Can you walk more slowly?
You’re walking along. You find yourself moving faster and faster. How are you going to get your legs to keep up?
Not a problem you’ve ever come across?
Actually you have. When you trip up, isn’t that exactly what happens? You find yourself moving faster and faster. Until, either you manage to catch yourself…
or you have a close encounter with the pavement.
Odd, isn’t?
You’ve no problem going fast when you trip
When you trip, your problem becomes: “How do I stop?”
“How do I stop!” 
Wouldn’t that be a good problem to have?
All you’d then need is to learn where the brakes were.
Well you can. You can learn how to walk fast without effort — and without fear of falling.
How?
There’s a clue in what happens when you trip. While you’re in balance, your problem is getting going. But when you lose your balance your problem is no longer getting going: it’s slowing down.
So, to fly along…
You need to be always out of balance
Permanently out of balance!
Yes, but take it steady. It’s no good being so out of balance your legs can’t keep up.
How do you take it steady?
Throw balance to the four winds
… and discover poise. Poise is what happens when you stop trying to hold yourself in balance.
Here’s how you discover poise:–
- Before you can hope to walk with poise, you must be able to stand poised.
- To stand poised, you need a free neck.
- To walk with poise you also need steady hips — not a wobbly gatepost.
I’ve dealt with the first and second points in other articles. You can find links to those articles at the end of this article, so let’s move on to the third point: the wobbly gatepost.
The wobbly gatepost
A farm gate with a wobbly gatepost just doesn’t swing easily. To move the gate, you first have to lift it off the ground, then you have to carry it over to the open position.
Your legs don’t swing easily either. They’re like the farm gate on it’s wobbly gate-post. Here’s what you probably do to walk. First you swing your hips forwards. Then you sway over onto your standing leg to make room to lift your foot off the ground.
A swinging gate needs a firm, steady post
Freely swinging legs need firm, steady hips to swing from.
If your hips would just stay steady, you could simply fall forwards and let your knee bend. As your whole body started falling forwards, your knee would bend automatically. Your thigh would swing forward, pendulum-like, from your steady hips. Your foot, following your knee, would peel itself off the ground: heel first, then the ball of your foot and finally your big toe.
When your big toe was off the ground, your lower leg would also swing forward from your knee, also pendulum-like. Your foot, being attached to the end of that second pendulum, would follow, willy-nilly, and land right underneath your forwards-toppling body, neatly catching it.
So you’d never actually fall at all. You’d topple forwards and forwards and forwards again without ever falling. Is that a neat way to walk or what?
But your hips are like the wobbly gatepost
Your body, from head/neck joint to hip joint, should be acting as one solid lever. It isn’t. Instead, your back is bending at the waist swinging your hips backwards and forwards with each movement of your leg. Almost everybody’s hips do that and you can’t realise what hard work it is until you’ve stopped doing it.
With such wobbly hips, no wonder your leg doesn’t swing easily. No wonder you daren’t trust it to swing forwards of its own accord and catch you as you fall. No wonder you daren’t let yourself topple forwards.
No wonder you never need to use the brakes — unless you trip. That’s why walking more slowly is no problem. For you, the problem is not slowing down, it’s keeping going.
Summary
Walking fast becomes easy if you let yourself fall forwards — so long as you also have brakes. To acquire brakes you need to learn poise. Poise is what enables you to fall in a controlled way.
Walking poise requires:–
- standing poise
- a free neck
- steady hips — not a wobbly gatepost. Steady hips allow your legs to swing freely and keep up with your toppling body.
Do you want to be able to fly along and not have any close encounters with the pavement?
Then learn poise.
References for those first and second points
- Standing poised: “Balance or poise: would you rather be stiff as a statue or poised like a trapeze artist?”
- A free neck: “Poised for action: how a free neck makes you more alert”.
This article is included under the following categories:‒
Personal Coaching by Philip Pawley
If you want to get the best kind of help, come to me for an introductory lesson in Liverpool.
If you’re too far away, then the next best thing is to get personal lessons and advice from me online at Repoise.com, my on-line school. (Both far-away and local pupils use Repoise).
In more detail:–
If you’re in Liverpool (or can get to Liverpool)
- There’s nothing better than individual lessons. My practice is at 37 Hope Street, Liverpool L1. Ring me on 0151 708 6172 to book an initial consultation and first lesson. (Leave your number so I can get back to you).
-
If you’re short of funds, you can still have first class training from me — though it will require a little more work on your part.
The thing to do is have an individual, in-person lesson just once a month. That will entitle you to also get regular on-line lessons from me through Repoise. That way, you have the best of both worlds: in-person lessons and very regular, even daily, on-line Personal Coaching by Philip Pawley from me. That’s a real bargain because Repoise costs the equivalent of three lessons a year to everyone else.
Ring me on 0151 708 6172 if you want to arrange this.
- I occasionally run group lessons. If you’re interested in these, go here for details.
If you’re further away and can’t get to Liverpool
- There’s still nothing better than individual lessons. Here’s where you can find a teacher near you in the UK or elsewhere
- I suggest you also get direct day-to-day guidance from me by joining Repoise.
If you’re having plain Alexander Technique lessons from someone else, you still need to discover the Smiling Back Method of the Alexander Technique. You’ll get a lot more out of your lessons when you do.
37 Hope Street, Liverpool, Merseyside L1 9EA, England
Telephone: +44 151 708 6172 Mobile: +44 7872 905 154
Copyright © 2007-2012 Philip Pawley
SmilingBackMethod.com
