Welcome To Natural Running!

An everyday thing – everybody routinely does it.  Before you go out into the street – you put your shoes on.  It's a choice to do this really.  For most it is just habit – not a consciously made decision but something - well you just do.  The force of habit is an apt expression. Exactly how strong a force it only becomes apparent when you make a choice, a decision not to do the normal, usual, routine, obvious, ‘whateverybodydoes’ thing. Should you go round the corner barefoot and bump into a bunch of 15-16 year old adolescent youths, then you'd really feel the force of habit and as you feel the full force, try to remember that you've not done something but simply chosen not to do something.

The force of habit is something to take seriously but why would you ever choose to make this decision to walk or run down the street with nothing on your feet.  Perhaps the confrontation with convention is interesting enough in itself. But there's more to be revealed – much more. It is incredibly worthwhile to penetrate through the layers of habit.  The pretty nigh universal habit of shoe wearing offers an interesting challenge. For most of our evolutionary story it wasn't a choice – we walked and ran without shoes.  How, what did it look like, feel like, sound like?  As such possibilities open up the effects of habitual shoe-wearing become clear. And that insight might guide the conscious choice as to what we put on our feet.

I'm always trying to frame an understanding of the force of habit – to understand the confrontations and challenges it poses.  Here's one I find useful:

The muscle community of your body comprises billions of fibres.  Think of these as ears of corn waving in the breeze.  Through the cornfield winds a well-worn track.  The stalks/fibres in the middle of the track are well worn – habitually engaged, virtually all the time even at rest.  The ones at the side are less so.  The rest of the waving field really doesn't get used.  The force of habit keeps us rattling up and down the well-used track.  Only when you get off track do you really appreciate the full force of habit.  While we are on the track its like sleep-walking.  We don't have a word for sleep-running but we should do.

Making something habitual and casual, such as putting on shoes to go out into a choice is a pointed example of choosing not to do the familiar, usual.   Why? To discover more of 'the field', to reveal the limitations and restrictions of habit you may never have realised.  Just imaging how it might be if all the fibres/stalks became a little-bit involved evenly sharing the load and effort over the whole field. This would come close to the state Zen Masters call 'one-pointedness'.  This state of aware, totally focussed presence is a high flown aspiration but it begins at the edges of the well-worn track, with a tussle with the force of habit.

Cast off shoes only to do the usual sleep-running mechanical actions and in a very short period of time you're back in your shoes and in the middle of the well-beaten track, the joyless trudge of mechanical sleep-running. To triumph over the force of habit things have to change – become more awake – more responsive.

Leo was rising 5 years old when his Mum reluctantly brought him to the Natural Running workshop due to a let-down with baby sitting arrangements.  We thought he'd be a nuisance.  He turned out to be a complete star.  A running exploration was set-up that involved everybody (Leo included) running around in circle. When I clapped my hands everyone was to go as fast as they could.  Everyone, except Leo locked-up into habit and shortened at the hand-clap.  But the child is not yet a sleep- runner.  At the clap of the hands he opens up into more of 'the cornfield', pouring himself into an effortless speed with a playful free energy and elan.  The child here is the teacher of the man.  What Leo shows us is our birthright – the freedom and responsiveness that has secured our survival up to the present mechanical (sleep-walking) age.