The Real Cause of Running Injuries is Limiting Beliefs (Part II)

Limiting belief # 2 Running is a mechanical process and running improvement is based on external measurements.  We need to explore internal sensations to improve. 

With this belief in the external we use our watch, stopwatch, GPS, and running log as our measurement of success.  When we treat ourselves as machines, we have already presupposed injury.  What do we do with #1 can we really lay a foundation for improvement.  Once we have learned to explore the easy, then we can learn to explore the powerful. 

Try this.  Stand comfortably and in a relaxed manner. Squeeze both glutes powerfully many times. What did you notice? If you started out in a relaxed stance you probably noticed that the pelvis moved forward and that your hips came forward more than is necessary for good standing. If you imagined a pencil sticking out of your navel you would have seen the pencil begin to point upward a bit as your pelvis shifted. You would also have noticed the movement you experienced traveled from your feet to your head. Now walk around the room a bit.  Now come back to standing. Step out with the left foot and bend both the left and right knees slightly. Be sure to stand in a relaxed manner. This time start out slowly and keep the effort level low so that you can sense what is happening. Squeeze only the right glute. Notice what begins to happen in the right knee, and then notice what is happening in the left knee.  Have your arms bent and the left hand by the left hip and the right hand close to the right chest. What is happening in the spine? Do this movement many times. Now let all these sensations go and walk around a bit. Now go out for a short run. Perhaps this run will have a slight up hill.  What did you feel in you run?  Without effort did you feel a bit more connection to the ground? Was it any easier to run uphill? Did you feel a bit more power? 

Limiting belief #3 Running is automatic

If we feel that running is automatic. That means we are on autopilot. Being on autopilot means we are satisfied with the habits that we have developed and are not paying attention to the possibility of new learning. This is a leading cause of running injuries. You know the phrase “listen to your body”? That is a simple saying yet developing this skill may take years. We get injured because we are not paying attention and when we are, we do not know what the messages that we are getting mean. Eventually if you pay enough attention you will know what your weak points are. You will also have been enough in touch with what you were doing that when you find stress in an area the next day, you will have remembered feeling of the pattern that caused that stress and you will be able to change something. 

Above all as your awareness increases you will have a more accurate picture of yourself as you really are, and you will know how to expand your movement possibilities.  If you run to compete, awareness is a mighty tool for accomplishing your goals.  If you want to run injury free, paying attention and developing self knowledge are absolutely essential.  If you run for self expression and as part of a healthy life then the deeper aspects of moving with less effort which means not struggling with or denying your true self, and continually learning in your body and mind what makes you strong and how are your foundation for success. 

“Find your true weakness and surrender to it. Therein lies the path to genius. Most people spend their lives using their strengths to overcome or cover up their weaknesses. Those few who use their strengths to incorporate their weaknesses, who don’t divide themselves, those people are very rare. In any generation there are a few and they lead their generation. ”                                                                                                                                     Moshe Feldenkrais

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The Real Cause of Running Iinjuries is Limiting Beliefs Part I

 Limiting belief #1 Running is hard.

Believing something to be hard makes it so. If we believe something is hard we tend to try harder. Trying harder means using more effort.  Using more effort than is necessary is the opposite of efficiency.  Have you ever fallen and rolled and gotten right back up without difficulty? Have you ever tripped over a rock on a trail run and hooked your back foot on the rock. If you stiffened up in order to try to avoid falling, as I have had the experience of doing in the past, you may have injured yourself.  I once pulled a hamstring that way.  But the point is that we have more subtle ways of using our own energy against ourselves. We think that more force is the answer. We have been raised to think that more effort is a virtue. We do not know how to seek the easy way, the better way. The way of ease is not known to us. It is a strange path. We can step on the earth lightly and lift from its surface easily and be connected to nature and thereby to ourselves. With each step we define ourselves. Or we can pound on the earth with each step and wonder at the hard impact we feel and how our setbacks seem to come out of nowhere.

Do this. Run once with absolutely no goals except to experiment to find the easiest way to run. Try this, try that, but only listen for the easy. What is really easy for you now? Keep the effort level of the run very easy. While you are exploring, you might succeed in finding your way. Things might get so easy, so natural as to be supernatural. That is fun.

Then take this attitude into one day of daily life. See what a difference there is in adopting this attitude more deeply. Then again bring this learning back into your running. 

(part 2 will be published tomorrow)

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The Magic of Running: How to Make It Happen

Go for a short run, just far enough to feel how your running is right now. Go just far enough to get the general sense of your running, your weight on your feet, and your general sense of effort.

Now come back inside. Remove your shoes, and stand in one place with your feet a comfortable distance apart. Notice the sense you have of how you are carrying your weight on your feet. Do you feel heavy, light, balanced or unbalanced? Do you feel comfortable?  Begin to scan yourself from head to foot. What is the general feeling of tension you have in your neck? What is the position of your head in relation to the rest of your body? How are your shoulders aligned? How are you holding your chest, your ribs, you low back?  How do your hips feel? How does the weight settle on your feet? Is your weight carried more on the outside or inside of the feet, the balls of the feet or the heels?  Or is your weight carried more in the center of the feet? 

Take a short break and walk around for a minute or two. Think of a chair and the four legs it has. The chair has no muscles to hold it up. But it has a structure. Unless the chair is broken, it never falls down.  It can stand on its legs for many years. You have a structure too. It is called your skeleton. Trust your bones. They are a secret to effortless running.  Learn how to use them and they can hold you up for hours. 

Come back to the place you were standing. Now picture a heavy weight on top of your head. In some places in the world, people routinely carry heavy weights on the head and they are skilled at doing this. With the image of the weight, again notice the curve in the neck. Notice that now the brain will now want to organize the neck to support weight. Can you feel how the head will want to rearrange itself?  Can you feel that with the rearrangement of the head, the entire skeleton will want to rearrange itself?  Once you rearrange the head you have affected everything. Can you feel that the relationship of the head to the feet has changed? 

Take away the image of the heavy weight on top of the head. Now you are standing differently than at first. See if you can now relax further some of the muscles that you normally think of as holding you up.  Due to your new alignment you may be able to do this. 

Walk around again and notice how your use skeleton can reduce the amount of effort in your walk. Go out and run again. Do not try to maintain an absolutely vertical posture, but trust your bones.  Allow them to do the work of holding you up. Notice at mid stance if there is a brief instant where the bones really work to hold you up. Play with your alignment and see if you can use greater awareness of the skeleton to create more ease in your running.

The Magic of Running

You might run for exercise, you are wise if you do

But there are other reasons to do it too

Movement is a vehicle, a tool.

To explore what’s around you and inside of you too.

What are you without the outside, that space, the environment even the universe

And what is the outside if it didn’t have you

You go out and run and you feel alive.

 But there is more, and when you find it you no longer struggle and strive.

Now you are connected and the ground runs with you.

That joining, with the ground moving backwards under your feet

You are no longer running on the earth, but with it.

You no longer hold yourself up, but the alignment of your bones like the trunk of a tree

Creates the magic of perpetuity

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