In Step
-- Fitness For
Body, Mind, and Spiritby 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" ©1998, by
Carolyn Scott Kortge. Reprinted with
permission of HarperSanFrancisco, an imprint
of HarperCollins, Inc.
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