Painful Walking
Bush Street Walker (click on link first)
It’s hard being me. Once my family gave me a tee shirt that said: We know you are secretly judging our posture. Pretty funny, right? But once you know what healthy alignment looks like, it’s hard not to see how people are unconsciously injuring themselves.
I was walking up Bush St in San Francisco when the man in this video drew my attention. I see distortions like this all the time, but this time I got out my camera.
Notice that his left hip is hiked up. When he walks he does not walk from the tops of his legs but rather from his waist. You can tell from the back and forth motion of his hips and the twist in his low back.This pattern causes all kinds of problems in the low back and spine, the hips, the legs and feet.
With Balance education all of these symptoms can be resolved.
Believe it or not, this pattern of walking is probably the result of how he sits. What shapes us the most is where we spend the most time and most of us spend most of our time sitting.
From the way he walks I would bet a thousand dollars that he most often sits on his right butt with barely any weight on his left butt.
I know for certain, no bets, that he is chronically tight in his left hip — above the hip bone at the waist, the inner groin, the SI joint area, and maybe even the left IT band. Chronic tension like this wears him out.
Most of us are unaware of our distortions and how tiring they are. My experience is that we don’t deal with our misalignments until something hurts so bad that it interferes with our life.
So how do you fix this? This man has to become aware of how he sits on his right butt and lifts his left hip. This crucial awareness can only happen by him becoming aware of sensations — the sensation of pressure on one butt but not the other, sensations of tension where it hurts, sensations of release.
In order to become aware he has to change how he sits. He has to learn the Balance guidelines for sitting and begin to feel sensations as they arise. His sensations tell him where to be aware and from that awareness he can be guided into comfort.
What’s so great is that walking like this is totally fixable. The answer is to learn what to do and become aware of your sensations. It’s a trip, a healing trip, available to everyone.
