Click on NOTE CATEGORIES to browse by topic, read through the entire archives, or type a topic in the search box.What did Katy do for her 46th birthday? She decided to add a mega-dose of vitamin community and walk with forty-six different people over the week of her birthday.
Katy loves walking in groups. Both small and large groups, because she gets to know people. There are very few interruptions during a long walk and fewer transitions. You’re on a walk, all day, and there’s time for everyone to get their stories out and to share some of their personal point of view. In this episode, Katy is sharing a bit of what some of her walking partners had to say about the importance of walking or moving outside has for them, personally.
OVERVIEW
(time codes are approximate)
00:04:40 - Conversations – (Jump to section)
00:12:30 - Musical Instruments make great chairs - (Jump to section)
00:17:14 - A Hike is Walking Where You Can Go Pee - (Jump to section)
00:33:30 - Katy's words for 2022 – (Jump to section)
LINKS AND RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THE SHOW
Katy’s blog post about the 30 or actually 47 mile walk for her birthday
Podcast #120 on Katy’s 40th birthday walk
Katy’s article at Experiencing Life Magazine
Personal Mission Statement Podcast #63
PODCAST TRANSCRIPT
(Music)
This is the Move Your DNA podcast, a show where movement science meets your everyday life. I’m Katy Bowman - biomechanist, author, and birthday girl. All bodies are welcome here. Let’s get moving.
(Music Fade)
As many of you know, I am a long-distance walker. This means that I will fit anywhere between 20 and 40 miles into a single day. I am also a big fan of celebrating milestones on foot. So, for example, our kids have always walked their years in miles to celebrate their trip around the sun - a tradition started by me liking to do something similar.
So, I started doing on-foot birthday parties - or really I don't know if you can call them a party because a lot of times it's just me walking by myself, to mark the end of my 30s. This one year I just came up with this idea to walk 39 miles as I stepped into being 40 years old. That walk turned out to be more like a 47-mile walk - which was totally unplanned. You can read about that in a blog post I wrote a few years ago. I will put that in the show notes. And then the next year I walked 41 miles through my rural community to see all the local farmers and producers - what they were creating in my own back yard, so to speak. And I wrote an article about that walk and what I learned on that walk for Experience Life magazine. I will also link to that piece in the show notes. There are lots of beautiful images, thanks to a photographer who joined in now and then during that walk. For my 44th birthday, I did something a little bit different. I walked 10 miles a day, for 44 consecutive days and I learned so many things. You can go back to listen to Episode 120 if you want to hear more on that. I mean that was really, really - it was very insightful. I learned a lot about, I would say, the mechanics of walking an extended distance. Even though 10 miles isn't so far, to do 10 miles every single day for a month - it's much different than walking 1 20 or even 1 40 mile walk in a single day. So that's really interesting for those of you who really like biomechanics and alignment and gait. You'll want to go listen to that episode.
So, what to do for my 46th birthday? I thought on it and I decided that this year I would add a mega-dose of vitamin community. Right? I feel like I've definitely deflected my own vitamin community over the last couple of years. So that seemed right to me. I wanted to walk with forty-six different people over the week of my birthday which, interestingly enough, is March Fourth. You get it? Both my birth date and my greatest joy: March fourth. Marching forth. You see? You with me?
So, I love walking in groups, both small and large, because you get to know people. There are very few interruptions during a long walk. That's one of the reasons that I do these long walks. And I'm doing an entire book about long-distance walking. But the fact that walking creates an extended period of time with almost no transitions. Transitions, I'm realizing, when we're talking about overload and attention-grabbers, transitions is another way of looking at that phenomenon. So when you're walking, you’re just on a walk. It's what you're doing. And we rarely get to be doing "a thing" for a long period of time. And what happens to your mind and your body when you are granted this transition-free period of time is quite magical. But when you're doing it with other people, the extension of that is there's time for everyone you're with to get their stories out - to share some of their personal points of view. So today, I’m going to share with you what I recorded, walking with this community of people that I really love and cherish as they were walking and moving outside with me. I asked them what the importance was, as far as walking or moving outside for them had been personally.
So, join us if you can, on the move in some way if you can, as you have a listen to what some of these folks had to say.
WALKER #1: Ooooh. My favorite walk of all time.
KATY: You got one?
WALKER #1: Well for sheer oddity it was the walk from the Milan airport to my hotel in the middle of the night.
KATY: (laughs)
WALKER #1: But I did a 6 mile barefoot, after the rain, mud hike.
KATY: Yeah, squishy?
WALKER #1: Up in the hills of Ventura. It was really nice. And I went off trail a lot and the ground was very forgiving. I got a few cuts on my feet, but not bad. We walked a lot as kids, to and from school, to and from the candy store.
KATY: All the important places kids go.
WALKER #1: And sometimes we walked because our bikes had flats or some of the other kids didn't have bikes so we wanted to all be together. And we walked a lot on the beach because I lived at the beach. Well for me now, walking is primarily transportation. And hiking would be when I have, uh, when I want to get away from civilization.
KATY: Mm-hmm.
WALKER #1: As best I can in Ventura. When I walk with others I walk usually more slowly and therefore I can focus on different parts of my gait than I normally do. Because when I walk by myself I'm normally kind of fast-paced or doing something odd that some people might consider mildly dangerous.
KATY: Because you like to walk the shortest - like crossing railroad tracks and jumping fences.
WALKER #1: Jumping fences.
KATY: Right, right.
WALKER #1: All that stuff. Jumping on walls. Jumping off walls. You know, swinging on a tree limb if it happens to be handy. It's just - it makes everything flow much better. It's a good way for me to unwind from stress. And it's a good way for me to think through my problems - whether they're emotional/mental stuff or if I have business decisions I have to make. It's just a way to clear my head.
KATY: Mm-hmm. Cool.
WALKER #2: Well so this was Central Park in New York City where I lived as a girl when I was about 7 years old, we had an apartment off park avenue. It was my mother's fourth husband - he had a very nice place. And we, my sister, who is 10 years older than I, so 17 and 7 in New York, she'd walk me over to Central Park and we would do all the things, you know, the boat pond and play on the Alice in Wonderland sculpture and watch the people playing guitars. It was a beautiful scene. And it just felt like the walk through the park with different ages, we could get lost. It was like the wilderness. And I had this sense of it as just this sort of unending mighty space. And, we left New York when I was a teenager, and I hadn't gone back until my early 20s when I took my then-boyfriend, now husband, Keith, back to New York and I said, "you know, you should see this part of me." So we went back. And I hadn't been back in 10 years and he and I had met working in a national park so we had this shared sense of vast spaces. And so I set him up for Central Park. It was like, "Ok, we're going to Central Park" like we're going to Yosemite. We could have gone to Central Park and walked across it in 7 minutes.
KATY: Right.
WALKER #2: I go, "Wait a minute." I couldn't even believe that the park had boundaries.
KATY: Wow.
WALKER #2: My sense of it as a child was that it had no edges.
KATY: Right.
WALKER #2: So it was very startling and I don't know if my body felt ... my body felt weird. I'll just say my understanding of how I held space as a child was really revealed.
KATY: Yeah.
WALKER #3: My dad and step-mom walked almost every night after dinner and we would sneak behind them and try and hide and then dart across and then you "oh" and then I'm sure they saw us all the time but they played along. And we as siblings, we walked, we used to walk in the storm drains. We'd take kerosene-soaked rags and wrapped them around sticks and climb down into the storm drains and walk for miles down to the ...
KATY: Really?
WALKER #3: Oh yeah. And then we'd get crazy and turn the lights out and then just try to walk in the "complete and utter hand in front of your face can't see a thing" darkness.
KATY: You have been the same for 70 years. Wow.
WALKER #3: Yeah. I am what I am, says Popeye the Sailor Man!
KATY: Just true!
KATY: All right long legs. That was a good step.
WALKER #4: I was just thinking of why it's hard to think of something to say about walking and just thinking of my own childhood that if you think of like a... you think of like wheat or in another culture, rice. The staple food that comprises most of the calories, for example, but wheat is an easy one. When I think of how walking was when I was a kid, that it was not really like a positive or a negative. It was not something I didn't want to do or did want to do. But it was always kind of like wheat, whether you want to turn it into cake or bread or whatever else.
KATY: Just an ingredient?
WALKER #4: Not only an ingredient but almost like a canvas of like, I can remember the two times that my dad took us for a walk when we were little kids and we went to the A&P and Kit Kats and I remember it as the times that my dad took us for a walk. And on Thanksgiving, he would drive us out to a place where we would take a walk because my mom told him to get the heck out of the house with all of the children with him. But I feel like it's - in the wheat example it's just kind of how I feel about it. It's like you can decorate it however you want, like it's going to be good. It's gonna take up a bunch of time. And you can decorate it in so many ways. Like then my mom tells a story of me in kindergarten wanting to walk by myself home from kindergarten and she let me do it but she followed at a distance without me knowing that she was there at a distance. And I don't have, in all my memories of walking, I don't have any memory of any emotion around walking itself, or going for a walk. I remember when I developed the autonomy to go for a walk around the block that we lived in suburban Los Angeles, again, it was just the independence and the thing to do if I was bored. And knowing all the cats and the dogs along the way that I would run into and enjoyed. It was just the walking was always just the vehicle for something else. And that something else was always good. Sometimes it was spectacularly good. But usually, it was just good.
WALKER #5: I have a distinct memory of 5th or 6th grade. David Nevers and I walked home together and I had started playing the french horn. We walked a little bit, put the horn down, the case down, to sit on it to rest and walk a little bit more. And then he played the trombone. And I was so envious.
KATY: Because he had a bigger chair?
WALKER #5: No because his case was a lot lighter than mine.
KATY: Oh!
WALKER #5: And I remember being in college and going out somewhere in our little town in my car, and there's Miss Genevieve with her cane in one hand, and a bag full of groceries in the other. And I'm like, "Miss Genevieve? You need a ride?" And she goes, "No, I'm fine. I enjoy walking." Damn. That's what I wanna be like when I grow up. She was bad-ass.
KATY: That's great.
WALKER #6: Once I got into middle school I started walking more just to hang out with friends, go places, and I didn't drive until I was 18.
KATY: OK.
WALKER #6: So, I walked a lot like 16, 17.
KATY: Right.
WALKER #6: just to go hang out and do things
KATY: Because you didn't drive.
WALKER #6: And I lived in Ojai, so very walkable town.
KATY: Yeah.
WALKER #6: Not even just southern California. Very small, very walkable.
KATY: Oh right.
WALKER #6: Just one main avenue. I lived in town. So I got a good little foundation, well, maybe first story, not so much foundation.
KATY: Yeah.
WALKER #6: But I had a good first story of walking in my late teens. It was a couple of miles, at least, a day.
KATY: Yeah. Way more than the average right now. Fav walks?
WALKER #6: Totally. I've done a lot of good walks. Best walks were probably in Europe.
KATY: Oh!
WALKER #6: I mean just walking around, like probably about 20 miles a day but it's all cafes and bars and parks, beautiful buildings and so that was awesome. Probably the most amazing walks. But my favorite walk with a person, because those were all by myself, would probably be the birthday walk we did for you a couple years ago when it was just me and you who walked out to Finnriver.
KATY: That was such a long walk.
WALKER #6: We just kind of charged through it the whole way. I just remember eating while I was walking because I didn't think we had enough time to dilly dally.
KATY: We never stopped.
WALKER #6: It was just like, charge!
KATY: I also remember being scared of the dogs.
WALKER #6: Yes.
KATY: This was before I had a dog.
WALKER #6: Yeah Yeah Yeah
KATY: I didn't speak dog back then, but you did.
WALKER #6: Uh-huh.
KATY: And we are walking in rural country, country road.
WALKER #6: Yep.
KATY: And I thought, being attack-minded, and you're like, "no no". It gave me a sense of "oh this is why people are afraid of walking."
WALKER #6: Oh yeah.
KATY: If you do not speak dog, to walk where you are going to encounter things that you don't know is scary. I had you to kind of walk me through it and then, of course, having a dog, I could better discern risk.
WALKER #6: Mm-hmm.
KATY: So that's something else I remember about that day.
WALKER #7: Back in right before the pandemic back in August of 2019 some friends invited me on a backpacking trip for six days. And in 2017 I had a spinal injury and walking was very painful. But I was slowly healing. I thought, "ok, I'll give it a try." But I had all my exit routes planned out in case it didn't work out. So my favorite walk was the next to the last day when two of us walked the spine of the Goat Rocks Wilderness and then walked into camp - did an 11-mile day. And the next morning we got up early and hiked uphill one mile, a little over a mile to a spot where there's a fantastic view of Mount Rainier. And just the feeling at the end of that trail, the end of that walk, like "holy crap, I did this. And my body can still do this." And it's something that I'll never take for granted again.
KATY: How many walks do you think we've taken in your whole life.
WALKER #8: A lot.
KATY: (laughs)
WALKER #8: A LOT.
KATY: (laughs) I remember having a conversation with you when you were like four about you defined a hike as the location...
WALKER #8: The hike was in the forest and it's hard and it's long.
KATY: That's what a hike is?
WALKER #8: Yeah, otherwise it's a walk.
KATY: And so what's a walk then? By nature, a walk would be not in a forest?
WALKER #8: No.
KATY: Easy? And short?
WALKER #8: Well, I guess. Well yes, I guess it could be a really short one in the forest. Just a really short one.
KATY: I feel like we have done longer, what you would call walks, and shorter hikes.
WALKER #8: Hmm.
KATY: What's the longest walk you've been on?
WALKER #8: One mile is the longest a walk can be then it's a hike.
KATY: Oh, wait a minute. So even...
WALKER #8: So walks are a portion of a hike.
KATY: A walk is a portion of a hike. I had heard this definition that a hike is just walking where you could pee.
WALKER #8: Giggles. Well, you can pee anywhere.
KATY: Well maybe where you're allowed to pee without getting arrested.
WALKER #9: I love different walks for different reasons.
KATY: Ok, all right.
WALKER #9: Like, ugh, ok, so there was a really poignant that we took in Costa Rica and that was just the best because it was way more of a rich dialog with nature that time.
KATY: Mm-hmm.
WALKER #9: Ever just have those walks where you feel like there's this deeper connection so everything is kind of speaking to you and so it was very beautiful that way. But then some of my favorite walks are also just in general where for me I had to work my way up from a handicap, like parking sticker, not knowing if I was going to stay out of a wheelchair permanently.
KATY: Huh.
WALKER #9: Work to not get into a wheelchair.
KATY: So you started in a wheelchair?
WALKER #9: I wasn't in a wheelchair. I was fighting not to land there. Because it was excruciating pain and I couldn't properly move. And I didn't know if I was going to be able to... we just didn't know. There were a lot of unknowns. So my favorite walks, I think, in general, other than those mystical ones where I just mentioned those ones, the other ones are the ones where I know I went further and I didn't hit pain.
KATY: Oh. That's a good feeling?
WALKER #9: Yeah.
KATY: So every walk is sort of like a small triumph.
WALKER #9: It is. Yeah.
WALKER #10: The time I thought I was getting eaten by a cougar and it turned out to be deer. It was my first solo backpacking trip and I was psyching myself out. Anyway, there was a trail and there was a cabin about 5 miles in or whatever (I couldn't remember what it was) and it was early spring, maybe a little later. And I was going, psyching myself out. I just thought I was going to see a cougar. And that was it. I thought it was a cougar and I freaked out and it was just a deer. And I laughed. It was just... of course it was fine. Not a cougar or a bear. I was gonna die on that trail but it was fine. I saw one other camper - a woman. I was as free from danger as I could have been but I was freaked out the whole time. Probably the most memorable.
KATY: I can relate to that!
WALKER #10: Oh no, the other one was where I was hiking in New Zealand. I was also solo backpacking but now this was a little bit later. And I had just watched this scary movie, 2012 or something like that, where everybody turns into a zombie because they've been... have you seen this movie?
KATY: NO!
WALKER #10: It's so bad. It's got Will Smith. Everyone gets rabies and they all turn into these zombies. But I'm in the middle of the forest and I thought I was lost and I just started freaking out because I felt like all these zombie people... I was freaking myself out there were all these zombie people everywhere. And I freaked out so bad, it was totally in my head. And I had to go back. I had to hike back five extra miles because I was so freaked out.
KATY: Fear is real!
WALKER #10: Yeah.
KATY: It's totally real.
WALKER #11: But I think the most formative walk that served an important purpose and place in my life when I was, it must have been in like middle school. I had two friends who lived on my street and we would go on walks together in our neighborhood - and it was a suburban neighborhood - so a big loop. And lots of streets going up and down but it was all contained. And we would walk as slow as we could, not on purpose, but that was our escape from home...
KATY: Right.
WALKER #11: ...and our parents. It was our independence. This is our time together. And it drove my mom crazy. But because she wants me to get exercise.
KATY: Right. Right.
WALKER #11; She's like, "Can't you walk a little faster. Get your heart rate up." (laughs)
KATY: (laughs) You're missing the point.
WALKER #11: Right. Yeah. I have never studied child development and stuff but what was, what I see looking back at that was that we were just in this transitional time in our lives where we were filling the neighborhood with stories from our imagination. Like, there was the dead man's house and the alcoholic's house. "Those people are always sitting at their table drinking." (laughter) And "This place is all overgrown and no one's ever there so there must be a dead person there." (laughter)
KATY: Making sense of what was going on.
WALKER #11: Right. Yeah. And also taking that step towards independence and really just reveling in that.
KATY: Yeah.
KATY: So, how far did you walk today already.
WALKER #12: I don't know. Like three-ish, three and a half miles maybe.
KATY: At school?
WALKER #12: No three miles at school probably.
KATY: Why did you have to walk at school?
WALKER #12: Because it was hike day. Wednesday is hike day for my school.
KATY: How do you feel about hike day in general.
WALKER #12: I mean, it's meh because sometimes we have marine debris hikes where we walk 4 miles on the spit, but today was not. That's only one day a month. So, I mean, it's ok. But I like it because we don't have math or writing or anything.
KATY: So it's a day of move.
WALKER #12: Yeah.
WALKER #13: Being in the car everything was in your car. And unless you were going for a hike, the roads where I grew up were not safe really to walk or friendly to walk.
KATY: And this is in Chicago?
WALKER #13: Well I grew up really close to the inner city and then at 13 we moved out to the right where the country and the suburbs kind of blend into each other.
KATY: In Illinois?
WALKER #13: Yes. I remember being in the car seat and when I'd see somebody walking, I didn't see it a lot, and I would feel bad for them. Do you remember that? Was that a thing for you?
KATY: Well no because I grew up in a very rural place where everyone walked. And I grew up in a place where it was many migrant workers...
WALKER #13: OK.
KATY: ..field work. And so I would walk to school with also a lot of people walking to work, walking everywhere. So no. But I do think - when kids are walking to school, but you wouldn't see a grown-up who had a car not working. So I do think that there is sort of a stigma associated with it. If you're walking, it's because you don't have a car.
WALKER #13: Right.
KATY: And I think that that's a pervasive issue and why a lot of people don't walk, without even realizing it.
WALKER #13: And it feeds it almost.
KATY: Sure. Totally.
WALKER #13: Because then you don't ever get any... if more people were in that pattern, things would shift with how you occupy space on the road, or...so it's just very interesting. And recently I had the thought I no longer see people and think that way.
KATY: Yeah.
WALKER #13: You know but it was just a really interesting thought.
KATY: Because you know, walkers maybe, sometimes it's about "oh there's people who choose to walk" versus having your whole reality be the only people who walk don't have cars. That is part of the work that I'm doing. Trying to get more people walking. Because what it does is it changes, it destigmatizes walking, but then it also makes it safer because sort of we're concerned about the safety of ourselves.
WALKER #13: The activity. Yeah.
KATY: What other types of walking?
WALKER #14: I mean I guess like cuz you have to and for just because you want to. Oh... so like depending on the length, I had different opinions.
KATY: What's your best length?
WALKER #13: I don't know, like a short walk. Like maybe half of what we did earlier.
KATY: OK.
WALKER #13: Um...
KATY: You mean what you did at school today or what we did here today?
WALKER #13: What we just did here a couple of minutes ago.
KATY: So like a half-mile, like 20 minutes. And then what's the difference - how do you feel when there's a walk because you want to versus a walk because you have to?
WALKER #13: I guess it's just like when I want to, I want to.
KATY: Yeah.
WALKER #13: I guess a lot of the time when I'm hiking when I ... or when I'm going on a walk when I want to, I'll be actually doing stuff. Because most of the time when I'm going on walks when I want to, it's like not at school. So there's not a ton of rules that keep me from doing all this and that.
KATY: Is it like, um, when you're walking at school you're not allowed to jump or climb trees or...
WALKER #13: We're not allowed to run.
KATY: You're not allowed to run on walks.
(background: WHAT? That's stupid.)
WALKER #13: Most of the time I'll have a lot more fun on a walk when I want to because most of the time, maybe not on the trail.
KATY: Right.
WALKER #13: Like I'll just be going and exploring wherever. Pretty much the only thing I do on a school hike is I talk with my friends and that gets kind of boring.
KATY: Ok, thinking about that. We call it a walk or a hike. I wonder if there's a better word for it. Because what I hear you say is just to take one step after another step sort of at the same pace in a line is not enjoyable.
WALKER #13: I mean it could be.
KATY: It could be.
WALKER #13: If that's something that you want to spend your time doing.
KATY: Right. But you want to, I know you, leap, climb, play, stop, cover, throw, sprint. You want to have these, almost like games. What do you call it when you have games that move on foot over a long period of time?
WALKER #13: Um...
KATY: What is that word?
WALKER #13: I don't know but I could come up with more of what I'm doing.
KATY: What is the longest walk you've ever taken.
WALKER #14: Up a mountain.
KATY: Up a mountain?
WALKER #14: Mm-hmm.
WALKER #15: What mountain?
WALKER #14: Mount Townsend
KATY: How far was it.
WALKER #14: All the way up to the top.
KATY: You went all the way to the top?
WALKER #15: How many miles is it?
WALKER #14: I don't know.
KATY: All the way.
WALKER #14: Like, 7 or 8.
KATY: And how old are you?
WALKER #15: According to my friends at school, Mount Townsend is 4 miles but really steep.
KATY: So how long have you been walking in the sense of how many years have you been walking?
WALKER #16: What does that mean?
KATY: Did you come out ready to walk?
WALKER #16: Come out from where?
KATY: Were you born ready to walk?
WALKER #16: Mmm. Yes.
KATY: Oh.
WALKER #16: I was, like, crawling.
KATY: Crawling is like preparing to walk.
KATY: For you what's the difference between a walk and a hike.
WALKER #17: A walk is this, well maybe not necessarily this, because this isn't ... You're walking. You're walking to walk but you're also having conversation. You're also - it's filling way more needs than walking.
KATY: Right. So you can never go on a walk by yourself unless you need isolation.
WALKER #17: No no, sure. You can have conversation with yourself. No, it's a walk.
KATY: Perfect.
WALKER #17: It's to walk but not only walk it's to have time for yourself.
KATY: Ok.
WALKER #17: But then there's also walking on a hike. But I consider that hiking. If we go to Gray Wolf Trail or Second Beach, that's a hike, that's not a walk necessarily. The purpose is more to be at the place. Maybe.
KATY: I love it.
WALKER #17: A hike would be at a place and a walk is for the purpose of walking for many different reasons that walking entails. But it's not about where you're going.
KATY: It can happen anywhere but you can't hike anywhere.
WALKER #17: No.
KATY: The hike is for the location.
WALKER #17: Sure.
KATY: Where that's the main benefit of it.
WALKER #17: Yeah.
WALKER #18: Where I grew up my mom drove us everywhere. I didn't walk anywhere because we lived way out in the suburbs in the desert. It was hot. But I roamed my neighborhood like crazy and I roamed every day for hours. But she would just say I had to be home before dark.
WALKER #19: So funny because when my kids were younger they were like, "Can you give me a ride?" "No. You can walk." I never said, "Oh in my day I walked..." I never said that. It was, "No, I'm busy. Go walk if you want to go."
WALKER #20: We just walked everywhere. We walked to the swimming pool, we walked to the store, we walked everywhere. We just never stopped walking. I don't feel good unless I'm walking.
KATY: Yeah. I feel the same way.
WALKER #20: Yeah. Yeah.
WALKER #21: I used to walk to school and when I wanted to leave school I would walk home from school.
KATY: Like it doesn't matter if it was over or not?
WALKER #21: It didn't matter if it was over. In Belgium, I was a little girl and I would stop at the candy shop on the way back and walking, yeah, so freeing and connecting with that time in between and taking in the world. Just being mindful in that action. It was always just, yeah, my favorite thing to do was walking.
KATY: Yeah. I'm right there with ya!
WALKER #22: I like how you said that, you know, what is your definition of walking? Because what came to mind first, beyond a memory, it's like my mind's grasping for a specific memory... "what one's the best? It's gotta be the coolest." But I just think of John Muir talking about sauntering and just santé, which is like the French...
WALKER #21: health
WALKER #22: Yeah. And it's like the way in which you walk the mindset you hold while you walk is it a chore or is it a, you know, exploration? I suppose.
WALKER #23: I would have to say out my front door down along Jamestown road, along the beach, and it is my favorite because I didn't ever even think that I loved walking until we had Iris. And I was so stuck in my house with an infant. And I would have different people come and walk that road with me. My dad in particular. And it's been such a bonding experience to get to walk and talk with loved ones. And I still just breathe it in every time I walk that little stretch.
KATY: That's great. Walk out your front door - it's a gift. To have a good walk right out your front door is great.
WALKER #24: It really makes me think of my Nana because she fell in her early 90s and broke her hip. And everyone thought ok, well...she's done.
KATY: Sure.
WALKER #24: But they told her if she walked every day then she would just continue to get better and she lived until she was 98. She would go into her downstairs garage when the weather was bad with her walker and do laps. And she was very dedicated to it. So I guess I thought maybe I'll start walking when I'm 90.
KATY: Like I have so many years.
WALKER #24: (laughter) Walk and things we're doing when I'm 90.
KATY: Ok. We are now back, in the post-walk time and I have to just say this: I didn’t do my annual end-of-year recap the last couple of years for probably obvious reasons. The last couple of years have been stressful and I let some things go to deal with that. And the end of the year recap was one of them. But what I managed to do every year was to come up with either a keyword, or handful of keywords, or a slogan that I use to align my behaviors to overall. You can read more on why and how to create these “personal mission statements” in my book Movement Matters. You can also listen to that on audiobook. Or you can listen to the podcast episode I did on personal mission statements, way back. This would be episode number 63.
But my collection of words in 2022 is this: do real things, with real people, outside. And I think I nailed it this year. And I’m hoping that this inspires you to celebrate, something, anything! It doesn't have to be a birthday. It can be Tuesday. It can be that you're alive. You know, just pick something and celebrate it a bit more dynamically this year.
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All right. Keep moving, friends. You are doing great.
Voiceover: Hi my name is Michele from Rochester, Minnesota. This has been Move Your DNA with Katy Bowman, a podcast about movement. Hopefully, you find the general information in this podcast informative and helpful but it is not intended to replace medical advice and should not be used as such. Our theme music was performed by Dan MacCormack. This podcast is produced by Brock Armstrong. And the transcripts are done by Annette Yen.
Find out more about Katy, her books, and her movement programs at NutritiousMovement.com.
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