This weekend, I have the honor of working with a small group of lovely ladies who are on their way to becoming Certified ChiWalking Instructors. We will spend the entire weekend together (ChiWalking Instructor Training), going through the ChiWalking form, lessons, tips, tricks, exercises and drills, which they’ll eventually teach to their own students across the world.

What has hit me in the last several hours is that in some respects, ChiWalking is almost more difficult to learn than ChiRunning. Why? It’s more subtle. ChiWalking and ChiRunning both revolutionize the way people move, and both rely on the tenet of Alignment & Relaxation (the principle from T’ai Chi of Needle in Cotton) to produce efficient and mindful movement.

The devil is in the details. I think that part of the reason it takes more focus to truly Body Sense ChiWalking is because we all walk more than we run; therefore, the amount of re-learning (and re-teaching) our bodies must undergo as we rewire synapses and connections is more significant with the act of walking than with running. So, in a way, you can almost develop deeper mind-body connection with a more subtle way of movement. I think learning ChiWalking can make learning ChiRunning enormously easier…

Many of you who use and love ChiRunning might be “waiting” to discover ChiWalking… I urge to go read the ChiWalking book and watch the DVD as soon as you can. You’ve felt the benefits of open, joyful, pain and injury-free running, and certainly created an exceptional mind-body connection. When you try ChiWalking, you will be amazed at how intently your mind must quiet itself to listen to your body speak. It’ll do you worlds of good, both for your running practice, and for your overall feeling of well-being.

I was working with a client this morning who has had a little flare up of the dreaded plantar fasciitis.

We practiced running will soft feet, landing midfoot, circular foot motion and hip rotation. In order to prevent a flare up of PF, it’s really helpful to focus on not pushing off with your toes, not holding any tension in your lower legs.

In order to really feel what it’s like to keep your lower legs completely relaxed, it’s easier to stand and begin walking, practicing the heel lift: Stand with correct posture, and imagine your psoas muscle (the deep, vertical muscle that runs between your pelvis and your middle spine) doing the work of lifting your leg. It’s a very strong muscle and can lift up your feet all day long without getting overused.

Walking around on the track this morning, my client had a moment of “ah-hah!” practicing the simple exercise of lifting his feet off the ground: he was really Body Sensing his ability to let his lower legs relax completely and rely on his psoas muscle to do the work. I explained that the more he can practice that all day every day: walking around the house, in the grocery, to the mailbox, even up and down stairs, the more easily it will become for him. Then, when he goes out to run, the ankle lift will be like second nature.

For those of you who have bouts of plantar fasciitis:

• Use tennis balls on the plantar tendon, and really push down hard with your foot to stretch and passively activate that tendon.
• Don’t walk barefoot at all! In fact, if you can wear sandals in the shower and as soon as you rise in the morning, that helps enormously.
• Keep walking and running, if you can stand it. PF gets worse the less you move and the more you sit still, because it gets stiff.
• Ice your tendon after exercising: frozen veggie bags or Dixie cups of frozen ice work well
• Stay Positive! You’ll get through it, you just have to listen to your body!

It was very fun to help my friend and client have this ah-hah! moment of recognizing a completely relaxed and passive lower leg by practicing ChiWalking: it will help him recover from PF and it will also help as he continues to run, recognizing the difference between toeing off VS lifting the ankle.

We went to see a show last night at a a local venue, and I had several moments of gratefulness for ChiRunning and ChiWalking and what they have taught me about learning to listen to my body:

1. The band last night consisted of a banjo player, a bassist, a guitarist, and a drummer. Once during each song, I would concentrate on trying to hear each instrument individually, singling it out from the other instruments playing at the same moment: for someone who has no musical talent, it’s a slightly difficult exercise.

   I realized as I was doing this exercise, that it’s very much like doing a Body Scan and listening to my body as I am walking or running: taking a moment to do a Scan, sense any tightness, recognizing it and letting it go.

   I am extraordinarily grateful for the knowledge of Body Scanning: every time something in my body needs attention when I am running or walking (or standing or sitting or washing dishes), I now have the skills to listen, to respond and to learn.

2. The venue where we saw music last night has very few seats. As a result, like most musical venues, we stood for the entire show, about 4 hours.

   Partway through the show, I realized that my back didn’t hurt at all, that my knees were soft, my core engaged and my feet felt perfectly normal. I can distinctly remember in years past, going to see shows, or walking through cities, or going to a museum and feeling absolutely wiped out after only a few hours.

   Thanks to ChiRunning and ChiWalking, I have learned to pay attention to my body all the time and am always prepared to listen and respond in order to keep my body happy, moving painlessly and without injury.

Over Thanksgiving, I have spent time on my feet in the kitchen, at parties, shopping, talking to friends. I have spend a lot of time walking as well, talking strolls with Oliver and Ivan. I can say that the entire holiday has been spent blissfully, listening to my body, learning what it needed, and responding with an appropriate Form Focus right in the moment.

What a gift! There are many of you who know what I am talking about. There are some of you who are learning… Just imagine how many people out there have yet to learn about the gift of pain-free movement!

Saturday was gorgeous, despite all the rain.  (Seriously, people. If you don’t live in Asheville, I can’t possibly explain the amount of rain we’ve had this year. It’s incredible, and I realized that it’s suddenly autumn and I don’t feel like I really had a true summer.)

We had a great group at the workshop, and spent the day teaching the basics of the ChiRunning technique. The Pool Running Drill is so fun to teach, and I think it brings people out of their heads and into their bodies. If you have the new version of the ChiRunning book, check out this drill on page 100.  Also, the group found the Core Strengthening Exercise helpful, too, on page 74. Thanks to all our Workshop participants. It was great fun!

I have been going out for brief jogs with Oliver and trying to talk him as often as possible. Every time I go out with him, I prepare by getting really clear in my head that I am centered and in control of him and myself. I get my bones aligned and always do the Body Looseners. They’re so helpful and relaxing at the same time. I have felt very strong when I go out walking, and although I can tell my cardio-aerobic capacity is a bit less than it used to be, I am in my body and that feels great.

Recently, I have really been working on my chin down and pelvic rotation. I feel like my core is pretty well engaged most of the time when I am moving, and want to work a bit more on pelvic rotation. With all the hills around Asheville, the downhills are a great place to practice “sticky feet” while walking or running and letting my pelvis rotate and be relaxed.

I took Oliver for a solid 45 minute walk this morning. (That’s my cover for saying that I went for a 45 minute walk this morning.)

It was great. The mornings have been fresh and crisp around here lately and it’s such a nice time to walk. Plus, it makes me feel better knowing I have walked my little buddy a good distance, and have worked my own heart, too.

It’s funny; when I walk at a brisk pace, lately I have felt more aware of my body than I do when I run. I can’t quite explain what I mean, but it’s almost like my body talks to me more when I walk for exercise. I think it’s a function of running more for exercise than walking and that I’m honestly probably more cognizant runner than I am walker.

What a thing to think about! I walk all the time, every day, but when I walk for exercise, with the intention of raising my heart rate for a period of time, the whole scene changes for me. I am able to Gather chi by enjoying the vista and the sounds of birds and water running. I feel less able to issue that chi back through my body back into nature.

I still need to work a lot on my core engagement. And my upper body posture and alignment. Often I catch myself slouching (even as I sit and write this now) and constantly have to remind myself to get tall again.

So when I walk I want to think more about leading with my shoulders and really letting my legs lead. I am going to try using a visualization when I walk for the next week or so (whether it be to the printer or around the park) that my shoulders and eyes are what lead my body rather than my legs (the second one is Y’chi). So when I get out of my chair next (in 20 minutes when I leave, for example) I will imagine that my shoulders are the driving force behind my movement, rather than my legs.

I’ll let you know how it goes: core engaged, leading with the shoulders and eyes, legs relaxed and cooperating with the floor/road.

I went down to Carrier Park again yesterday morning early when it was still cool.

Doing the Body Looseners and a bit of ChiWalking before and after running is going to save me, I believe. Patience is certainly not one of my highest strengths, and by doing the Looseners and stretches and walking before and after running, it’s forcing me to take things a bit more slowly and in manageable bits.

I think this process is good because as Danny often says, getting your brain to really focus for steady periods of time is hard — your mind wants to wander! So if I can really practice focusing for the entire run (by starting with shorter times and distances), then it will get easier over time to focus for longer periods of time.

We talk about refocusing in the Beginner Marathon Training Program (and in the Intermediate, due out next month). This idea of focusing and refocusing is so imperative to all of us… not only when we’re running but when we’re doing anything in life. What’s so exciting, though, is that as runners and walkers, we can practice refocusing while we’re exercising (doing something we love) and then it starts to become 2nd nature and you can refocus more easily on anything in other veins of life.

So if I loosen, walk, run, walk and stretch, in that order each time I go out for a run, the entire process turns into a series of events when I must refocus, over and over again. If I apply this same reasoning to the rest of my life, say for example, my morning when I arrive at the office, perhaps I could use the same idea of refocusing:

Check email, get tea ready, respond to 5 emails, return phone calls, rebrew tea, walk around the office for 5 minutes, check email, prepare for meeting…

I think the most important thing about the practice of refocusing is that you make a choice about what you need to focus on (during your day, your run, your vacation, etc.) and have an implicit understanding with yourself that while there may be temporary distractions, going back to focusing on “this list” is the most important thing…

So, on that note, I am off to brew some tea.