A Talk with Michael J. Gelb and Bruce Fertman, authors of “Walking Well: A New Approach for Comfort, Vitality, and Inspiration in Every Step”
Michael J. Gelb is a pioneer in the fields of creative thinking, executive coaching, and innovative leadership. He is a fifth-degree black belt in aikido and a gifted teacher of tai chi and the Alexander Technique. He is also a professional juggler who performed with the Rolling Stones. He is the author of seventeen books — including the international bestseller How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci — which have been translated into 25 languages and sold more than one million copies. More information at MichaelGelb.com and WalkingWell.com.
Bruce Fertman brings sixty years of study as a movement artist and educator to his work, having trained in gymnastics, modern dance, ballet, contact improvisation, the Alexander Technique, tai chi chuan, aikido, chanoyu (Japanese tea ceremony), Argentine tango, and kyudo (Zen archery). For the past thirty years Fertman has taught in Europe, Asia, and the Americas helping people experience the interconnectedness of physical and spiritual life. More information at GraceOfSense.com and WalkingWell.com.
- What do you find unique about your method of walking?
Our method is based upon a simple, anatomically logical sequence of instructions that help readers discover what it means to walk naturally. If followed, step by step, walking becomes more comfortable and enjoyable. It is easy and fun.
We guide people how to use less effort in a way that generates more power. Our readers discover there are other sources of power besides muscular effort: they learn to use the mind and imagination, in coordination with the ground and gravity, to generate rhythm and ease in every step. (continued)
- How do you get people more comfortable while walking?
Many of us have been taught the “right” way to walk, and there’s almost always something artificial about it. When we release the artificial and move naturally, we discover more comfort
All animals, other than humans do not know what they look like nor do they care. They don’t have body-image issues. Preoccupation with how we look and how we think about our bodies can create profound discomfort and impede freedom of motion. We help people question their thinking about their bodies and arrive at a more constructive way to think about themselves.
- How do you generate vitality? Where does vitality come from?
Vitality comes from nature. Everyone knows that walking in a natural setting generates more energy and good feelings. But what if you could learn to walk naturally wherever you go? How much energy might you generate and save if you learned to avoid interference with your natural ease of movement? We also have an important chapter about optimizing your breathing in coordination with every step. This is an important secret of generating vitality.
- You teach a lot through animal imagery. Why do you do that?
It’s nothing new for movement artists and educators. We do it because it works and it’s fun.
Other animals are a lot better than we are at a lot of things. We can learn from watching and imitating them.
- You talk about the ground a lot and our relation to it. Why is this so important?
We cannot take one step without the ground. It’s impossible. Walking is not an action; it is an interaction. We don’t act; we interact. That is all we do.
So, realistically, you cannot teach a person how to walk well without teaching them about the ground and how to interact with it.
Walking initiates between your back foot and the ground. That is what propels you forward. The first thing you need to understand is your own foot, and the ground, and what is going on between them, how they are interacting. And that is where we begin.
But the ground is much more important than that, for many reasons. The ground is the earth and that is where we live. We are earthlings. How do you get a person to feel this, to really feel this, viscerally, that they live on, in, and under the “Great Mother”? Teaching people how to feel the earth under their feet is a beginning, to realize that they cannot live or take one step without her. You never walk alone. When you experience this your life will change for the better. Every step will generate a sense of connection, support and gratitude.
- What is the kinesthetic sense and the proprioceptive sense? What do they do for us? What do they have to do with walking? How do you develop those senses? Why do we not learn about them?
Maybe because they are not localized senses. We see with our eyes, hear with our ears, smell with our nose, taste with our mouth and touch with our hands. But the skin, the sense organ for touch covers our entire body. Our entire body is capable of touching and being touched. Why are children not taught that? Hmmm…. Our sense of movement is also not local, and it is an internal sense. Proprioception is the same way. Internal. Kinesthesia is just your body sense – it just tells you if you are moving and if so how you are moving. And proprioception is just the sense of where you are, your shape and size. It tells you where one part of your body is in relation to another. It’s how you know what is you and what is not you, where your body begins and where it ends.
Senses can be educated. They can be awakened, reawakened, refined, opened. The more educated they become, the more accurately and appreciatively they can receive the wonder of life around us and within us.
The less we sense, the more robotic we become. The more we sense, the more human we become.
- You spend a lot of time in the book teaching about lying down, sitting, and standing. Why do you do that when it is a book about walking? What’s the connection?
All we humans do is lie down, sit, stand, walk and transition between these. We sleep. We get up. We walk out of our house to the car. We sit in our car going 60 miles an hour but we are just sitting. We get out of the car and walk down the street to the office. And so on through our entire lives.
At any given moment, when we are lying down, sitting, standing or walking, our spine will be in a particular relationship to our pelvis, rib cage, and skull.. Sometimes, those relationships become fixed, stiff, inflexible, painful rather than free, supple, and comfortable. If those relationships become fixed, set, held in a certain way that becomes chronic when we sit, that is how they will be when we stand, and when we walk. So, in a way, it all begins with sitting. If you cannot sit in balance, you cannot stand in balance, and if you cannot stand in balance you cannot walk in balance. That is why you see babies first sitting up. Then they learn how to stand. Then they learn how to walk. That’s why we teach lying, sitting, standing, and walking – the four dignities.
- Walking as a form of exercise seems not to be the main thrust of the book. It seems you have something bigger in mind when you talk about walking? Is walking a metaphor for you pointing to something more than physical, more than just for the body. What do you mean when you talk about “finding your walking life” or “walking through your days?”
We do have something bigger in mind. The Diné perform a 9-day healing ceremony called the Night Chant. There is a line that runs through the ceremony like a refrain. “In beauty, may I walk.” Walking for them is meant both literally and metaphorically. How we walk means how we live. How do we want to live our lives, how do we want to walk forward into our futures?
When we talk about “finding your walking life,” that means finding the tempo that best brings us into resonance with ourselves, with others, and with the ensouled world around us. We don’t want to plod, schlep, and drag ourselves through our days. We don’t want to run through them either.
When a person is having trouble figuring something out, we might say to them, “Let me walk you through that.” That’s the best way to figure things out, to walk through them.
- So many scientists, and artists, and inventors, and writers, and philosophers have sworn by walking insisting that walking is one of the keys to their creativity. How does that work? Why is that?
It could be as simple as this: Walking, especially walking in a natural setting, helps to oxygenate to the brain. Your brain is about 2% of your body weight but it uses more than 20% of the oxygen we breathe. And, of course, creativity is an expression of mental agility and that is supported by physical mobility. The rhythm of walking quiets the chattering, superficial mind and invites the inner wisdom in our blood, bones, heart and gut to speak to us.
- You write about how talking to someone while walking shoulder to shoulder is really different than talking to someone face to face. Can you say more about that?
It is not necessarily better or worse, but it is different. And if you are having difficulty talking face to face, it is worth a try to see how it goes walking shoulder to shoulder.
Sometimes certain facial expressions or gestures trigger us. You don’t really see a person when walking side by side. You hear them. You listen. You’re not facing off. You are walking together, side by side, going in the same direction, at the same speed. It’s also easier to feel comfortable walking in silence together than it is to sit silently together face to face. Sometimes a lot works itself out in those silences. Letting the minds rest and the bodies communicate subliminally.
- You say the chapter on Walking for Transformation is your favorite. Can you say more?
Walking for exercise and health is great. That is why we write about it in the book. We call it Hatha Walking. Walking for fitness. Fantastic.
But then, there is walking as a way of being with others. Walking as a way of communicating and problem solving. And walking for inspiration. and for transformation. Walking as a meditation, as a pilgrimage, listening not to our busy minds but to the voice of the world. Coming back into our own bodies, coming to our senses. Getting clear on how we want to be within ourselves.
This is what we mean by finding your walking life. 
You are in your walking life when you have a felt sense that you are on holy ground, in a holy space, in a holy body, in a holy life, not just when you go to a sacred site, but when you walk through the supermarket or into your office. It takes some practice to weave this truth into the fabric of our own bodies and being. But it is not too difficult. We have written the book so that our readers may experience this for themselves.
Walking Well: A New Approach for Comfort, Vitality, and Inspiration in Every Step
By Michael J. Gelb and Bruce Fertman
Category: Fitness / Health / Inspiration
Pub Date: September 3, 2024
Price: $18.95 * Format: Trade Paperback * Pages: 232
ISBN: 978-1-60868-912-5 * Also available as an ebook