Gait Correction & the Work of Rehabilitation
Let’s delve into the tale of how I started to learn how to walk all over again. It is a love/hate story about using canes, and concludes with a set of four maxims for enacting personal change.
As far as symbols of disability go, the canes reign alongside wheelchairs. As a young man I didn’t think about these devices much because they didn’t affect me, but there was the subconscious observation and assessment of passers-by wielding a cane. Are they blind? Are they limping? Are they a fraud? It’s pretty embarrassing that I wondered about that last part, but it seems to be a common consideration–at least in American society. Viewing people who use canes with suspicion rather than compassion is part of our pathos.
When my arthritis began worsening in my mid-20s, movement became more and more exhausting, and then more and more painful; and with much ambivalence, I started using a cane. The first one was issued to me; a metal cane that screamed “nursing home”. Those metal canes are loud and draw a lot of unwanted attention. The metal cane was a symbol of decline. It drove me crazy, and so I sought other, more distinguished canes–especially wood canes. They come sized, thus they’re much quieter, not to mention looking much more classy. Rather than a highly stylized cane, I found myself a simple, unadorned cane with a nice chestnut-colored finish.
However, there was a beast lurking within this device: the support/hobbling trade-off. The more I used my cane–particularly the more I literally leaned on it–the more my frame relied on it, worsening my limp and weakening joints when they needed conditioning to remain strong and fight back degeneration. It became harder to move, and the stairs outside my apartment became prohibitive, effectively keeping me housebound. This only made the decline sharper, and we eventually moved somewhere with more family support as well as fewer steps required to go out.
Getting back outside and walking was a fight. It hurt. A lot. Whatever gains I made felt like nothing. But memories of backpacking in the Olympic Mountains, and walking all around beautiful cities… those happy memories of exploration drove me to keep trying. The attempts were irregular but continuous.
One sunny day I went out for a walk, trying once again to get myself into a walking habit. I had gone maybe twenty steps from my house when I realized I forgot something important: my cane! Doing a quick body scan on the spot, I decided I could keep going on my short walk. Just to see what it felt like. Just to prove something to myself. And if the pain was too bad, I could always just sit down on the curb and wait it out.
It worked.
Then and there, I learned lesson one: just do the thing, or what I call the “Nike Rule.” And thus began my long, winding journey of gait correction. It didn’t feel good, but only doing what feels good is a recipe for disaster. And it stands to reason that leaning into this discomfort here and now, pacing myself, not overdoing it but finding the middle way, was the key to conditioning.
A new axiom formed in my mind: de-conditioning demands conditioning. That is the answer to the cycle of decline I discovered in my personal dark ages in that second-story apartment. So when my arthritis flared (as it will do) I just wanted to give up. But I didn’t want to slide down that slippery slope again. I needed to keep conditioning, and perhaps most importantly, I had to encourage myself with love and compassion like a good friend, rather than the hectoring and badgering the inner taskmaster likes to indulge in. The conditioning was two-fold: training my mind to be kinder and steadier, and training my body to become stronger and more stable.
This leads to lesson two: train daily. This is called the Seinfeld Method in productivity circles, derived from a quote attributed to Jerry Seinfeld’s commenting on his writing practice: do it every day, check off each day on the calendar, and heed the challenge of keeping the chain of checked days going. Basically to build momentum and try to maintain a streak as long as you can.
And there’s a corollary that forms lesson three: if you miss a day, make sure you train the next day. If it isn’t possible to go out because it’s rainy, or the air quality is bad, then do something inside: follow a qigong exercise on Youtube, or use the stationary bike, or a VR exercise app. Keep up the momentum.
And that brings us to lesson four: keep training with a goal in mind. You can have ‘near’ and ‘far’ goals; generally speaking, something you hope to achieve in a month or two, compared to something you hope to achieve in a year or two. For example, my near goal is being able to walk to the corner market a few blocks away. On one walk I saw the corner market and a giddy feeling of pride and empowerment swept through me. On the other hand, my far goals are several: one is to be well enough to fly back to my hometown and see family, as well as go to Hawaii and walk along the beach. Imagining the feeling of that saltwater lapping around my legs sustains me.
The final takeaway here is that for training like this, whether gait correction or something else, is knowing your goals and knowing yourself; coaching yourself with care, self-compassion and devotion instead of berating yourself; and thinking through methods logically and following them faithfully. This system helps with building the determination, self-discipline and dedication that can bring you to your desired goals.
