ChiRunning, The Tanden, Carlos Castaneda and Star Wars

Running...a pursuit whose motivation is physical...can it be more like a spiritual experience?

First of all ChiRunning...what is it?
ChiRunning is a method of running developed by Danny Dreyer based on the principles of Tai Chi, to harness the invisible energy called Chi, and to use body lean to use gravity for forward motion, with the feet not grasping at the ground and “toeing off” but simply lifting off the ground as you move along.

It is a whole philosophy of motion which I have been trying to practice in my running (with varying degrees of success) since 2011 to recover from and prevent running injuries of which I had been plagued: a case of Runner Heal Thyself!

Using an invisible energy may seem darn screwy yet the Martial Artists highlight how much the body can achieve in the application of the Mind through certain spiritual practices, breaking concrete with their foreheads for example or the Shaolin Monks of China, or for that matter the intense Mind over Matter practiced by Buddhist Monks from Tibet to Japan. We might think of the Jedi knights of Star Wars. although science fiction, fall into this sort of thing - the metaphor is still relevant. The mind controlling the physical.

ChiRunning thus involved centering our minds and using this Universal Energy for our own needs, which might be running 10k, a half marathon even a full marathon. But as Dreyer points out in his book "ChiRunning: A Revolutionary Approach to Effortless, Injury-Free Running" most runners and most training methods involve Power Running – a muscle building “no pain no gain” attitude,  – the opposite of the ChiRunning “go with the flow” attitude which explains, Dreyer says, why 15.6 million runners injure themselves every year in the USA. With ChiRunning Dreyer can "run 50 miles without it being a big deal or harmful to the body".

What has Carlos Castaneda got to do with ChiRunning? 
Well nothing actually, or at least not directly. Although if you believe what McDougall says in Born to Run, that the Shaman mentor of Castaneda was a Tarahumara then there may be a link. Juan Matus the Brujo and teacher of Castaneda makes long treks across the Sonora desert and often remarks that Castaneda is fat slow and stupid like a bull, with a roll of fat across the neck...perhaps there was some ultra running involved...

Castaneda brings to us the same concepts that George Lucas would later use as the basis of the Jedi religion in Star Wars. In fact Castaneda stresses, among other things the importance of Personal Power an energy which dictates how a man lives and dies. He makes it clear that Native American Shamans collect this Personal Power (like The Force in Star Wars) and to effect change by the power of intent and to be "perennially fluid" so as to be able - at a moments notice - to seize a quanta of energy that he called a "cubic centimeter of chance"

Chi, Ki Etc
Such a discussion of power and universal energy reminds me very much of the Japanese energy of Reiki.
Reiki is a Japanese folk tradition for self development but purporting to be  a healing therapy. It’s seriousness as a healing therapy is belied by its transmission, through day courses, and in its contemporary application – often as an adjunct to beauty therapies or within health spas. In it is original scheme it is something like an adjunct to the martial arts and a process of self-change and self-healing.

Like the martial arts one of the important things about Reiki is using the Tanden, a point just below the navel from which energy builds and is projected. In Tai Chi, and in ChiRunning it is called the Dan Tien and Castaneda also speaks of it in terms of energy from the abdomen.

According to Castaneda;

 “the [Native American] seer sees that every man is in touch with everything else, not through his hands, but through a bunch of long fibers that shoot out in all directions from the center of his abdomen.”

In fact I recollect reading that in one of the Castaneda books, a shaman called Genaro uses the threads of energy from his Tanden to scale a perilous ravine and jump to a ledge...real Star Wars stuff...

Back to running...

Can we apply this shamans/ Tai Chi / Reiki philosophy to running?
According to Dreyer Yes We Can! And if barefoot running has taught me one thing it is the power of fluidity. The moment that the spine becomes engaged in the running, and releases the energy like a coiled snake, this Chi energy, this invisible energy, is released.

A fluidity of thought as well as muscles, the ability to relax and go with the flow.

My training in Reiki has caused me to review my ideas of energy and intention, and whilst I do not agree with the contemporary presentation of Reiki the use of the Tanden is really fundamental and applicable to many things...much like the Shaman Warriors of Castaneda’s books, being "perennially fluid", and this also seems to link in with the concept of using Tai Chi principles in ChiRunning.

It is certainly something to aspire to...not for competition or even beating a personal best, but for a greater potentiality. As Castaneda once wrote:

“All the faculties, possibilities, and accomplishments of shamanism, from the simplest to the most astounding, are in the human body itself.”

Barefoot Inspiration and Review of the Vibram Five Fingers

I forgot to say that the book Born to Run was a big inspiration to me as was the book Chi Running. Chi Running focuses on correct running form, Born to Run focuses on, well, everything else. Whilst Chi Runnng is a sort of technical running guide, Born to Run is the archetypal un-put-down-able page turner. What what quickly focused my attention in Born to Run in particular was the passage on page 40 about Carlos Castaneda. In the past I was very much into Castaneda as an undergraduate student, reading and researching his work in hopes to explore that tribal art work and textile designs of native peoples were some sort of vision from Non-Ordinary Reality. The idea got me as far as the start of an M.A. but I took it no further. One of the reasons was that I realised that Casteneda was a total fraud. But the interest, however counter-intuitive to my academic sensibilities remained, and although Casteneda is a very dubious figure both as an anthropologist and as a new age guru, I found it intriguing that the author Craig McDougall had stated that the Indian Nagual or shaman that mentored Castaneda, the Yaqui Indian Juan Matus, was not a Yaqui Indian at all but a Tarahumara (Raramuri), the supposed tribe of Super-athletes that can run 100 miles for fun in sandals (and blouses and skirts) and who are the subject of the book. This re-ignited my interest in Shamanism in general and the full potential of barefoot running and made me feel compelled to one day re-read Castaneda's compendious oeuvre. 

With Born to Run McDougall, a journalist, with that Journalist's gift of writing short concise paragraphs and page turning chapters suddenly made running, and barefoot running, and running  fifty miles cool, as cool as surfing with a new sort of philosophy and a cool but weird (and ultimately tragic) proponent in the eccentric late Caballo Blanco, a sort of long distance running Don Juan for the 21st century. It is damn alluring, long distance running in sandals and so is the book and highly recommended.

Of course running properly and injury free is damn difficult and the book romanticizes just about everything the author talks about, but that (I suppose) is what a good book is and what a good writer does. Nevertheless it (the book that is) was ( and still is) the main impetus (and inspiration) behind the whole  barefoot running thing which has been about for nearly ten years and me, well, I have just latched on to the back end of the fad. (There is a film coming out called Run Free which will further this cresting wave of barefootedness)

Review of Vibram Five Fingers KSO (2015).
The Vibrams are out of the box and on my feet! According to the accompanying literature you are supposed to not even run in the five fingers for the first two weeks but strengthen your feet by walking barefoot. I was going to leave four weeks before gradually phasing in the "barefoot" running with the Vibrams, but something happened with those Puma Mobiums. First of all, I should point out that I bought the Mobiums mid 2013 and used them for about six months before I went through a bout of illness and stopped running for a year. Even then the Mobiums were uncomfortable particularly in the arch, as if some one was poking something up into the arch of the foot and after a couple of miles I found my feet started to go numb. Fast-forward a year and I find that the Mobiums are still giving the same pain and numb feet, to the point that when I finish a run the discomfort is such that I cant wait to take my shoes off. I also started to get that shin splints feeling along with a pain in my left ankle. Having had (in the past) gait analysis and a string of expensive running shoes I decided rather than to seek "professional" advice (which I have learnt to distrust) to instead listen to my own intuition. It is for this reason that half way into week 3 I threw caution to the wind and took the Vibram Five Fingers (VFF) out for a spin. It was very icy and cold and with snow on the ground, and I had to calculate a run which was ten percent of my usual route which was stipulated in the literature (Vibrams have been successfully sued in America for misleading claims.)

Finding a route short enough was difficult so I just ran around the block. Immediately I found the pain in my left ankle start to ease along with the shin splints feeling and I felt none of the foot arch pain associated with the Mobiums. This was interesting because the Mobiums are neutral runners with minimum cushioning and the VFF are basically gloves with a bit of rubber on the bottom. It was not logical. I remember the last time I had an injury (in 2011) I packed extra insoles into my Brooks to make them more cushioned (and they were pretty well cushioned to start with) only to find it made it worse and here, by taking the cushioning away the pain actually went. Go figure. Actually go read Born to Run and you find out that one runs far more carefully barefoot than shod, not only that the stride is shorter with fore front strike and the muscles and the rolling of pronation acts as a spring - as a sort of bio-mechanical suspension.  Leonardo da Vinci said that the foot was a masterpiece of engineering and a work of art and if you look at his study of the bones of the foot you can see its inherent intricacies. It is a dynamic multi-flexible arching platform and  a very sophisticated piece of kit which we have squashed into shoes for centuries....and maybe the foot doesn't want to be locked into a shoe!!!