This post is part of a series celebrating the release of Building Balance in Your Body & Life, my new 30-lesson audio course on Insight Timer. Find the first two posts here and here. If these ideas interest you, please join the course! Go to the Insight Timer web site to listen to the first lesson and to join us. Thank you for supporting your body your life and my work.
In the iconic 1970 Monty Python sketch, Ministry of Silly Walks, John Cleese opens the scene with an ostrich-style silly walk to his office. He meets Michael Palin who is looking for Ministry grant money to develop his own silly walk.
After watching Palin’s walk, Cleese looks at him and says, “That’s it, is it? It’s not particularly silly, is it?”
The Monty Python Silly Bar is high, to be sure. And the body’s bar for silly walking is just as high.
Walking, unless you are injured or differently-abled, is one of the most common human movements there is. Most of us do some amount of walking every single day. Walking is great. It’s great for the whole body -- muscles, joints, bones, breath, heart, brain – as well as the mind and nervous system.
In the modern world, however, we are encouraged to walk in decidedly un-silly ways.
Think about the surfaces you walk on in the man-made world. Floors and sidewalks and stairs and docks and boardwalks. What do they all have in common? All these surfaces are flat and hard.
Now think about the surfaces in nature. Grass and dirt and sand and rocks and roots. What do they all have in common? All these surfaces are uneven, unstable and soft.
Nearly half the bones in your body are in your feet. All those foot bones mean your feet have dozens of joints. A joint is a place in the body that is meant to move. Given that design, your feet are not meant to be strapped into tight, heeled shoes but mobilized. Your feet are not designed to walk on hard, flat surfaces but on nature’s uneven surfaces.
So in the spirit of The Ministry of Silly Walks, here are 3 ways of walking to wake up, enliven and energize your amazing feet.
3 “Silly” Walks That Give Serious Love To Your Feet & Body
1. Walk barefoot.
Spend some time every day walking barefoot.* Walk around your house, your yard, a beach with no shoes (or minimal, zero lift shoes) so your foot muscles and joints can activate to keep you stable, balanced and moving.
* When healing conditions like plantar fasciitis and other injuries, barefoot walking may be contraindicated. And if you haven’t walked much or at all in bare feet, start slowly and gently. A few minutes a day is a great place to start.
2. Walk slowly.
For most of us, walking is so habitual that we don’t even notice how we do it. Slowing our walk way down both challenges our bodies in new ways and highlights how we do it. By slowing your walk way way down (play with inhaling as you lift your foot and exhaling as you place it), you will feel your balance, how you place your foot and the micro adjustments your body is doing all the time...we just don’t notice.
3. Walk chaos.
One of my favorite walking exercises I learned from Carlos Rosas, one of the founders of The Nia Technique. To walk chaos, simply change the direction of your foot every single time you take a step. Picking up your foot each time you step (rather than twisting), turn your toes in, out, parallel. It’s the most inefficient walk you can imagine and it’s also one of the best for both your body and mind. Put on a piece of music you love and walk chaos to the beat!
The Wonder of Walking section of the Building Balance in Your Body & Life course explores a wide range of ways to wake up your walking and to appreciate it for the amazing movement that it is. Spend some time this week paying close attention to the way you walk and see if you can change it up some to enliven your body. And join the Building Balance course for more ways to feel balance in your body and your life.