spramblope

: sprint, amble, lope,

run.

It's not a directive I've heard that much in my life - or perhaps in the regular physical contexts that tend to surround that verb.. I've hustled my little tush off in numerous misguided but earnest ways (the Hotchkiss soccer field, the news floors at NPR headquarters, strapped to my college laptop for four days straight to crash my thesis deadline) - but now when I hear that word in my head, it's synonymous with a need, a riddle, an enterprise.


(Run.)


It started after the Marathon - a detail that makes me feel at times ordinary, or susceptible, or communal.
Journalist and kindred spirit Christopher McDougall says that distance-running has increased three times in our history, and always amidst a national crisis that hits us in the boo-boo (otherwise known, in this case, as our root chakra: the energetic home of our fear, our tribal identity, our sense of safety and purpose and vitality). McDougall wrote the best seller Born to Run four years ago, but his questions are perennial: Why?
Why don't antelopes get shin splints? When did running become something that belongs to only athletes or lunatics? Why should every other mammal on the planet be able to depend on its legs except us?


I had no conscious awareness that I wanted to (re)claim this primal ability, but I did register a desire bordering on requisite that I wanted to be able to run, in the event that I had to. For ten miles, at a good clip, with my daughter strapped to my back. Away from dangerous, towards sanctuary. I wanted to be in that kind of shape, but also to experience the feeling - of nothing stopping me, of not having to ask anyone's permission, not having to strap into all my gear or drive anywhere or learn anything new.


Of course it turns out there's always something to learn (sigh). But in this case, the non-didactic progression has been incredibly satisfying:

It hurt a lot in the beginning (not with physical pain exactly, but I was just DRAGging, sans oomph, drive, qi). Even before a mile was up, I couldn't wait for it to be over, and it seemed a fairly doomed experiment. But I set my sights on a goal (another thing I discovered I am hungrily in love with about running) -- a 4 mile run with TRWB (Team Red White & Blue, a great grassroots organization that joins veterans with community members through physical and social activities).


Having goals like this is like catnip to me. I need progress. I can't believe I forgot this about myself, but I think I've spent the past three years in such amorphous atmospheres - being a mom, starting my own practice - I've been learning more about how to be patient with an organic process. With this venture, each time I went out, I could run for a few more minutes, and then I actually felt better after the run than I did before, and then I could make it without my headphones drowning out the ever-counterproductive mantra I am not a real runner. And now I can see that those were all milestones that led me to holding my own at that 4 mile run less than two weeks ago. And today I ran more than 4 miles before breakfast, at a good pace, never flagging, no pain.


: : : r u n : : :


It feels like a gift to be discovering that self-doubt doesn't automatically translate into paralysis. Which makes me think of psychologist Peter Levine's Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma. His writing and philosophies are gentle, thoughtful, and wise - and he's really woken me up to how movement is connected to trauma and its aftermath:

...In an ideal adaptive response to a life-threatening event, the nervous system searches for related significant images and possible responses at an appropriate level of activation and context. It then makes a selection and acts accordingly. It searches, selects, then acts. This threat-arousal sequence has to include an active response or it becomes frozen and doesn't complete. (p. 212)

I'd say this also goes for any stressful event we experience, regardless of scale: our bodies need to work it out. It doesn't have to be running. But it does have to be moving. Even following other animal examples, we could shake it out or stretch it out or dance it out... I think the key is to figure out where it lives in you. This can come before the movement, or as a result of it - but joining your breath with the contraction and release of your limbs and muscles and tendons and organs and flesh IS healing. It reflects the nature of who we are down to the last cell in our bodies. Every creature has a right to own that. And every human has the blessing to acknowledge it.