Walking with my wife used to be an adventure of an odd sort.
“Please stop walking into me?” She would plead.
“I’m not walking into you.” I would respond.
“You always walk into me.”
Then I changed the way I walked and about a year later as we were walking my wife noticed.
“Hey, you stopped walking into me.”
“I never walked into you.” I lied.
We are not designed to perceive ourselves accurately.
It is some sort of survival mechanism. I am amazed at the way people stand, walk, and move while being oblivious to the way they stand, walk, and move.
With respect to my own self-awareness, I would like to think it was somewhat heightened.
But I had no idea that I was walking on an angle into my wife or that I had stopped. Even though I am analyzing the way other people walk all the time.
We do train ourselves to do certain things habitually and to perceive that we are doing them correctly.
I recently had a private session with a tennis player with poor posture. I love working with athletes for many different reasons.
Mostly because they have poor posture in life but play tennis with good form. This is something I use as often as I can.
I started the session in my usual way looking at what I call “old you”. The posture that you think is standing up straight.
Then I said, “Show me how you receive a serve.”
And he moved into an exaggerated version of what I teach is good posture.
Sticking the butt out, bending the knees, letting the arms release and hang. This is how every tennis player sets up to receive a serve.
You are trying to find a lesser version of these cues when you are standing with good posture.
So I suggest “Go back to your idea of standing up straight.”
And when they do I go in for the kill.
“You would never receive a serve standing that way. You would be a horrible tennis player. I am not saying that life is a game of tennis but for whatever reason, you want to be good at tennis and have some concept of technique. You don’t seem to want to be good at standing or walking because you haven’t really given either a second thought.”
My own story is about knee problems. I am hypermobile which means my joints are too loose. It also means I am born to do yoga.
But I didn’t think too much about how I did yoga which isn’t smart if you are too loose. As a result of the yoga, and a few unfortunate occurrences, I ended up having three knee surgeries.
When I finally realized that the path I was on led to more knee surgeries, if not replacements, I knew change was mandatory.
Unfortunately, I learned that we don’t want to change, and aren’t really designed to want to change.
Ingrained habits help us survive but don’t always help us flourish.
My tennis player clients’ prescription was easy. Stand and walk more the way you play than the way you think is straight. It might sound odd but it is simple and effective.
I changed the quality of my standing and my walking through my yoga practice, and exercising correctly.
Everyone needs their own route to change.
But here is a crazy thing. I walk straight now. But I don’t really notice. I just do it.
My wife doesn’t notice either but her life is better for it since we still take long walks together every morning.