Walking Fast whilst Remaining Sung
July 2010 Walking Tip
Paul Cavel Circle Walking
Most internal arts practices are non-aerobic exercise. They can make you healthy, but you won’t get the aerobic workout you would from Western exercise programmes. Walking fast—using the techniques I’ve been describing for the last three months—combines internal power generation with aerobic exercise. It can upgrade your internal systems and make you super fit!
Fast Walking: Preparation Is Key
One of the challenges with walking fast is that it brings up a lot of energy and blood into the head. Any stress or tension then gets amplified. Another challenge is keeping those ever-important alignments. So we have some work to do yet before we go zipping round and round.
Reducing stress and tension in the body before increasing your speed is absolutely essential. It creates a baseline that you want to maintain as you progressively walk faster. So spend at least 5-10 minutes each practice session working on the material from the last three months (April, May, June) and don’t forget your body alignments whilst walking in a circle at slow speeds.
Once you have created whatever level of sung you can achieve, you’re ready to advance.
Setting the Gears: Releasing the Eyes before You Walk
Start by focusing on your eyes. The eyes are the doorway to the nervous system, so relax the eyes to release your nerves (exercises that can help). Let your eyes become really soft as you walk and release your nerves to the best of your ability.
Walking Stage 1
Keeping your attention on the eyes, increase your walking speed by up to 30%.
What happens? Do your eyes go hard or bug out? If so, relax your eyes and nerves until you regain sung at this new, faster speed.
Walking Stage 2
Again, increase your speed by another 30%, but this time keep the eyes soft and the nerves relaxed. The idea is to only increase your speed to as fast as you can whilst remaining sung. If any tension or hardness comes into the eyes or body, take time to relax it at the faster speed.
Keep going until you are walking fast and you can’t possibly relax.
Now you know what is too fast for the time being. Reduce your speed just enough to regain sung. This is your maximum cruising speed whilst remaining in control of your nerves.
Walking Stage 3
Finally slow right down, change direction and repeat the process on the other side. Do your best to stay relaxed, calm and soft as you gradually increase your pace. Whatever you do, don’t change direction at a fast pace. Always slow down, change direction and then smoothly increase your speed whilst keeping your body sung.
An Anytime-Anywhere Walking Practice
You can practise the sequence above incorporating the internals from the last four months anytime anywhere. My retreats next month will incorporate some of these techniques and much more as will my autumn teachings in England and Germany if you want to deepen your internals.
Happy Circle Walking,
Paul
Any physical and/or energetic exercise can carry risks. Do not attempt these exercises if you have any physical, emotional or mental conditions that may make you susceptible to injury.
© 2010 Paul Cavel—All rights reserved.
Copying or distributing any portion of this article without written consent is prohibited.
