Castrocara, Italy...Walking Workshop

And we filmed the highlights! It is a validating experience to see how everyone improved over four days!

Europeans, as well as others, have a tradition of walking both for health and for spiritual development. Many Swiss still follow the cultural tradition of weekly walking and “walking till the day you die.”
One of Italy’s popular spiritual “gurus,” Saint Anthony of Padua, an athlete (like Gautama the Buddha), was called the “great walker.” He would organize daily walks of up to 20 kilometers to get people to reconnect to their spiritual self. And then of course, there were the pilgrimages, like Compostela.

Walking, for many, has become a revived activity, not only for optimizing health, reducing growing numbers of diabetes, cancer, heart trouble and stroke, but what for meditation, mental health, mindfulness and connection to the earth intelligence itself.

From Tanzania to Tuscany, walking is the single best activity you can do stay well, fit and enjoy your life. (Given the results we are seeing with groups who have been doing core movement integration for over five years now, there are fewer incidences of diabetes and cancer.)

During this time, Josef was also able to film the Maasai gait, their way of walking and posture. Most of these people, though they walk slowly when tending their cattle and goats–both men and women–can maintain a walking speed of 3.5 to 4 miles per hour, even in the mountains, for many kilometers, and have rare knee or hip problems (most of which among Westerners come from poor posture and misaligned forces).

This also matches a major research study in the U.S. showing that Americans who walk 3.5 mph, at least 4 days at 45 minutes live with far less problems, and longer.

Josef will be seeing clients personally, conducting a class in May, and presenting a weekend workshop on ‘Walking Well and fit-for Life’ (June 16-17th in Watertown, MA).

CMI is working to bring the Maasai guide, John Kita, extraordinary walker and even runner, to teach alongside Josef in an upcoming Walking workshop.

For more information, contact: dellagrotteCI@aol.com

Kita, Maasai Guide

“My intention was to capture the ease and efficiency in John’s walk (at 5mph), comparing it to my walk–as the video reveals–more efforting with arms and shoulders. But now, post Africa, more efficient and movement resonant, following many miles of walking with John Kita and the Maasai. I do up to 10 miles with no problems, given my age.

“These improvements come from taking the best principles of biomechanics, core pathway organization, Feldenkrais, physical therapy, and especially from tribal walkers, Alpine, racewalkers, and others who have cultivated efficient forms which lead to the ability to maintain a walking pace of 3.5 miles per hour–the research-demonstrated standard to maintain health and extend longevity, ’till the day you die.’
(John can also do 15 miles of running a day with no problems. He is young, yes, but has no problems…few of the Maasai do.)” Josef DellaGrotte, March 2012

Kita, Maasai Guide

During this adventure, Josef was also able to film the Maasai gait, their way of walking and posture. Most of these people–both men and women–though they walk slowly when tending their cattle and goats, can maintain a walking speed of 3.5 to 4 miles per hour even in the mountains, for many kilometers, and have rare knee or hip problems (most of which among Westerners come from poor posture and misaligned forces). This also matches a major research study in the U.S. showing that Americans who walk 3.5 mph, at least 4 days at 45 minutes, live with far less problems and longer.

Josef will be seeing clients personally, conducting a class in May and presenting a weekend workshop on “Improving Gait, Walking and Posture” (June 16-17 in Watertown, MA). Visit our Courses page and Calendar for details as they emerge.

In addition, CMI is working to bring the Maasai guide, John Kita, extraordinary walker and even runner, to teach alongside Josef in an upcoming walking workshop. Stay tuned…

Only 150 of 300 were able to finish the Vermont 100-Mile Ultrathon. This race also included horses who started later. Neil recounts: “12 miles along, the sun coming up, the lead horse and others went by us. Another less experienced horse came up, and I kept up running side by side for an hour, then left the horse behind…” Neil ran the distance in approximately 21 hours.

About Neil Feldman, DPM
Neil Feldman, DPM, is the principal and owner of Central Massachusetts Podiatry in Worcester, MA, since 2003. He is Board certified by the American College of Foot and Ankle Surgeons. Dr. Feldman’s approach to treating foot problems is one that not only looks at the feet, but how the body moves over those feet. Patients, athletes and fellow physicians have come to appreciate this treatment approach as it not only helps with current symptomatology, but also pro-actively tries to address the underlying causes of why people develop foot pain in the first place.

Dr. Feldman is well known in the running and triathlon community as he has completed seven Ironman triathlons including the Hawaii Ironman twice, numerous marathons including six Boston marathons as well as ultramarathons, most recently the Stone Cat 50 mile trail run.

Neil understands what it is to be injured after sustaining a double pelvic stress fracture in 2009. He also understands what it takes to overcome injury and adversity as he overcame that injury by training for and completing the Vermont 100 trail run, one of the original 100-mile trail runs, in 21 hours, 34 minutes.

ITINERARY
Here’s Josef’s itinerary for his upcoming trip to Africa to walk with the Maasai.

February 16: arrive Kilimanjaro Airport, Tanzania
Day 1:Trek from Nainokanoka to Embulbul Special Campsite (about 5 hours)
Day 2: Trek from Embulbul to Empakai Special Campsite, then around Empakai Crater
Day 3: Hike Empakai to Nayobi Special Campsite, Maasai villages along the way
Day 4: Hike Nayobi to Lake Natron. Overnight River Campsite
Day 5: Walks and other activities in Lake Natron. Overnight River Campsite
Day 6-7: Mt Meru circuit

Stay tuned for updates, photographs and maybe even video!

That sets off medical alarms and indeed the medicos have requested the mother to consider surgery. What kind? A radical, life-altering surgery involving attaching a Harrington rod to the spine with turn-screws.

They have already tried physical therapy, and everything else yet nothing has worked to reverse the slow creep of the scoliosis.

How can this be helped? First, it takes a different approach, one that looks at the scoliosis as an idiopathic disordered response to growth, and look further, into an existing postural disorder not even mentioned by any of the therapists. If the body is already out of its core supported integration, the shoulders rolled forward, the scoliosis has a field day. What I am looking at in this 15 year old is an un-integrated body, disconnected to herself…. yet it takes only six sessions before she gets reconnected using the six pathways. At first, she does not understand but does the exercises and lessons. Then she starts to figure it out. She can follow the paths of levering, and transmission through joints. Session six finds her scoliosis so reduced that her parents note the very observable difference.

We are now preparing her for the final test: the x-rays. Once she drops below the critical point, they will have no basis for their surgery. She will be free of inner terror. She was referred because they heard of the possibilities of an alternative method, in this case, Feldenkrais.

What is it in a person’s way of walking that looks good, that resonates with us, that has a certain elegance to it, a sense of togetherness, confidence, power, 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 observed many clients who experience pains and difficulties relating to walking. Over the years–and working on developing my perception to see beyond treatment into how things interact and interconnect–I am able to see what is often elusive, yet obvious (as Dr. Feldenkrais, F.M. 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 upright 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 cannot 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 spiral 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 and 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 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 that 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 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 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.

There are many misconceptions and often misleading ideas about walking and running.

My own case in point: a compromised knee and some postural re-adaptations, and allowing for unpredictable complexities in the body (as in physics, so in neuro-biomechanics), I can expect tightening up and low level pains from time to time. But if I maintain good form, using efficient core pathway movement “vectors,” I can usually walk fairly well and fast. But then those “unpredictables” kick in, and I am in another round of tightened muscle tissue. Is doing a fast walk road race now out of the question? Not so, I have found.

If I cannot release it myself, I go to one of my well-trained, experienced CMI (Core Movement Integration) practitioners, and that usually starts the unwinding.

Recently (probably too much travel, sitting on planes, working and who knows what else), my left meniscus compromised knee and lower leg area was again tightening up. A competitive walkers’ road race that I have done for over ten years was coming up. I asked Debbie Hledik, CMI practitioner and LMT, to work out these areas. The muscles began to relax, the fascial plated to glide, and I was on the way. Still, some residual stiffness remained.

Then, the elusive obvious: a nurse friend suggested heat packs. It worked! The next day I did Slattery’s annual walkers’ race—a five miler with two short but steep hills and 130 participants. I came in fifth with a time of 62 minutes (a little slower than last year), maintained a good pace (without pushing myself to try to beat those 49 year olds any more!). And, best of all, no after effects whatsoever! No pains, no stiffness.

What I know with even more clarity is what I have been teaching for years…through classes, seminars, CDs and DVDs…that an efficient walking gait requires the right vectors of force transmission (differentiating the basic six pathways that force travels through the body–right out of biomechanics), coordinating them into one functionally integrated action, and learning to perceive the right core pathway alignment and the right spiralic activation through spine and ribs. Lastly, using the right set of preparatory movement exercises involving resonant motion flow, lengthening  and strengthening for greatest efficiency and benefit without strain, or damage to joints and ligaments.

Not only do I continue to maintain my form, speed and endurance, I will also continue teaching others how to walk well, organized and fit using only three “prototype” movement lessons, and six lengthening-strengthening exercises. One can add more “variations” as needed, but these are the basics. Once the movements are coordinated and perceived by the brain, a new neuromotor pattern (engram) is generated.

If done efficiently and free of shearing stresses and turbulence, the body can do many miles of walking without a problem. This kind of walking is not only the best exercise, but also has been, through recent published research, demonstrated to prevent deterioration, reverse cardiovascular disorders, reduce cancer, prevent or control diabetes, and increase longevity.

Here is another even more dramatic case of one of our well-trained practitioners increasing functional gait, reversing degeneration, getting better and improving with age:

[The Marine Corps Marathon, October 30, 2011, Washington, DC ].
“I am very happy to say that I finished my first marathon joyfully. My main concern was with my right knee cartilage tears, but it held up beautifully. Never once did it complain. I was using a dominant core movement path 3 and 4 with the emphasis not on the push off leg (path 4) but on the lifting leg (path 3). The supporting leg was as relaxed as I could make it.

 I did have to overcome a left calf (soleus) strain which started at mile 6. Luckily I was able to change the foot strike by firing my hamstrings as my foot was contacting the ground. This minimized the time it was on the ground and reduced any stretching of the calf area. For me it was a great educational experience about efficient biomechanics…”
 Arthur Madore, LMT, CMI, age 63

Arthur further explains how he trained his body through core movement awareness lesson-exercises he used and developed for himself for the Washington, DC, Marine Corps Marathon in October 2011, “ … the engagement of both transversus and obliques assist the flexion-rotation of the pelvis. You can practice the moves starting lying on your back, knees bent, doing the pelvic tilt knee to chest (floating leg). Instead of floating the knee to the chest, let it stay in contact with the table so it pulls directly to the ischium. This involves mostly the hamstrings. In walking, the foot clears the ground by the combination of core paths 2 and 3 in the forward moving levering lift leg, creating a ground force reaction to the supporting leg. Add a slight forward lean from the ankles and the forces of propulsion through center of gravity…This is my latest understanding of the most efficient way to combine the paths with both walking and running.”
Arthur Madore, LMT, CMI (first-time marathoner, training with 3 meniscus tears and finishing with no problems or after effects)