Walk Your Way to Wellness
Walk Your Way to Wellness Apr 29th
Dynamic Walking WILL Change Your Walk & Change Your Life
Ever wonder why the relaxation from a vacation disappears so quickly? Your everyday habits of posture and stride reinforce tension in body and mind. But you can change your walk and change your life…
The Secret Right Under Your Nose – Four Swinging Pendulums
Your body has four swinging pendulums: two arms and two legs. When you learn to allow them to swing passively (not try to swing them), your body relaxes, your mood lifts and you reset a new balance in your body and mind.
Dissolve Tension
Gait Analysis describes the phases of walking as the stance phase and the swing phase. By allowing each leg to swing, instead of lifting it to step forward, as most people do, you can release habitual, sometimes painful, tension in your legs, hips, pelvis and low back. “I thought I was walking O.K.,” reported a student. “I didn’t realize how tension in my legs was causing knee pain.”
Your arms are also pendulums. By releasing to gravity and allowing them to swing passively, your breathing relaxes, spinal tension decreases and circulation of breath and fluids increases.
“I am breathing so much fuller, without thinking about it,” said a student, “and my jaw is relaxed.”
Lift Your Mood
From a mind-body perspective, when you surrender your legs and arms to gravity you release control. You signal your personality to let go, to let nature take her course. A profound shift in your nervous system occurs, from fight or flight to the relaxation response with its cascade of ‘feel good’ endorphins. You enhance blood flow for recovery and performance. Anatomically, your arms and legs are designed to be used as pendulums but busyness, haste, and cultural imprinting have conspired to limit this gift. “I feel like the walk is walking me,” said a student. “This is easy.”
Reset a New Balance
Life gets you bent out of shape. However, allowing your arms and legs to swing passively rebalances your tension patterns. Here’s how. Your arms, right to left, are approximately the same weight, as are your legs. The momentum of their weight, swinging passively, creates a balanced, gentle, and repetitive action on your neuromuscular, skeletal and fascial systems.
Uneven stresses can occur from a stronger right leg push-off, for example, or muscular compensation from an old injury. This can torque your spine unevenly with each of the 6,000 to 8,000 steps you take daily which, left uncorrected, results in repetitive stress injuries. A balanced walk is a healthy walk. “I couldn’t walk more than 10 minutes without pain,” reported one student. “I learned to balance out my stride. After just one class, I can now walk for an hour or longer, pain free!”
The Benefits of Coaching
Your muscular compensations tighten over a life-time as your body tries to function the best way it knows how. This happens in all sports and activities of daily living, which is the best reason to identify and eliminate compensations in your most repetitive activity — walking. You can go out for a walk to release tension patterns, but since you’ve never been trained to identify and correct your imbalances, they will persist. As you age, you rigidify, lose flexibility, balance and vitality. Dynamic WalkingRM coaching helps keep this from happening.
Join our next training to…
- Enhance vitality, conditioning and performance
- Heal and prevent injuries that could limit mobility and independence
- De-stress your life daily with an effortlessly easeful walking stride
- Keep your Lifelong Legs walking
When: One two-hour training: Saturday, April 29th
Time: 1-3 p.m.
Where: Healus Neuro Rehab Center, 655 Redwood Hwy, Mill Valley, California
Cost: $35
Enroll: DynamicVitality.com
Dr. Suki Munsell holds certification as a Registered Somatic Therapist and Educator. She will be joined by her husband, Russell Munsell. They have co-taught Dynamic Walking since 1990. Training with them “you’ll gain the freedom to choose and the power to change.”
Learn more about their classes and read The Ten Steps to Dynamic WalkingRM at DynamicVitality.com http://www.dynamicvitality.com/dynamicvitality.com
Sponsored by Healus, the Center for NeuroMuscular Reprogramming held on their beautiful waterside deck.