Do you know how to walk?
• Pretty cool article about how Joanna Hall instructs people to walk in WalkActive training, a protocol she developed.
• “Maintain a flexible, open ankle, to leave my back foot on the ground for longer, and to peel it away, heel first, as if it were stuck in place with Velcro. Imagine that maybe you have a Post-it note on the sole of your foot …and you want to show the message on the Post-it note to the person behind you.”
• Then “increase the distance between pelvis and ribs, standing tall and creating more flexibility through the torso. Then the neck: there needs to be more distance between collarbone and earlobes.”
Black Holes…
might not really exist.
Rucking Tips
• Check out these excellent rucking tips from Michael Easter’s “2%” newsletter.
Thread the backpack hip belt through your dog’s leash handle. This really works! The attachment at a lower point of your own body leads to effortless leash walking.
Use water as extra weight so 1) you have water with you and 2) you can dump it if you need to drop some of the weight.
Do 5-10 bear hug squats with the pack at the end of the ruck to offset all of that time with weight on the back of your body.
Keep a loaded ruck or vest by the door so you can wear it on short walks, phone calls, trips to the mailbox, etc.
While rucking, adjust straps often, shifting weight to hips, back to shoulders, chest strap, etc.
When traveling, instead of taking a plate vest or backpack (and having your spouse beg you not to), take an empty sandbag. You can fill it up with sand when you get to the destination. Then empty if before you come home.
Best Coffee Mug
• Check out the Mighty Mug. Very well insulated. Stainless steel interior. Won’t spill. The coolest part: It won’t tip over because it suctions to any smooth surface. I took it on a recent trip, great for hot and cold drinks. Thanks to my patient who brought his in to show me.
Body Keeps the Score
• This very popular book by Bessel van der Kolk has sold extremely well since release in 2014; surprising because the book is somewhat challenging with a fair amount of medical detail. van der Kolk covers the main theme of how trauma affects the mind AND the body. He is a clinician with vast experience with the methods he describes. He writes about childhood experiences and the importance of attunement between parents and children.
• In a few places in the book, he articulates something similar to the quote below, about the importance of verbal but especially nonverbal parental support. It has really made me reflect more on how I respond to my kids when they come to me excited about something or proud of themselves. The quote below leads into how people may eventually seek much needed relief from substances when they don’t find it in relationships.
“But if no one has ever looked at you with loving eyes or broken out in a smile when she sees you; if no one has rushed to help you (but instead said, “Stop crying, or I’ll give you something to cry about”), then you need to discover other ways of taking care of yourself. You are likely to experiment with anything-drugs, alcohol, binge eating, or cutting that offers some kind of relief.”
• Although both aerobic and weight training exercises yielded similar outcomes, such as improved skin elasticity and dermal structure, resistance exercise demonstrated a distinct effect by promoting an increase in dermal thickness (likely due to upregulation of biglycan (BGN), a proteoglycan present in the extracellular matrix that plays a crucial role in dermal structure).
Quotes
Many of humanity’s greatest creative and scientific achievements have probably been driven by this tendency, by our desire to seek order in chaos and feel joy when we find a new way of making sense.
– Maia Svalavitz in The Unbroken Brain
We can hardly bear to look. The shadow may carry the best of the live we have not lived. Go into the basement, the attic, the refuse bin. Find gold there. Find an animal who has not been fed or watered. It is you!! This neglected, exiled animal, hungry for attention, is a part of yourself.
– Marion Woodman (quoted by Stephen Cope in The Great Work of Your Life)
