Normal Walking

Watch on the video how the arms and legs swing forward and backward across the midline of the trunk. The arms swing because the shoulder girdle is free to move. Each shoulder swings on the seesaw pattern, so one goes forward and the other moves backward in egalitarian measure. The movement has a natural energy, like a pendulum. There should be very little force needed.

The pelvis also swings, one side forward and one backward, because it is also a seesaw. The arms and legs work in a pattern called reciprocity: opposite arm and leg flex while the other side extends and provides push off through a bent knee and toe. The timing for walking is hot-wired in our system, as well as the use of the seesaw patterns to constantly measure middle and be able to move it forward. Paradoxically, it is the extension at the hip that starts the forward propulsion with bent knee and toes. Flexion at the hip is not the boss of walking.

The connective tissue wrapped around our bones and muscles also communicates the timing and release of this cycle for walking and balance. The whole body is constantly kept aware of where we are in space, how long it takes to swing, and when each part passes by the middle of each other part. Our muscle partners train with this information from the first time we lay on the floor to roll around as babies.

The ability to walk easily and jauntily with our eyes up and scanning the horizon is an important part of survival. We don’t hunt for our food every day, but we do need to drive, be street smart, and judge how the terrain shifts as we walk.

When you watch a dancer, an amazing catch in midair of a baseball or football, or the leap to the basketball rim, you are watching a beautiful joyous body move through space. You may call it sports, but it’s a full body dance: “Phenomenally Electric.” The big athletes may get good contracts, but it’s the joy and rush of the full body movement that keeps them in the game.

We get lost in the idea of exercise and forget that the result is to have a free, happy, mobile body. The joy of the message gets lost in the structure of the messenger. Not everyone will be an award-winning athlete, and even if you are or want to be, there must be a moment when you are just you! Why are you spending hours exercising, if you then can’t move with the joy expressed in the following poems? Read these words and walk across your floor with the joy expressed here. Let go of who you have been told to be and be yourself in this moment!

I SING THE BODY ELECTRIC

By Walt Whitman

The love of the body of man or woman balks account, the body itself balks account,

That of the male is perfect, and that of the female is perfect.

The expression of the face balks account,

But the expression of a well-made man appears not only in his face,

It is in his limbs and joints also, it is curiously in the joints of his hips and wrists,

It is in his walk, the carriage of his neck, the flex of his waist and knees, dress does not hide him,

The strong sweet quality he has strikes through the cotton and broadcloth,

To see him pass conveys as much as the best poem, perhaps more,

You linger to see his back, and the back of his neck and shoulder-side.

Walt Whitman. Leaves of Grass,1855. Public Domain.