Walking into Light
Yesterday was my second meeting with the spiritual director. This morning that got me thinking about the connection between body movement and connections to mind, heart, spirit.
In January, I began an ambitious project: walk every day, at least 6,000 steps.
That is, it was ambitious for me. My natural orientation is that of couch potato and certainly I have logged in an impressive number of hours on the couch in my life, especially, like many, since March 2020 and the beginning of #CovidForever.
It could have been just another New Year enthusiasm, a resolution soon discarded and forgotten. But I was determined, it was something I needed to do, and I am very competitive in nature, so getting that steps app on my phone (and eventually a month or so ago my smartwatch better to log in every step etc) did the trick, and nine months later, I am still walking daily.
No, I don't hit 6.000 steps every single day. But I do nearly every single day, well over 95 percent of the time, and of course many days walk 7K to 10K or more.
While it’s amazing to slowly get in better shape after packing on those pandemic pounds, even more important for me is how walking is changing me, or more accurately, helping me to be better connected with who I am.
(Image credit: Robert Pental, photo taken in Cootes Paradise, Hamilton)
The Joys of Nature: A very dear friend of mine walked out in Nature every day for a year a number of years ago, and while I admired her efforts greatly from a distance, I really didn’t get it at the time. After walking every day since mid-January in many beautiful places, including beaches and other lovely places in Tobago, in the UK (Leicestershire, Derbyshire, Wales, London, Edinburgh), in Montreal, and of course all over Hamilton, Ontario, I now have begun to get what she was so excited about at the time, and part of why she took so many pictures along the way. There is something about being more connected to Nature that is a gateway to Everything, including the inward parts of the self that feel less accessible in the busy day to day blur of life.
Thinking Walks: walking to think truly is a thing. Apparently Charles Darwin used walking daily to think through his great thoughts, and certainly over the millenia, humans of all conditions have walked to work through all kinds of things.
Walking isn’t just about thinking, of course. It is a wonderful way to help process emotions. Have you ever been in the throes of some unbearably intense emotion and gone out for a long walk to ‘clear your head’? I certainly have, and been most grateful for what those walks did not only to help me emotionally regulate, but further to help integrate and solidify certain key insights.
Walking or Running and EMDR: apparently part of why walking does amazing things in through bilateral stimulation. The latter is key in ‘(e)ye movement desensitization and reprocessing therapy, commonly known as EMDR, … a mental health therapy method. EMDR treats mental health conditions that happen because of memories from traumatic events in your past. It’s best known for its role in treating post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), but its use is expanding to include treatment of many other conditions.’ (Source)
(Image credit: Robert Pental)
The Body-Mind-Spirit Connection: while there are many, many reasons walking is therapeutic, this morning I am very focused on how walking helps processing trauma. ‘Trauma is not just an event that happened in the past; it’s something that can leave lasting imprints in the body. Our muscles, posture, breath, and even how we walk can carry traces of what we’ve been through. Movement, whether that’s walking, stretching, dancing, or other embodied practices can help release stored tension, reconnect us with ourselves, and promote healing.’
Photo by Ahmad Odeh on Unsplash The same page linked just above continues, ‘As Peter Levine writes in Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma, “The body is designed to process and release trauma naturally, but when this process is interrupted, the trauma becomes stuck.” Movement helps to gently restart this natural release mechanism, allowing people to feel more grounded, regulated, and in touch with themselves.’
This page on Peter Levine’s Somatic Experiencing 101 provides more background on what Somatic Experiencing is and why it can be effective in healing trauma. Among other things, it references a seminal therapy session: ‘Amidst this chaos, Dr. Levine was compelled, by a seemingly prescient vision of a charging tiger, to say: “Nancy, you’re being chased by a tiger. Run! Run for the nearest tree!” It was at this moment, as Nancy began kicking her feet, that Dr. Levine first witnessed the human animal’s innate ability to heal from shock and terror by completing the instinctual, self-protective act that had been overwhelmed and frozen into her body’s nervous system, over 20 years earlier.’
Photo by Diogo Lemos on Unsplash 5. Walking into Light:
Into White Yusuf/Cat Stevens lyrics
‘I built my house from barley rice
Green pepper walls and water ice
Tables of paper wood, windows of light
And everything emptying into white’
While I don’t know why and how Yusuf wrote this song or what he intended, to me it speaks deeply to the contemplative experience.
My spiritual director has invited me to explore what it could mean to find a good place to walk, and in so doing, to walk back into a childhood trauma in contemplative prayer, inviting Jesus to walk with me, and to see what happens.
I am eager to find out.