In Step -- Fitness For
Body, Mind, and
Spirit
by Carolyn Scott
Kortge
It had turned into
one of those too-familiar days. Demands and disruptions had left the schedule in
shambles. By the time I tied my walking shoes, the early dusk of a winter
afternoon hovered on the horizon. It would be dark before I rounded the corner
at the midway mark of my usual neighborhood loop.
As soon as I hit the street,
my mind started planning dinner and scanning cupboards, pushing to squeeze
fitness and food into a tight time slot. I am here and I am walking, I
reminded myself mentally, pulling my attention to the present and to a fast,
rhythmic walking pace. I am here and I am breathing.
Twenty minutes out, I rounded the
corner and turned toward home. Now the wind that had followed my steps met me
head on, slapping at my face and taunting me with a splattering of rain.
No, my brain screamed. No! Not now! No rain! No wind! I'm tired. I
shouldn't have started. My steps slowed. The rhythm faltered. Complaints
swirled through my head: My shoulder hurts. My back is tight. I want to get
home.
As I hunched forward into the wind
and rain, I felt the battle more than heard it. It settled like a weight in my
legs. Then awareness pulled my shoulders back. I heard the affirmation in my
mind. I am here and I am walking. I am here and I can do this. Yes, I can.
Yes, I can.
The words pushed aside protests
and complaints. They broke the trance of mindless babble. The chant began to
match the rhythm of my steps until it condensed into a single word: Yes!
I affirmed with each footstep. Yes. . . Yes ... Yes. By the time I
reached home, I had crossed a border. I had entered a new state of
mind.
Day after day I return to the
border. I step outside the door of my home and confront the hurdles on my
walking path: I don't have time. It's cold. It's hot. I'm
tired.
Anyone who walks regularly is
familiar with the journey. No matter whether you walk alone or in a group, on
treadmills or sidewalks or trails, you've stumbled over mental obstacles in your
path. You've heard the hecklers who line the route. Summer, winter, rain, or
shine, they wait beside the path. They hurl "to-dos" and "should-have-dones" in
taunts that slow your step. Sometimes they even turn you back. But walkers who
learn to silence these distracters travel to invigorating vistas. They reach
inspiring heights. The peaks before us are hidden from view until we clear the
fog in our own heads.
All too often we approach exercise
as just another task -- maybe even a burden. We do it because we know we should.
"Stress walking", some folks have labeled it as they dash off to battle calories
and advancing years with frantic lunch-hour sprints. Perhaps you're familiar
with the pattern. You go on automatic, pushing through the paces of exercise
while thinking about other things. You return from a thirty-minute walk with
urgent memos swirling in your head. Even Henry David Thoreau, living in retreat
at Walden Pond in the 1800s, recognized the hazard. "I am alarmed when it
happens that I have walked a mile into the woods bodily, without getting there
in spirit," he wrote. "The thought of some work will run in my head, and I am
not where my body is -- I am out of my senses. In my walks I would fain return
to my senses."
The joyous connection that returns
us to our senses occurs when body and mind fall into step together. It's as if
we suddenly use two eyes instead of one to focus on a goal. Focus restores
perspective. It transforms fitness walks into retreats of renewal and
realignment. Focus guides us safely past the distractions that detour us from a
path of well-being for body, mind, and soul.
Focus elevates ordinary walkers to
the level of spiritual "saunterers," as Thoreau found on his meditative walks
through the Massachusetts countryside. He credits the religious pilgrims of the
Middle Ages for giving rise to the word. Walkers who undertook pilgrimages to
the Holy Land, la Sainte Terre, came to be known as Sainte-Terrers. Not every
walker reaches holy lands, Thoreau cautioned. Those who do are saunterers -- not
idle wanderers, as the modern word suggests, but purposeful travelers with a
clear goal in mind. Travelers who leave familiar routes and routines to pursue a
larger goal.
Surely, any expedition that leads
to a greater sense of wholeness must be a pilgrimage to holy lands. Anyone who
journeys toward spiritual and physical well-being earns the name of
Sainte-Terrer. The pilgrimage on which I set forth as a walker urged me
ahead at a brisk aerobic pace. It pushed me past fears I'd adopted long ago
about getting hurt, getting dirty, or getting in trouble by letting my body run
wild. Then, as the rhythm of walking teamed up with focus, I found a unity of
movement that strengthened all of me. I became a "spirited
walker".
A Step in the Right
Direction
Millions of people already walk
for fitness and health. The number surges with every study that delivers fresh
evidence of walking's healthy contribution to everything from weight loss to
memory improvement. We buy treadmills, pedometers, and heart monitors. We
memorize cholesterol levels and aerobic heart rates. It's all a step in the
right direction, but without focus, exercise walking loses much of its potency.
By aligning the energies of muscles and mind, you make exercise more fun, more
efficient, and more effective.
 This article was excerpted from the
book:
The Spirited Walker
by Carolyn Scott Kortge.
Reprinted with permission of HarperSanFrancisco, an imprint of HarperCollins,
Inc. ©1998.
For more info or to order this
book.
About The
Author
Carolyn Kortge is a
journalist & feature writer for newspapers in Wisconsin, Kansas, and Oregon.
She has captured numerous national awards for excellence. She holds bronze and
silver medals from the USA Track and Field Association's National Masters
Championships and was formerly ranked among the top five women racewalkers in
her age group. Visit her website at www.spiritedwalker.com.
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