Your Legs and Feet: The Gift of Movement

Woman walking on sandbeach in the caribbean

An excerpt from Reclaiming Your Body by Suzanne Scurlock-Durana

While the English language frequently refers to what our bodies know — “gut feelings,” hearts “reaching out” to others, etc. — many of us have learned to ignore, deny, or even mistrust our body’s inherent wisdom. Even worse, a lot of people don’t like their bodies very much at all.

As a result, we often cut ourselves off from one of our greatest allies. In Reclaiming Your Body: Healing from Trauma and Awakening to Your Body’s, author Suzanne Scurlock-Durana provides the tools and guidance necessary to reconnect with our body’s inner guidance system of sensation, imagery, and inner knowing. Her book includes chapters for each main “wisdom area” of the body — the heart, gut, pelvis, legs and feet, bones, and brain — and explores each area’s unique roles in the process of developing full-body presence.

We hope you’ll enjoy this short excerpt, which speaks to the wisdom of our legs and feet.

One of the marvels of the human body is what I call the metabolizing effect of our legs and feet when they are activated. Beyond that function, they have an inner intelligence as well, which you will see below.

Legs and Feet Help Us Metabolize
This wisdom area of the body is one that helps us take what we experience as confusing, disorienting, or simply puzzling and metabolize it — digest it. I don’t mean this in the literal sense of breaking down our food into substances that can nourish us, but in the metaphoric sense of finding clarity about our lives, our challenges, our biggest questions.

When I was younger, I was a runner. Now I walk and walk and walk. Whenever I have an issue or a problem, I walk it out — or “metabolize” it. I head out on the path without thinking about what I am trying to figure out, and most days by the end of the walk the answer appears.

My friend Bobbi, a talented pediatric therapist, informs me that the Brain Gym curriculum teaches how moving our limbs in a cross-body motion stimulates and integrates the hemispheres of the brain.1

Any physical activity, like taking a walk or a run, facilitates integration between the body and the brain — as long as our limbs move in a synchronized manner. Thus, by doing this kind of exercise, tissues in areas that are stuck or caught can start moving again.

Also, think about what happens to people when they are frozen with trauma. Often people who have sustained traumatic injuries that were overwhelming go into a contracted or dissociated, frozen place, and a felt sense of one’s legs and feet are one of the first things to disappear. When this occurs, the healing process is stymied.

Stimulating small movements can end stasis at a cellular level. Full-body movements help to heal overall frozen shock states, and both are the antidote needed for healing trauma at a core level. And nothing is more nonthreatening than taking a walk!

One review of research done by Harvard showed that daily aerobic exercise lifts mild to moderate depressive symptoms by 60 to 70 percent, which was equal to the effectiveness of antidepressant medications (like the SSRI Zoloft). Further, exercisers maintained their gains longer than those on antidepressants as long as they continued to move their legs and feet regularly in an aerobic manner.

One study found that walking fast for about thirty-five minutes a day for five times a week, or sixty minutes a day for three times per week, had a significant influence on moderate depression. This bestows all the health benefits of exercise in terms of the mood-lifting effects of endorphins, enhanced immune function, and reduction of pain perception.

Also, think about how muddled and overwhelming it can feel to deal with stressful situations that have a lot of options. After traumatic events, and even with normal stressors, we know that our perceptual lens is narrowed and our ability to come up with creative solutions is vastly reduced.

When we get moving and activate our legs and feet to sort it all out, the potential for excellent healing solutions is immense — if we can remember to use them!

Suzanne Scurlock-Durana, is the author of Reclaiming Your Body and Full Body Presence. Her Healing from the Core curriculum combined with CranioSacral therapy and other bodywork modalities creates a complete, body-centered guide to awareness, healing, and joy. She teaches around the world and lives in Reston, Virginia. Visit her online at www.healingfromthecore.com.

Excerpted from the book Reclaiming Your Body: Healing from Trauma and Awakening to Your Body’s Wisdom. Copyright ©2017 by Suzanne Scurlock-Durana. Printed with permission from New World Library .

"Life happens. Life in the flow."

We learn over time that nobody can solve our problems, but someone can guide you how to solve the problem. You may receive guidance through a teacher, a guru or even strangers that you run into every day. As we practice yoga we learn that the more we know, the less we truly know. Every day I am reminded how much I truly do not know; a very humbling experience.
Yoga teaches me to be present. To just live for being and enjoying life as it is right NOW. Not ten minutes from now, no five days ago, but right now. We are taught to get out of our heads, to release worries and fears of the past or the future and to only live for this very moment. Presence.

"Lead me from untruth to truth, lead me from darkness to light." ~ Buddha

Through yoga we are reminded that we do have a dark side as well as a light side. We are not to repress the dark side, but embrace that side of our Self. We are the yin and the yang. We ultimately cleanse the dark stuff we hold inside. We shine the light on this. We must make friends with dark side. Both positive and negative balance out the whole. Daily practice refines and improves our inner vision to see our Self more clearly. We no longer need to run from fears. Face them and say I'm not running from you anymore. So much is in our heads, so much dark is only in our heads, self-doubt judgment betrayal. Yoga grounds the body so that the light and dark sides of ourselves become clear. So much is truly untrue. But as we diligently practice we are able to find the middle ground and walk our centered balanced line in life. We gain balance in centered lightheartedness. We can have harmony in both light and dark.

"Yoga tells us that the world is actually a projection of our own thoughts and we can modify our inner world to manifest into our outer world. When our inside realm is at peace and in harmony, our outer world shines this projection back at us."
~ David, Jiva Mukti Yoga co-founder

Yoga is observation.

We can observe our world and see what part that is in us is begin reflected back to us. We can then see what part of us needs modification or adjustment in order to have our outer reality reflect back to us the peace, happiness and love we so greatly desire and deserve.

Yoga is already inside of you. Happiness is there. Yoga helps you peel away the onion layers to get to the core. To freedom. The deepest Divine connection to the Ultimate Light Source.

Come out of wanting and back into acceptance and Joy. A yogi or yogini can turn any situation into bliss. That is a yogi. Yoga is being now. Ultimate yoga is meditation. Just BE.

Yoga is love.

"Love is the light that dissolves all walls between souls." 
~ Paramahansa Yogananda

Through a dedicated practice of all forms of yoga we can participate in the world with a sense of freedom, unaffected from trauma, depression, anger, etc. The freedom is balance in both.


Maggie Anderson is a Yoga & Spiritual Teacher, Reiki Master Teacher, Integrated Energy Therapy® Master Instructor, Soul Coach®, Past Life Coach, Magnified Healing® Master Teacher and Angelights Messenger. She is the author of How I Found My True Inner Peace and Divine Embrace. You can contact Maggie at SpiritualCompassConnection.com.

"Follow Your Bliss. It's Your Spiritual Compass."