| Book: The Spirited Walker |
"The
Spirited Walker : Fitness Walking for Clarity, Balance, and Spiritual Connection"
By Carolyn Scott Kortge, Harper San Francisco, May 1998
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The Spirited Walker offers an approach to fitness walking that blends traditional mediation techniques with contemporary sport psychology. With practice, these tools infuse daily walks the spirit of meditation and with the clarity of athletic performance. Regardless of whether you walk for relaxation, aerobic fitness, weight loss or connection with nature, your steps can lead to inner peace, mental focus, and spiritual awareness. Fitness walks become an active meditation. Workouts evolve into a metaphor for moving forward with purpose and clarity, a reminder to live fully and wholly in each moment. A journey toward connection with the soul.
Carolyn Scott Kortge has traveled the path from fitness walker to racewalker to spirited walker. Her book will be on the shelves in May, and can be ordered now through our Amazon.com partner. Carolyn was pleased to give us an interview about her techniques.
What is your method for turning fitness walking into spirited walking?
Focus, or mindfulness, is what distinguishes spirited walking from fitness walking for me. My approach borrows from sports psychology and from traditional meditation to create mental and physical tools that keep us awake and aware during walks.
It's always tempting to 'space out' on a walk--to let the thoughts meander willy-nilly while we take a mental rest. Instead of rest, we often end up chasing loose ends and dodging arrows. When the head and the body are going in different directions, it's difficult to reach any goal. Spirited walking helps them work together.
The Spirited Walker: Fitness Walking for Clarity, Balance and Spiritual Connection provides lots of suggestions and techniques for adding focus to walks. They range from visualizations to affirmations to singing "Yankee Doodle Dandy." Some are playful; all are powerful. All of them help you get more out of a workout, especially when you combine them with aerobic exertion.
Any good, aerobic workout pushes you out of your comfort zone for a while. That's where you are most likely to encounter mental protests and complaints. Every walker is familiar with mind chatter. We know the voices in the head that tell us we are too tired to walk fast today, or too old, or too out of shape. I maintain that if you can talk yourself OUT of a workout, you can also talk yourself INTO one. The techniques for doing don't have to be spiritual. They simply have to replace the negative messages that bog you down if they circle endlessly in the head.
It's ever so much easier to keep up a brisk walk when you hear "Yes, I can" in your head instead of "I'm too tired," or "This is hard." For years, I had a voice that said I was too clumsy to be good at any physical activity. When I began race walking, it mocked me. "I told you so," it said when I went through the awkward movements of learning a new technique. "You look really dumb," it taunted. "You've never been good at sports."
My choice was to give in to the voice, and give up on my goal of learning how to racewalk, or to find a way to keep my internal critic quiet. I decided to out-talk it. "I am a graceful and active woman, at ease in a strong healthy body," I affirmed to myself when the critic appeared. The words blocked the interference of self-doubt. As my walking pace picked up, I began to create walking mantras, phrases that I repeated in rhythm with my steps. "I am here and I am walking," I repeat to restore focus when I discover that my mind is planning dinner or rehashing a conversation. "I am here and I am breathing." I say, and my focus comes to simply breathing in and out, not thinking, not making plans, not worrying.
Sometimes I entertain myself, and create mind-body harmony, with a waltz-walk. This is a great focusing tool because it uses a three-beat rhythm which demands greater attentiveness for most people than the more familiar 4-beat pattern. "I-am-here. I am here." I repeat mentally as I swing my arms briskly. Each word punctuates a step. On a hill, the phrase might change to "Yes, I can" Yes, I can."
Sometimes I simply sing to drown out the distractions. When I teach walking clinics, we often do a timed mile walk, just to give people a measure of their walking speed. Everyone gets tired by the last lap because they are working hard. This is when I urge them to breath deep into the belly and call on the energy of "Yankee Doodle Dandy" to get around a final circuit. It's amazing what a change it makes.
There are lots more suggestions in the book. I've focused mainly on verbal techniques here but the book also has chapters that talk about visualization, breath and posture focus techniques. Each chapter of The Spirited Walker has suggested exercises that give people guidelines for trying a variety of methods. My own walks often cycle through two or three different techniques in half an hour. I love variety.
Meditation is often used as a stress-reliever. Does Spirited Walking bring stress relief?
For me, it's definitely true that putting walking and mental focus together brings greater stress relief that either produces by itself. That doesn't mean that I don't still enjoy walking as a social outing with my husband or friends, or sitting in silent meditation groups. But when I put mindfulness and walking together, the outcome is different. And when it's stress relief that I want, nothing beats what I call "crisis control" walks. That's when I dash out the door to clear my mind with a workout that "aerates" brain and body.
In The Origin of Everyday Moods, research psychologist Robert Thayer says that regular exercise is the best prescription for stress reduction. His studies at California State University have shown that even ten minutes of brisk walking can lift a person's spirits.
Cardiologist Herbert Benson, author of The Relaxation Response, has demonstrated that walkers or runners who simply repeat "in" and "out" with each step achieve a state of relaxation faster than those who do not. The repetition works, he says, because it gives the mind a focus that stops the cycle of worry that creates stress.
How do you apply these techniques when walking with a partner?
My husband and I begin most days with a 45-minute walk together. We head out of the house with plans and schedules in our minds. For the first 15 or 20 minutes, we catch up with activities each has on tap. We go over ideas for weekend outings, or friends to invite for dinner. By the time we clear the details from our heads, we're warmed up and moving at a good clip. We're also ready to settle into silence as we pick up the pace to get an aerobic workout. For the next 20 minutes or so, our communication is in our movement. We move together, in rhythm, feeling a wonderful sense of support and connection without saying a word.
When one of us has an early morning meeting, or one of those annoying injuries that sometimes occur, we miss these times of togetherness. They give structure to the rest of our day.
The same sense of connection and support occurred when I trained regularly for racewalk competition with the same partner. We used warm-up times for catch up, and then let our energy and shared goals flow between us as silent communication. It is a wonderful form of communication.
What about denominations that do not support meditation as a spiritual practice?
In my use of the term, "Meditation" means mindfulness, awareness. It means focusing attention on a positive phrase, or on an image that steadies and calms the mind. Some people might choose to focus on a poem, or on a piece of scripture.
I don't think it matters what form the mindfulness takes on those walks. Some people call it prayer. A little book called Prayer-Walking by Linus Mundy suggests that people memorize scriptures for walks to recite while "taking a stroll with your soul."
Much of what I do while walking would be called prayer by people in other religious traditions. Most of my walks bring me eventually to an awareness of gratitude and praise, and I acknowledge this mentally, giving thanks. It doesn't matter to me what words people want to use.
Basically, the goal of spirited walking is to create a walking workout that is mental as well as physical. When that happens, a merger is formed. Body and mind slide into alignment. This is the place where things move smoothly. Where tension relaxes. Often, when that happens, we experience a sense of delight, of being in harmony with ourselves and the life force around us. That feeling of wholeness and belonging is what I call connection with spirit. For some people, that may be God. For others, it is connection with mother nature, or with a higher power.
Tell me about your racewalking accomplishments.
The first time I walked with someone who set a 12-minute walking pace, I got hooked on fitness walking. Actually, I was hooked on the challenge. At that time, I was in my 40s. I'd never been a runner, but I skied and hiked and was an aerobics class regular. I thought I was fit until I discovered I couldn't keep up a brisk walking pace. In two miles, my shins hurt, my hips ached, and my ego was seriously bruised. But something had shifted inside. It had never occurred to me before that walking could be a workout, as vigorous and aerobic as Jazzercize.
For a couple of years, I contented myself with clocking my passage on a two-mile route I measured outside my front door. Then, a friend suggested a new challenge. She wanted to work with a coach and compete in the World Veterans' Championships, an international track meet for athletes 35 and over which was held in my hometown of Eugene, OR in 1989. She wanted me to join her. Athletic training terrified me. I'd never imagined myself as an athlete. My past physical activity had been motivated more by fear of weight gain than by love of movement. But, I'd gotten my walking pace down to 11-minute miles and realized that I was hooked.
With about six months of preparation, I entered the 5K and 10K races at the WAVA meet and emerged without ribbons or medals, but with a sense of exultation and victory. I'd crossed a line of personal possibilities that I'd never even imagined. What carried me into five more years of racewalk competition was largely curiosity about this new, unknown physical part of myself. I encountered a woman who loved to push herself and work up a sweat. But I raced for the camaraderie it brought, as well.
In my first 10K race, the mental demands of competition were unknown to me. I struggled to maintain focus and pace. Late in the race, I pushed past another competitor. We both were showing the strain of a long effort, but she found the strength, and the heart, to gasp, "Good on ye," as I pulled ahead. I never met her, but I've never forgotten her either. She taught me a lot about athletic appreciation and respect for all-out effort, even from a competitor. I've tried to carry that attitude into every event I enter.
In 1992, I had just turned 50 when I won a silver medal in the 10K and a bronze medal in the 5 K events for women 50-54 at the USA Track & Field Association's National Masters Track & Field Championships in Spokane, WA. As always, the outcome of races depends on who shows up. I've certainly never been one of the truly outstanding American women race walkers, but I've been fortunate to show up for events where major competitors in my age division couldn't make it. I'm honored to have the medals on my wall.
I stopped competing in 1994 in order to restore a little balance in my life. It's difficult for me to compete in a casual manner. I needed time for other commitments, and wanted to reduce the amount of pressure that I put on myself. I reserve the right to return to competition someday. It's too much fun and too rewarding to give up forever.
Did you come to the spiritual side of walking through racewalking?
Absolutely.
This is a quote from the book that talks about that discovery.
"Walking seemed so simple. I had no idea that these external steps would launch an internal journey. Step by step, walking drew me into an adventure that traveled unmapped corners of myself. Internal boundaries shifted. The tight lines that had confined me inside the image of an athletic "klutz" began to loosen. Instead of a klutz, I found a woman who loved testing her physical limits. She liked feeling active and strong. I hadn't known that about myself. For years, I'd had been looking at my body from the outside, as something to control with discipline and diet. When I stepped inside, I connected with a new self-image and a deeper knowledge of myself."
What I learned in walking was that by pushing myself physically I also pushed myself mentally and spiritually. This discovery began even before I started racewalking. In order to achieve and maintain a faster walking pace, I had to make my mind a partner. Otherwise, it would talk me out of anything that felt unfamiliar and uncomfortable. When I began racing, my mind was my toughest competitor. Athletes learn to make allies of the mind, but many of us who never have considered ourselves athletic simply don't even think of it. We let the mind wear us down with chatter about feeling tired, or cold, or hot, or bored, or thirsty.
Gradually, I learned to use the tools that athletes use--mental imagery, visualization, breath control, positive affirmations, body posture checks. Not only did I get a better workout, because I could stay on target longer and harder, I discovered that I got a better sense of all-over wellbeing and wholeness. All of me was working out together.
For me, that sense of wholeness and wellbeing is a spiritual experience. It creates a connection with parts of myself that are often at odds, and with the energy that surrounds me. It is, as you say, a PEAK experience--a moment in which body, mind and soul are so lined up that we feel invincible. Or inspired.
This quote from the book explains: "Movement in the body brings movement in the mind. It is a natural alchemy. So many us seek this kind of movement in our lives, a fusion of being and doing. We long to restore wholeness within ourselves and to connect with one another and with the spiritual values that sustain and guide us."
My peak spiritual experiences walking have been when speedwalking, especially on the Portland-to-Coast walk, with a communion of body working at top speed in rhythm, breathing hard, mind set to keep the pace. Is this common, or is it just an endorphin-rush?
I think I may have answered this in the response above. The harmony of movement that you describe when you are walking for speed is precisely what I experience with intense workouts. It is not unusual.
The route that leads through body to spirit is familiar to many athletes. Twenty-five years ago psychologist Michael Murphy wrote about a "spiritual underground" in sports that was seldom covered on the sports pages. He identified it as the feelings of exaltation, and being "in the zone" that athletes experience but rarely reveal in interviews.
When we think about walking meditation, we immediately think about slow, contemplative walks. And certainly, enormous coordination of body and mind is required for this practice. Traditional walking meditation is often done at a pace that seems unnaturally slow so that it forces one to pay attention to movement in body and mind.
But racewalkers meditate too. No significant physical achievement is possible unless a person focuses clearly on a goal and believes that it is possible--a combination of physical, mental and spiritual energy. This was a form of meditation that I had never imagined in my years of sedentary "om-ing."
Even when I was competing in races, I didn't realize that I was "meditating." For me, the goal of finishing a race, or getting a certain time in a workout provided a clear objective. But when I stopped competing, I discovered that I had to create my own inspiration in order to maintain a level of workout that brought aerobic benefits. I began singing songs as I walked to keep momentum going and to drown out chatter in my mind. Sometimes I recited rhythmic mantras: "I am here and I am strong." The words kept me moving. That's when I realized that the skills I had learned in racewalking were the same skills of focus that I had learned in meditation practices.
This was an exhilarating discovery for me because I'd spent most of my life disliking and discounting my body. I'd never considered that it could be a component of spiritual expression. Now, that seems so obvious to me. I am a person with a body, a mind, a soul. Why would one part be more or less spiritual than another? And what could be more spiritual than wholeness, a sense of connection with myself and with the wonder around me?
As for "endorphin rush," I'm tempted to call is a synonym for that sense of elation and wholeness that I experience as spiritual connection. Studies show that the combination of physical and mental focus does produce emotional and biological responses for people. Walkers who simply repeat "in" and "out" with each breath reach a state of relaxation much faster than walkers who use no mental focus.
When walking slower, especially out in the forest or countryside, I sometimes find myself singing hymns. I try not to do it out loud....
In Chapter 3 of The Spirited Walker, I interview racewalker Elton Richardson who holds more American records than I can imagine for masters competitions. She is an amazing walker. And what keeps her going? Singing hymns! "Oh, you brought me, yes, you brought me, from a mighty long way. Thank you Jesus, than you Jesus," she sings to herself to set an upbeat pace that leaves casual walkers behind.
Gratitude is not an unusual outcome of Spirited Walking. Sometimes it just happens, but I think that we can nurture it, encourage its growth, by making appreciation an intentional part of the cool-down of a walk. In the last five minutes or so of a walk, take time to give thanks for what you just did. Acknowledge the time you spent doing something healthy for body and spirit. Give thanks for health. Give thanks for another day. The habit of gratitude is powerful. It's worth cultivating.
After several years of practice, gratitude spills into my walks automatically now. I plunge into the final steep pitch up the hill to my house with the rhythm of "Yes, I Can, Yes, I Can" powering my steps. By the time I reach the top of the slope, the words slip into "I give thanks, I give thanks." Thanks that I am at the top of the hill, yes. But also thanks for a good walk and thanks for another day. It's very simple and very short, but it reminds me to acknowledge the joys in my life.
"The
Spirited Walker : Fitness Walking for Clarity, Balance, and Spiritual Connection"
By Carolyn Scott Kortge, Harper San Francisco, May 1998
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Prices]
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