all different and you need to question my experience for your own circumstance and structure, including the very first bullet point below.)
- Feet on straight.
- Both feet on straight.
- Heel strike-small toe mound-big toe mound-push off-inner arch spring up to core line of body (including psoas and diaphragm)-back of leg contracting to bend knee and extend hip and allow leg to swing forward and start again. Watch this simple yet profound video with Leslie Kaminoff explaining it to see what I am talking about.
- I very recently realized that I need to relax the hip joint to literally allow the leg to swing forward rather than hauling it forward. I also realized that deep and subtle gripping of the hip in the swing phase of walking is why I used to have no contralateral movement during walking. If the hip joint doesn't relax, then other parts of the body will either overcompensate (such as the hip flexors) or try to do the job (such as the hip hiker quadratus lamborum). As Jonathan FitzGordon says: "Each step is meant to be a spinal twist that rotates the vertebrae, works the core, and tones the surrounding organs. If we move correctly the body maintains and heals itself from the wear and tear of daily life."
- Unencumbered movement of the diaphragm and taking a full breath. What this means in practice for me is to become aware of whether I am holding tension and rigidity in the bottom of my ribcage. When I realize that I am tense in that area, I usually need to simply let go of jamming that part of my spine forward. Which is that part? This is junction of the thoracic and lumbar vertebrae (T12-L1), the hinge between your chest and low back, the solar plexus. This is also the place where walking meets breathing in the words of Tom Myers. It is the place where the psoas (walking) fascially connects with the diaphragm (breathing). This has done wonders in allowing me to experience walking as a whole-body movement, movement that not only integrates the lower and upper body (where the ribcage undulates gently side to side responding to the movement of the feet, legs, hips and spine) but allows me to experience my viscera/internal organs dancing to the united rhythm of walking and breathing. In short, the front of the body is soft, not rigid.
- Closely related to this is also the idea of having the shoulders relaxed so as to allow the arms to hang and swing freely from their sockets. I believe that humans as a species are obsessed with what their shoulders should be doing and because we are bipeds, it's easy for us to try and force the shoulders in a posture that fulfills aesthetic and other societal norms/ideas, including a preoccupation with trying to fit in or appear in a certain way. When I let go of the idea that I need to hold the shoulders in a particular position during movement such as walking, I realize how much space there is between the arms and the ribcage and how the arms move and swing freely as a result of that and get seamlessly integrated into walking. In fact, holding and immobilizing the shoulders in some imaginary idea of good posture is big reason for rigidity in the spine and in the ribcage, especially as related to breathing (it is also a big reason for arm flailing during walking, especially when in a hurry or other such suboptimal movement).
- Two other points I want to mention. When I walk, I also occasionally remember to think of getting taller as I am walking. I think of getting taller through the crown and the back of the head, so as to minimize my tendency to jut the chin forward and tense the front of the throat. This is related to my post on the smiling neck. It's a way of accessing my gravity line from the top (head and neck). I also let the tongue be calm and relaxed in my mouth.
