Heal Your Body While You Walk

Wouldn’t it be amazing if you could heal your body, tone your muscles and boost your energy, all without adding any extra time to your day?

Natural walking, or “flow walking” as I like to call it, is a way to use every cell in your body with every step you take. It’s powerfully efficient full body movement, meaning that benefits abound even if all you do is walk around your office. And, it looks and feels great!

To get started, stand up and rock back on your heels with your arms raised high and back as far as you can go without falling. This wakes up the back of the body. Most of us walk with our front body, because the back body goes to sleep when we sit in chairs. Standing up this way and arching backward starts to bring the back of the body “online.”

The next step is to stand tall. Visualize your weight going down into the ground like an anchor and tree roots growing down from the bottoms of your feet. Then add a chord from the top of your head pulling toward the sky.

When you’re ready to walk, look in the direction you want to go. This is one of the secret ingredients. People tend to look at their feet when they’re “trying” to walk, but when we send our gaze in the direction we’re headed, we naturally lean that way and drop into a flowing gait easily.

What’s happening? The trunk of the body leaning forward under the influence of gravity starts the motion. When the back leg is needed, it is sent forward by a “push-off” from the back foot. When you do this, really spread your toes and “grab” the ground in front of you. Really connect with the ground as you pull it behind you, as if your legs are octopus tentacles that have attached their suction to the Earth. Feel all the muscles of your legs — and especially your butt — working it! It should feel amazing, and very different than what you’re used to!

This grabbing and pulling action further activates the back of the body. All these actions of the back of the body stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system, which lowers the stress response. One specific effect of an active back body is that the diaphragm and the adrenals (the glands that produce adrenaline) are “massaged,” which has really begin to feel more, heal more, and slow down.

As you continue walking and as you land on the heel of the foot in front of you, roll fully through the whole arch and feel your natural “shock absorber” in action. The foot, ankle, knee, hip and pelvis is a spring mechanism that gives you a massage as it recoils from the ground. Our arms naturally swing back and forth,which adds a nice rotational motion to the vertical wave. Your “tail” will naturally wag. Can you feel it? Tail wagging is key — it sends the vertical wave all the way up the spine to the head.

Adding a gentle pulling of the pelvic floor and belly button toward the spine wakes up the muscles of the core and adds a pumping action that further massages the diaphragm and adrenals. We all know how important the core, but do we really know what it is? The core is more than muscles, it’s also neurologic connectivity, and natural walking is the best way I know to bring it and keep it on line.

When we move from our vertical axis, which is what “core” really means, the work of walking happens without tension in the limbs. The hips and shoulders are relaxed. The work of walking is done by gravity, our bones and the continuum of muscles we use when the intersection of the ribcage and the low back is activated (that’s the pelvic floor and belly button part). A strong, active vertical axis is the key to relaxed hip and shoulder joints.

Core activation, or moving from a powerful midline axis, is evidenced by smooth, elegant and coordinated motion through the whole body, kind of like swells in the ocean. With each step a vertical wave of motion blends with the rotational wave created by our limbs as they move from side to side. Walking this way moves every cell in the body, and our hips, shoulders and even the joints of the spine are mobilized and lubricated.

The result? Natural Walking will gradually shift your nervous system from survival to healing, you’ll tone in all the right places, and you’ll receive a micro-massage of your entire body, all day long. Walking this way invokes power, ease, healing, and flow! The impact of this state on strength, vitality and creativity is astounding.

— Michelle Veneziano, DO is a doctor of Osteopathic Medicine in Fairfax, CA

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