Walking Right - The Path to Fitness and Health by Josef DellaGrotte Ph.D., MT
Feldenkrais Practitioner and Massage Therapist
What is it in a person's way of walking that looks good, that resonates with us, that has a sense of integrated motion flow, a certain elegance to it, a look of confident directed stride, or an image of body power and endurance, yet is relaxed and seemingly, attractive and enjoyable?
As a somatic practitioner, therapist, and personal trainer, a veteran of many thousands of miles of walking on this planet, I have worked with many clients who experience pains and difficulties relating to walking. Over the years - working on developing my perception to see beyond treatment into how things interact and interconnect - I have come to see what is often elusive, yet out), namely that all components of movement are not just parts but are all interconnected as one functional structural, and yes, even psychophysical entirety.
The walking experience is primordial. All land based creatures, great and small, do it. Humans have been relying on this primary functional activity of daily life for as long as we have been around. Some peoples have developed it into a high-grade level of functional movement, an exercise that can combine performance with art, with health and fitness. Walking is uniquely human. Though on two legs we cannot match the speed of most animals. We nevertheless can move with direction, determination, purpose and intention. The actions are simple yet wondrous - this art of walking upright with ease, efficiency, and power to go almost anywhere, anytime. Here the abstracted image ends and the real somatic feel begins.
Walking can not really be described. To know about it, to have a feeling for it, you must experience the quality of flow, or resonant frequency of motion, within yourself. The talk must be walked, and like the Velveteen rabbit, rubbed into reality, embodied in ourselves. A few years ago, a research group from MIT decided to study African women and the way they walk. Unique to them and by extension to Indian and South American women even men, was their ability to self organize in such a way that they could maintain biomechanically erect posture for miles on end. And, they walk at average speeds far excelling what we generally are able to do. All this while carrying heavy objects on their head! And yes, no known cases of cervical strain! What they had learned over millennia was to sense how to organize around the center of gravity which is a point of neutralizing forces and feeling light in the gait.
We now have a growing trend in the West, sparked by walking styles from Sweden, Finland, Switzerland and other countries, that actually achieve a similar effect without even the load on the head and is referred to sometimes as “power walking”. Taken to extremes, it has even become an Olympic event, race walking, like running, yet with much less stress injuries to the body.
How does walking really work?
While it may seem natural, most of us who live and get shaped by the sedentary conditions of sitting do not get the real benefits of walking. Some even have increasing difficulty walking as they get older - all unnecessary!
For an upright creature with only two legs, all the ground reaction force must find its way through a vertical segmented body, that is, via all the joints of the legs, the hips, and the spine. No easy task. That is, every time I push the ground with my straightened thrusting leg I am structurally designed to be able to direct the vector of force across these segments linking muscles and connective tissue (which we will call myofascial pathways) in such a way as to maintain an effortless erect posture that is also moving my entire body through space. And, all this is happening because these forces are also moving through my spinal segments. Sounds difficult? How am I going to control this? It isn’t difficult. It does take practice.
The African men and women who had to travel distances in hot climates, and perhaps similar folk like the American Indians who continuously moved long distances to summer and winter camps, not only walked at a sustained clip, but had to learn ease efficiency and resistance- free gliding movements. To do this they intentionally arranged their movements so that their hips could perform a powerful energy generating actions much like a camshaft that turns an engine or a spinning octopus ride at an amusement park. The action has even been described as three propeller-like actions of the pelvis.
The reference here is to the simple physics of generating force. When the hips are synchronized in three directional actions dictated by their very structure, the kinetic energy so generated can travel up through the spine and articulate with the ribs. This generates a spiralic force which turns the torso and is carried through the shoulder girdle and arms. The walker who knows how to access this pathway of vector energy experiences an elongation of the spine and the neck. (Ever noticed how certain peoples look tall and beautifully extended in walking, dancing, performing? )
This happens naturally by the very design of our body, but the program has to be activated by learning, which is how humans make progress in all fields. Then and only then we human beings walk true to our potential nature.
Sad to say, ever since we started bending from the upper body forward at a young age, usually associated with the early imposition of school; ever since sitting and bending became part of the new industrial life style, problems with muscular skeletal pain soared. Walking was compromised. The age of sitting with all its inherent structural problems has also generated muscular, skeletal, myofascial and joint disorders on a near epidemic scale.
Today the vast majority of the population that walks can be observed to be lacking an efficient and working cooperation between the lower and the upper body. Some of this is due to cultural inhibition of moving the hips, especially for women, but the inescapable reality is this: the hips must move functionally in all the directions dictated by their structure. These are observations made by several pioneers and founders in the somatic realm such as Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais, FM Alexander, Ida Rolf, M.Traeger and others. Here are the bottom line essential point of true walking:
1. Not only must the hips move but the action must connect directly into the upper body via the spine
2. When the spine is rotating it actually generates spiralic energy
3. The few people who walk or run this way appear tall, elongated, aligned, and even graceful. They appear to be on the edge of gliding over the surface with a light rebounding touch of the feet.
Watch the great efficient runners, like Michael Johnson, and you see the same phenomena. Well, here is the good news. Such walking is available to almost anyone, young or old. Over many years of working as a therapist, a somatic educator, a practitioner of the Feldenkrais method, a personal trainer, I have helped reeducate many clients with painful hip and spine disorders. I could have said “treat it” which I certainly did, but treatment only of spinal, hip and shoulder disorders is just a way of helping a person maintain their own body situation. The key ingredient is to help the person find a better way of doing the same thing. Otherwise, repetition of the problem, reappearance of the problem will be the order of the day.
One of the key pieces of this puzzle of transforming pain and problems into opportunities is to be able to teach walking to anyone in an easy and simple way. Once people have learned the basic fundamental movements by doing it themselves there is inevitably actual improvement that does continue for life. This improvement has been recorded in my own files, with people who have had problems of hip replacement, near hip replacement, knee problems, lower back problems, and physical conditions involving surgical fusion’s and these people have been able to improve their walking. Because of the very structural basis of walking and what it can do for you, it is the best exercise available to you, requires no special equipment, can be solo or with partners, and costs nothing.
Power walking with ease: from hips to spine to arms
Walking upright requires an alignment with central gravity that is unique to humans. This connecting link starts from the hips, the strong bony structure and articulations of the pelvis generate three actions which are essential to getting lift and forward power. The hips have to rotate laterally bend and extend and flex. That power is then transmitted to the spine and the ribs, which need to be in the best alignment to transmit the vectors of force. So what if it isn’t in the best alignment? First, Imagine a car trying to up hill in high gear. There is not enough power, the engine over heat and damage soon occurs. It is the same in a human body. If the hips are not generating the “horse power” because of restrictions in action , then you walk harder using the legs. The legs become stressed often manifesting this stress as knee problems. Second, The hips are doing okay but the spine is curved either in a lower back curvature (lordosis) or a mid back curvature (kyphosis). Problem: the vector of force has to travel through mobile moving joints of the spine. If it can’t the hips work harder carrying the load of the upper body on them. Does this sound discouraging? Look at it this way, if you recognize you are working too hard to walk, it is only matter of some sensing, learning and movement awareness to shift out of a poor habit into a better way of walking, an upgrade, to get the system functioning the way it was designed to do.
Try this Exercise
1. Face a door or wall. Place your fingers on it and organize yourself to be standing close and in the vertical plane. Avoid any leaning forward or putting pressure on your fingers.
2. Now Stand on one leg. Keep that leg straight and push through that leg as if you were pressing into the ground and generating a ground forces, a spring like action that runs up your spine and gives you the feeling of uplift (getting taller)
3. Think of directing the force through your body and notice how the body starts to turn. While you are doing this your other leg should have no weight on it. It can be touching the ground with the toes with the heel lifted to maintain your balance. Practice this activity on one leg, rest, and then do it with your other leg.
The key to this exercise is trial by experiment in order to sense differences and notice connections. Simply by doing and noticing, you start to activate your innate ability to feel the connection between pushing through a straightened leg and following that force as it travels through your body. It will probably rotate you slightly through the left if you are standing on your right leg or to the right if you are standing on your left leg. Follow the force of this thrusting until you are clear where the end point is. Simply by doing this exercise you are already developing movement awareness, (a process developed to an easy but high level of skill by the late Dr. .Moshe Feldenkrais) of sensing limbs, joint actions, resonant motion, lengthening and strengthening in an interconnected way. Once you start to cultivate the sensing of such connections, your walking will improve automatically.
The benefits
· Walking is the best exercise available. It provides much needed movement done with resonance, or smooth contractions and lengthenings.
· It is essential in maintaining core strength, spinal flexibility and upright posture.
· Walking is the single best foundation for fitness, involving many muscles, many of the daily minimum requirements of movement steps,
· Walking as above described elongates the spine, provides strengthening, endurance, relaxation and perhaps most important, confidence building. Walking is the basic foundation of fitness.
· Walking, the exercise par excellence of fitness and wellness is known to reduce cardiac problems, stroke, and arthritic conditions with a host of other benefits to the entire body. `
Josef DellaGrotte, Ph.D. is a Feldenkrais practitioner, muscular/ massage therapist, and trainer. He has been in private practice for more than twenty-five years. Josef conducts training and programs in Core Integration at the BodyMind Integration Center, 118 Main Street, Watertown MA, 02472. Visit his website at www.dellagrotte-somatic.com