Intuitive Running: Youtube Video Transcript

Hi, my name is Marcus Gardner, but the people that know me best call me Adjul. Through the course of this video, you'll begin to get to know me as well.

I live and work on staff at the Teaching Drum Outdoor School in northeast Wisconsin, where we facilitate a yearlong immersion course called the Wilderness Guide Program. We basically provide a safe place for people to go and live for a year in the wilderness as a small group, away from the distractions of old habits and the environments that reinforce them.

That may sound simple, but to live day-after-day without our familiar identities and distractions takes an immense degree of presence. We face aspects of ourselves, our clan-mates, and the natural world that take us out of our comfort zones and into unfamiliar territory.

I can speak for myself and other graduates of the yearlong in saying that we discover abilities within ourselves that we never knew existed.

These abilities though are nothing new. If you look at any child, you'll see their potential. At least, if you catch that child before they're trained to believe otherwise.

Today, I'm going to share one of those abilities - one of my favorites - with you. I call it Intuitive Running.

Isn't running awesome? How we are one of the few lucky mammals to be able to coordinate our bodies with such grace. The endorphin rush we get. The thrill of the chase. Challenging ourselves and finding, and then pushing our limits. And how we can share this experience, with almost anyone in fact. From kids playing tag, to pro-athletes on tracks and fields, huge groups sweating out on the streets, ultramarathon runners, trail runners, elderly runners staying in top, you can even run inside in gyms and on treadmills. I just heard of something called the November Project where groups of up to 300 strangers will show up at the crack of dawn, and endure - and enjoy - a grueling running workout together.

These days, running has lost much of its direct connection to our modern, consumption-based, workaday lives. Yet so many of us continue to run. We must have some sort of inborne attraction to running that we can't shake.

In looking at what it is to intuitively run, a powerful question arises: how did we get here? How did we each personally - and collectively, as a species - get to where we are today in modern running. As children, we were like any other animal; testing our abilities and learning about the world through play. Our games of tag, and hide- and-go-seek are one in the same as the stalking and chasing games that all animals play. Not just for fun, these games challenge us to learn and develop our abilities, and learn to adapt swiftly to a dynamic environment. That's why our children can become so absorbed in their games. "Just games" we might say, but these games bring them to a level of presence that most of us adults struggle to attain. And same goes for our hunting ancestors. Imagine, being tuned in to your prey and the whole ecosystem you live in. Weaving yourself through the desert or forest, stealthily, with purpose.

How did running go from those experiences to 'pounding pavement?' Checking your pace, your stride, your time. Tuned out to our ipods. Running in a grid down streets, or in circles around a track. At best on well-tamped earth down pre-planned routes, cleared of debris for our convenience. How did running get so serious and orderly? What happened to our spirit of exploration?

Oh, right, because we're mature, responsible adults. Well, I understand. I myself am challenged to meet the needs of my modern life and at the same time fill my hunger to run.

And I can see that hunger in others, to get in touch with the heart of running. There's people doing things like MovNat, a fitness-training regime that focuses on natural movement, where even in urban environments they can find ways to discover their body's intrinsic adaptability. With the freestyle urban gymnastics of parkour and freerunning people are pushing their limits and expressing themselves creatively, through their running. And then there's the aforementioned November Project; a grassroots group empowering themselves to get their run on, without needing to pay someone to make a workout for them or set aside a special space.

Intuitive running, to me, means running for attunement. This goes beyond any workout routine, there's no making it into a business model, or becoming certified in it, and it doesn't lend itself to competition or media attention. This is more like a meditation, but an engaged meditation. Tuning into what's around me, myself, my running partners. I want to become sharper on my runs, physically, but also in relationship. In how my brain works.

What do I mean I say intuitive running can make my brain sharper? There is science that speaks to this.

Researchers wanted to see what would happen when they 'enriched' the environments of zoo gorillas and lab rats. This reminds me of the MovNat slogan that they are “breaking people out of the human zoo.” In the experiment, the gorillas went from being in a small cage to a much bigger cage, with trees, and streams, and being out under open sky. The rats were in a small cage, with few – if any – other rats and obstacles to play with, but then were upgraded to a bigger cage with lots of obstacles and playmates (an important element we'll return to).

What does a change like that do to an animal's brain? There's a tendency to look at the brain like a network of interconnected roots and branches, sometimes called the 'arboreal brain' or 'dendritic arbors.' Dendrites are the parts of our brain cells that reach out and make new connections to other cells. Just like trees, dendrites can have few branches to connect with, or they can grow lush with many. The scientists found that the enriched animals had up to 40% more dendritic branching than before. Reaching out, forging new connections of understanding and self-awareness. It's this richness in relationship that I'm after when I talk about attunement. The indigenous people of my area had a prayer of gratitude that roughly translated, “All my relations.” They knew that relationship to all that's around and within us, enriches our lives and makes us fuller people.

And that's not just spiritual gooeyness, scientists call it neuroplasticity. Want to up your neuroplasticity score? Well, there's a function of our brain, accomplished by mirror neurons, which activate when we watch someone do something in the exact same way that they activate when we do it ourselves. This can be anything from expressing emotions to performing physical tasks. Mirror neurons are probably largely responsible for the saying, “You are who you surround yourself with.” I'd also hypothesize that mirror neurons were partly responsible for why the rats who created the most connections were the rats with the most obstacles to stimulate them, as well as having watch and learn from through mirror mimicry. We at the school here have an awareness exercise called shadowing, where we feel into our relations, whether it be another person, our dreams, a being in the natural world. We become them as a way of stretching our connective capacities.

So, how can I use running as a practice to grow the branches in my neurological forest? How can I tune in with my mirror neurons to all my relations, and get a really sharp, highly-neuroplastic brain? My path: get off the grid of my stale running habits and get back into playfully building my awareness, and listening, deeply.

What I have to offer you is what's worked for me on my own running exploration, and what my elders have offered me. I mostly run off-road, off-trail, and through the woods. That's what I'm surrounded by, and that's what I enjoy tuning into. Go out where you live, and tune into that, and find what works for you.

Run spontaneously. Instead of choosing a destination and going from point A to point B, decide on the fly where your next turn – or even your next step – will lie. You'll notice that this takes the emphasis off of speed and sometimes you won't even be doing more than walking, and that's fine. It'll just create openings for different kinds of movement you would've otherwise missed. And you'll be more likely to notice things. I make it a point to keep checking in to see if I am present with myself and my environment during my runs.

An important part of my process has been to let go of distractions as much as possible during my runs. This means no ipods. While they're great to de-stress and get into a rhythm, what I'm going for is to be totally involved in my running; tuning into the rhythm of my body moving through my environment. When I am tuned in, something wonderful happens: my movement becomes music.

Push your frontier. We thrive on the thrill and discovery of testing our limits. When you're finding your direction running, keep your eyes peeled for challenges. It's a sort of philosophical inquiry, but – instead of works – we use our body to ask the questions. Do I fit under this? Can I balance on this? Can I turn in this way that I've never turned before?

Use all three dimensions. Find ways to get off the ground and up onto other levels. Just as well, find ways to get lower to the ground, going under things and engaging your body in different ways, like crouching and crawling.

Now that you can see we're getting out of the running box, I can mention a few technical aspects that it could help to focus on.

A lot of us suffer from poor posture because we're often hunched over trying to get ahead of ourselves, whether it be looking at the computer, or lurching to and fro. Use your balance, feel your center, and move from there as much as possible. Which usually means moving your lower body before your upper body. When you do that, and push your frontier, you'll have fun using muscles you don't normally use and moving in ways you didn't think you could. You'll see more opportunity to challenge yourself by maintaining your balance in all sorts of tricky situations.

Swinging our arms. Normally, a runner will pump her arms and use them to create forward momentum, like a sprinter would. Well, I'm not trying to cut seconds off my time. Instead, I'm focused on maintaining my center of balance so that I can adapt and adjust at a moment's notice. I end up leaving my arms rather limp and letting them flow with my overall movement. I find I pump my arms more when I am distracted, which throws off my balance.

Get all of your leg involved. Traditional running, especially on pavement, can be hard on the body. When I run I'm up on my ankles and calves and using them as shock absorbers. Not only because its easier on my knees but also because it makes me more nimble and quieter. I keep my knees slightly bent for the same reason. Instead of bending at the back, I keep my center of balance more by using my thighs and quads. Try it, the burn is enlivening.

The final element I want to mention can be the most difficult, because so many of our habits – not only our running habits – push us away from this. Tune in to what's around you with humility. When I experiment with a new obstacle or movement, I do my best to listen. To my body, to how I feel, to what I'm noticing as I move. I strive to treat my environment as sacred. This means, instead of only looking to pull off impressive tricks, try looking at your environment as a partner you're working with. If you were with a lover, or a friend, would you only want to talk about yourself all the time? Inevitably, you'll be given some pretty neat gifts: observing a new animal or insect you've never seen before, noticing a new texture or place you didn't know about, reading tracks of other animals or humans in your area. And overall, being present just feels good.

I have a concrete practice that helps me with this. I move as sinuously and stealthily as I can through my running area, paying attention to what's around me as I go. And, I touch the least amount of obstructions as possible. For me, in the forest, that means I try not to touch any branches as I weave around, under, and over trees, and through tight thickets. If you're not in the forest get creative with park benches, shrubs, curbs, and other things you meet along the way.

Remember the rats with all their companions in their enriched environment? That's the last layer I'm going to encourage you to explore. It can help take you even more out of your goal-oriented attitude, as well as accelerate your unlearning of old running habits, and learning what your real capabilities are. It's called wolf-running.

When you wolf-run, you aren't just tuning into yourself and your running locale, but also your pack-mates. In a wolf-run pack there is one leader, while everyone else is shadowing the leader in a line behind them. Everyone can take a turn at being the leader. Keep some distance from the person in front of you while you're on their trail so they don't have to be responsible for branches or whatever else is coming back at you. Watch how they move. In the process, you'll be introduced to movements as well as nooks and crannies in your area that you wouldn't have considered for yourself. And then, just like the rats in the experiment or wolf pups learning the skills of the hunt together, you'll have fully-enriched your environment.