Are you also enjoying these wonderful summer days? How nice it is to be in nature and recharge your batteries there!
Just back from jogging, I was amazed again this time how much more energy and stamina I have when I’m doing it without shoes. This has prompted me to once again look at the topic of correct, natural walking, among other things, in my next monthly workshop:
“When everyone is limping, everyone thinks they are walking correctly”.
In our actions, we almost always measure ourselves against society. If I do something one way, but see that everyone else around me is doing it another way, then I must be wrong – indeed, we often think “I may not be normal!”. This already starts as a child, when we begin to adapt our sitting upright Buddha posture to the curved posture of our parents and then continues to our first steps: If you have children, you might remember the first steps of your daughter or son? Which part of the foot touched the ground first each time? Heel or toes/balls?
The following video shows impressively how we prevent and make impossible the natural gait with the footwear we put on ourselves and our children:
Yes, our children are true masters and teachers; we would often only need to listen and look more often and so we could perhaps save the one or other expensive seminar with a “great master” 😉
By the way, it is also interesting to note that with the introduction of the first “comfortable” jogging shoe by Nike in the 70s, foot problems and foot injuries increased massively. So the best sneakers are not sneakers at all.
Humans were created by evolution as a perfect “running machine” (running in the High German sense = running). No other mammal can run long distances with such endurance as man. So was and is hunted today: In the midday heat of the Kalahari Desert in South Africa, the hunters of the San bushmen (see picture) run after their prey until it collapses from exhaustion.
With these San hunters in the picture above you can see very nicely the natural gait of people who have never had to wear shoes.
On September 24th I will bring you closer to the natural gait and maybe you will soon hang up your gym shoes and maybe even hiking boots 😉 Of course, this does not happen overnight and I am also mostly walking with shoes. However, I only have so-called barefoot shoes or sandals, such as Unshoes. These have served me well, for example, during a five-hour hike in the mountains of Colorado (by the way, they are also used to run ultramarathons of 100km).
Russel Four Eeagles
Finally, today I would like to share some profound words from Russel Four Eagles from his wonderful book “The Making of a Healer”. He writes in this book about the teachings of his grandmother (Gram) of the Oneida tribe.
“…It is also sad that – unlike in Gram’s time – the responsibility for raising children is left entirely to the two parents alone – with increasing isolation from the rest of the family members. We love our children. And yet society as a whole has taught us to pass the buck. We send the kids off to school or to a babysitter while we earn money. Parents have to work to provide for their family. That in and of itself is acceptable. The problem is that in most households now both parents work because it simply takes two incomes to survive.
Unfortunately, we work more and more just so we can pile more and more into our garage to take out once a year for vacation. We notice our neighbors’ great cars and suddenly our car isn’t good enough. “We need to make more money,” we tell ourselves, which then usually means we work even harder.
Kids don’t get out to the park or the woods anymore, which is another sad fact. Instead, they are entirely occupied with their expensive clothes, computers and cell phones, to which they have become accustomed. So, once again, we work more.
Since we don’t have to take care of our elders, we have even more time to accumulate money. But this gain is actually pathetic, considering how much damage it does to the present family. And even then, we still have trouble making enough money.
What we need to remember is what we have forgotten: Children are everything. For the indigenous tribes, children were the highest good. But now the children are the ones who lose. They are cheated out of the time that their parents, their grandparents or other relatives could give them. I believe that there are very few parents or grandparents who would turn their backs on their children when they have a question or a problem to solve; but we are not available at all because we are away at work (unless we should already be in the nursing home). The family unit itself has turned into little more than strangers living under the same roof. Working is pretty much unavoidable these days. But balance and clarity about our priorities is what to strive for. It is not easy, but we must try.
Society has taught us to buy kids things because that’s what they want. But simply put, what children need are their families.
But society wants the economic machine to run well-oiled and smoothly, and clearly the corporations want that too: so let’s create a new holiday so we can sell, sell, sell and buy, buy, buy.
…
And I wonder: if – as Gram has taught – we should make our decisions based on what benefits not only our grandchildren, but the next seven generations – and the children of today are already losing – what does this mean for the next seven generations?”
So be attentive to what are the real important things in life. On your deathbed, the warm hand of your daughter or son holding you and the loved ones gathered around you will give you more comfort than the new iPhone in your hand and the good wishes via Facebook or Whatsapp…. And as a client of mine recently said “the shroud has no pockets.”
Namaste
Gerald