Everywhere, there’s movement within this expanse of trees and grass and temples. All ages–from 9 to 99–are here, practicing Tai Chi and Sword Arts, swinging their arms, rubbing their kidneys, rotating their waists, and hanging from low-hanging tree branches (to stretch their spines).

Amid all this, is a thing that produces me rub my sleepy eyes and search again: groups of women are walking backwards inside the lane. This: walking backwards, calmly and confidently.

This ancient exercise (yes! It is an exercise!) is one of the treasures of Chinese health practice, addressing problems with balance, leg strength, back strength, and posture. It may look simple, but the explanations why this is a good practice are profound. Once you a number of:

1. As we get older, our fear of falling makes us react wrongly. When babies fall backwards, they just plump down to a sitting position, however this tendency disappears as we grow older. Many falls end up going backward because we arch our backs. Walking backwards rounds that a part of our back that we arch, and encourages ‘forward’ muscle use.

2. Anything that is wrong about your posture came from walking forward! Slumping, slouching, rounding, arching…dozens of undesirable habits. Walking backwards reverses these habits.

3. From an energetics standpoint, walking backwards actually re-frames consciousness in your bodies. The simple explanation is our attention is likely to favor the front in our bodies towards the exclusion of what is behind us. Chinese health and martial exercises both encourage ‘whole body’ awareness for ‘whole body’ health. Walking backwards generates a ‘sensor’ to integrate this area.

4. Walking backwards actually engages completely different teams of muscles. This will be relevant especially as our bodies age, since we lose flexibility and our flexibility often diminishes. By making use of different muscles we exercise areas of the body that require attention.

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