… here we come!

I arrived in Seattle last evening, and am headed out the door in a few moments to set up the booth.

Look forward to seeing some of you at the booth today and tomorrow, and great luck with the 1/2 and full marathons!

A bunch of ChiRunning fans will be on the course, and we hope you’ll come by the booth to say hello!

Hi all -

I have decided that I still want to participate in the race in Seattle next week, but will be walking instead. Fellow Instructor Sarah Young and I will proudly ChiWalk the music-filled, fun Seattle course together, donning ChiWalking coolmax shirts!

There have been so many lovely comments from all of you, and I am inspired to get deep and listen to my body. “She” wants to run, but walking is the smarter more gradual choice right at this moment.

Who knows, maybe while we’re walking the 13.1 miles of the race I’ll have a breakthrough by listening and responding to my body continuously and have the chance to get to the bottom of it. I have heard so many fellow ChiRunners and ChiWalkers say that by listening and responding they’ve had “ah-hah” moments and been able to achieve another level of understanding. I think of this as an opportunity to get better at listening, and by walking, I believe I am taking the first step.

I took a nice walk yesterday morning and jogged for a couple of minutes throughout. I was frustrated because it didn’t feel great… I stopped because I was having a hard time getting my mind to focus on running form focuses through the frustration of the “squeaky knee”. What focus I do know I need to work on is the C Shape over and over and over again. Even as I sit here and type this, I am trying to keep my chin down, crown tall, and core engaged. So as I walk around between now and … (forever!) I will be working on my C Shape.

Visualization is a nice tool. It’s such a vital part of creating a mind-body connection. I think the process of visualization allows your mind communicate to your body what you want to acheive, with out your mind having to be “bossy”. What do you think about that?

Off to practice a walking C Shape.

Happy Friday to all.

I think of Gradual Progress as the framework around which ChiRunning can be learned. One step at a time, things should be incrementally and fully learned before moving on to the next step. It’s not the only way to think about ChiRunning form, but for me, is an important one.

As you’ve read in my blog, my knee has been bugging me and I have tried to work through it to see what would help and what I was doing incorrectly. Because the condition of my knee (and even more so, the condition of my form) has not improved, I have been disappointed and embarrassed to blog about it. I can walk the talk, but it’s going to take some deeper more mindful work.  Here’s what I think happened:

My training regularity from August ‘08 through the race day in January ‘09 was dedicated and mindful. I worked hard on my form, and did decently well, but when it came to race day, I had (and still have) leagues of room to improve. While I do think that I went a little hard during the last couple of miles without keeping my form together (eg, I was taking longer strides, but in hindsight, don’t think I was keeping my core engaged/pelvis level), it has been the months since the race when my own running form has been the problem, not the race.

Danny’s been using the term “feel what it feels like” a lot lately, and it’s the perfect little phrase to continually remind me I need to get into my body, every chance I can. It’s 6 months after the race and my knee hasn’t gotten any better. I want to get better and stay better, I don’t want to have knee issues again.

I will be using Gradual Progress for real as I take the time to learn again. Thank goodness I know about ChiRunning. It will guide me through this process, through beginning to run again mindfully, and through my daily activities. Thank goodness for ChiLiving, a business that does so much good for people and encourages us all to go deep.

Katherine and Danny wrote a great article recently about teaching and letting your mind and body really communicate. I am going to read it again myself: Mind over Body vs Body over Mind (June 2009).