by Josef DellaGrotte Ph.D.
What is it in a persons way of
walking that looks good, that resonates with us, that has a certain elegance
to it, has a sense of togetherness, confidence, power, endurance, yet is
relaxed and seemingly, attractive and enjoyable? As a somatic practitioner,
therapist, aåd personal trainer, a veteran of many thousands of miles of
walking on this planet, I have observed that a high percentage of clients who
experience pains and difficulties relating to walking,
Over the years, by working on
developing my perception to see beyond treatment into how things interact and
interconnect, , I am more often able to see (what is often elusive, yet
obvious, (as Dr. Feldenkrais, FM Alexander, Ida Rolf and others have pointed
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 so that they could maintain biomechanically erect posture. And
could walk at average speeds far excelling what we generally are able to do,
and 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, 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 being walk true to our
potential nature.
Sad to say, ever since we started
leaning and bending from the upper body forward at a young age, 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 at 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 in all the
directions dictated by their structure.
Some essential points: 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 to actually improve with results that will last a
lifetime. One of the missing pieces of this puzzle was 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 lordosis or mid back
kyphosis. Problem: The vector 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. This is not good. 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 learning 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 awareness through movement,( Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais-
based principles and process) 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 provides much needed “resonant movement”
through many of the axial joints. It is essential in maintaining spinal
flexibility and upright posture. Walking provides needed elongation to the
spine, plus strengthening, endurance, relaxation and perhaps most important,
confidence building. Walking is the basic foundation of fitness. Walking is
known to reduce cardiac problems, stroke, and arthritic conditions with a host
of other benefits to the entire body. If you would like more information about
how you can learn the five basic lesson-exercises based on the Feldenkrais
Method, exercise physiology and biomechanics, in a one day workshop format to
improve your walking, please contact Josef DellaGrotte.
_______________________________________________________________________________________
Josef DellaGrotte, Ph.D. LMT 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 Integrated Fitness-Wellness at the BodyMind
Integration Center, 118 Main Street, Watertown MA, 02472. Call 978-461-0221 or
email: jdelgrotte@aol.com.
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