Solo Hiking...
Welcome to August Everyone!!
This is part two to last month's newsletter on long distance walking and community. For this one, I went solo and out into the woods...
Last year, I did the Ramapo Dunderberg trail in May. And although I made it through, I made a big mistake: I started too late on the first day and I had to be back in the city the next evening to teach a class - meaning I only had a little over half a day, each day, to do the whole hike. Which meant I actually had to RUN a large portion of the way while carrying my heavy bag. I finished, but I was exhausted and I really beat up my feet. Although I still took in the surroundings, felt a sense of accomplishment, and used the experience as a test of will, it wasn’t the relaxing time communing with nature that I had hoped for.
This year, I planned to do it differently by giving myself more time.
It was a much better experience.
Here are my thoughts on those two days:
Hiking in nature is very different from walking in the city.
Whereas you might have to create variety of movement in the city to avoid repetitive use stress, the great thing about nature is the environment provides that variety for you. All the different terrain and surfaces really do encourage your body to adapt to all sorts of postures and walking gaits. Also, the pace is inevitably different. From a runner and city dweller’s standpoint, one could conceivably move 10 miles in a couple hours... However, trying to move at a relaxed pace and going barefoot over rough terrain certainly slowed me down quite a bit. I consistently found I only moved at 1.5 miles an hour! So on the first day, 10 miles took me around 7 hours and on the second day 15 miles took me a full 10 hours!
Yet, I really wanted to enjoy this hike and not get caught up in the stress of pushing to finish. I didn’t want to do the hike for the sense of accomplishment only. Yes, the distance and having a goal of traveling from one end to the other of the park were appealing, but I felt that the main reason to do it was to take in the experience of being and moving in nature. So, the journey only made sense if I allowed myself to walk at an easier pace and truly enjoy being there. Plus, I discovered a pretty good feedback tool alerting me to whenever I started rushing, ignoring the impulse to rest, or when I lost the awareness of the present moment: whenever those things happened, I invariably lost my footing or stubbed my toe. Ouch! And yet, what an amazing gift that was - to have a real physical tool to teach me mindfulness and presence! The terms “presence” and “the present moment” can seem like abstractions with little practical application. Here, I was experiencing an immediate biofeedback when my mind wandered and I found it very practical indeed!
How often are we moving through life and engaging in activities but our attention and mind are constantly in the future- waiting for the task to be done?... Or even when we’re in the middle of something we’ve looked forward to such as a vacation, do we find we miss the whole event because we spend the time thinking about the next event or what other plans need to be made.
I began to think I don’t want to miss anymore of my life that way. And when I did stub my toe or lose my footing, it occurred to me (OUCH!) I don’t want to learn through suffering anymore either. “Trial and error” can be a great way to make progress and discoveries… but if we charge ahead in life crashing into walls, it seems more like tragedy and error… and suffering…
Is there another way?
I think the other way is mindfulness. Being present. And learning through discernment. And by discernment, I mean the practiced ability to guide my choices based on my intuition and a sense of integrity with my self. It’s a way of learning when I’m either on or off course with my internal compass.
I wonder if our difficulty in remaining present in our awareness is one of the unintended and overlooked consequences of wearing shoes!
This hike felt like a great exercise in this practice of presence and discernment. When I felt off balance, or rushed, or stressed, those were practical signs to change course, slow down, and decide what would make me feel better. I hope and intend to bring this awareness to the other parts of my life as well.
Solo Trek vs community:
Here’s a few pics from the hike!
It was a bit hazy but in the background of the last pic you can actually see the skyscrapers of Manhattan!
Now isn’t that interesting: I’m off on a hike presumably to spend time alone… on purpose. And yet, there’s this deep desire to record the experience and share it with others… I couldn’t help thinking “oh, this would be a good instagram post”.
In our modern world, many of us are addicted to social media. There are studies that show how high use of social media correlate to higher rates of depression and actual social isolation. I think this is because social media is a false equivalent for actual community. And we derive small hits of feel good chemicals like dopamine when we use social media, but like any drug, it has diminishing returns. So, we crave it more but feel less euphoric the more we use it. It seems to be so addictive because we are innately communal creatures. We need community to thrive. And yet, many of us also need time alone - for it is in the alone times that our creative energy surges and we become clear on who we are. There’s a reason many religions feature stories and rituals of going alone into the desert…
With social media, we are faced with a conundrum: it gives us a sense of community when we feel alone, but even when we seek to be alone our minds don’t release into that state because it is so easy to be in contact with that virtual community at all times.
Now, I’m not actually disparaging social media. I think it has amazing uses and value… if we use it right.
But I think we need times of being alone and away from our virtual community, so our creative minds can flourish and we can once again hear the more subtle whispers of who we are. And then, maybe we can reconnect to social media with more focused use and prioritize those who are part of our real communities versus the virtual one.
Even though I did take some pictures to share with the virtual community, I avoided posting until I was back in the city. And I suppose that’s a good step.
Vary your carry!
No matter how light I intend to travel, I pack too much. And my bag felt heavy… especially after numerous hours. So just like you can vary your gait to mitigate repetitive use stress in your legs, you can vary your carry to alleviate fatigue from carrying your backpack in just the one way it’s designed for. Here’s some examples:
I also made a video on this for the Infinite Movement channel! Check it out here:
Vary your Carry
How we carry things in everyday life can be a prime example of how repetitive use starts to shape our bodies. So why not just practice a variety of ways to carry things. Even if it looks silly. I think it’s time we dare ourselves to seem a little weird in order to start changing the culture. Let’s create a culture that celebrates and reflects health inducing practices rather than abusing our bodies to adapt to an unhealthy culture. At this point, I’ve made peace with getting some quizzical looks as I walk barefoot or wear my backpack on my front.
If any of you have other weird but health inducing changes for our culture, I’d love to hear about them!
Even with varying my carry with my pack, I still ended up with some wear and tear on my shoulders:
Yikes! Maybe I just need to develop thicker shoulder calluses? Ha ha!
Pressure-deforming sleep habits:
Here was my sleeping setup:
I used a hammock and some bug netting strung up between two trees…
But instead of hanging the hammock, I let it rest on the ground. I love the feeling of the ground under my body while camping. Sure, I’m not that used to it and there are some bumps and hard objects on the ground that keep me shifting around at night. But that’s the point! There’s an argument to be made that pressure from coming into contact with harder surfaces and objects actually helps to realign and keep the tissues and joints of our body mobile and healthy. It’s the same principle as massage - where the therapist applies pressure to resistant tissues of the body. In the modern world, our bodies rarely come into contact with harder surfaces. Our beds and couches conform to the shape of our bodies which keeps us from feeling where the tension and sticky parts of our bodies are. In the context of nature, humans may get a lot of benefit from sleeping on the forest floor because the harder ground helps “work out the kinks” in the body. Check out this article on ground sleeping peoples by the physiotherapist, Michael Tetley:
Instinctual Sleeping and Resting Postures
And if you feel inspired by this, you might start thinking about getting rid of your bed and sleeping on the floor! Here’s a step by step approach article on transitioning to floor sleeping by Katy Bowman…
I used Tetley’s article as the basis for a recent movement class. You can find a snippet of that here!
how pressure deforming movements help align our body and the exploration of instinctual sleeping and resting postures
And if you like that, Big News!!! I'm very close to launching my new website and having access to online classes you can do at home!!
Hip list versus knee bend:
When going for a long walk or hike, what is it that limits you? Sometimes, it’s the aches and pains or simple fatigue that keeps us from going any further. Going up and down the hills can really burn out our quadriceps and give our knees a beating (imagine pushing your hands into your thighs feeling the achy-ness and burn with each uphill step). It’s pretty obvious, but where we feel it most in the body is probably what’s working the hardest. However, by the end of the hike, I noticed my lateral hips were sore. I took this as a great sign! This meant I was actively using my lateral hips, and butt muscles more than I used to. And I felt almost no discomfort in my knees and quads. Most of us have a tendency to overuse the quadriceps and knee joints due to our alignment and daily habits. As a consequence, we develop a lot of wear and tear in the knee joint that could be avoided if we knew what to do differently. Especially since I had numerous knee surgeries in my late teens and early twenties, I felt grateful for feeling just fine in my knees. I felt very grateful to all my alignment work and study for giving me the ability to enjoy moving much further and with much less effort.
