Breath, Mudra, and the Healing Walk with Dr Yun Kim, Dr Jacques MoraMarco & Manon on The Healers Café

present moment, actually feeling the sensations and the feelings that we have in our bodies and so in in that chapter for mindful walking we invite our readers to check in instead of check out feet on the ground feeling the fabric of your clothes feeling your breath we have a mudra, a hand gesture that is part of the vitality walk, and so feeling, feeling the mudra, doing the breath work, and so you know, in all the research that we read, the key component is the mindfulness the mindful awareness of the present moment, and we can get there by anchoring our mind in the body, so the breath, the movement, the shifting of the way, and so that’s that’s a kind of training that we can do to be here now, it’s a very well-known book by Ram Das. Be here now. How do we do that? We do that. One of the ways we, one of the ways in which we can do that is to bring our attention to the body,

Dr. Jacques MoraMarco  09:15

right? And how did you start that? The original inspiration.

Dr. Yun Kim  09:19

So, about two decades ago I got very interested in mindful meditation, and I had the great fortune of doing a meditation retreat with a great Vietnamese monk and peace activist, Thich Nhat Hanh, in California Deer Park Monastery, and his signature teaching was mindful walking, and with 200 retreat and in silence we did mindful walking from the meditation hall up the hill and I can still picture him, I can still picture his face, he emanated so much peace and serenity, and I was, I was so moved by that experience, and that’s when I decided to inquire. Break this into, into my life, into my mindfulness practice.

Dr. Jacques MoraMarco  10:05

Yes.

Manon Bolliger  10:06

How long? Like, I mean, of course, people can do it all day long, I’m sure, but, but what is.. what do you recommend to people you know, just to live a healthy life, but how much should they incorporate that into their day or routine? Or

Dr. Jacques MoraMarco  10:28

yeah, you know, I think the goal and objective, of course, is to start with the first step, the first five minutes, possibly to do whatever, or whatever walk we describe, whatever practices, do it for five minutes, and then build up upon it, but it seems that the magic number is at least you want to do 30 minutes a day, if you can do more, it’s better, but at least have that 30 minutes a day, because also in terms of the steps, there are certain signs behind steps, and the steps between 5007 1000 is the magical number, and unfortunately, here in the West, in Western society, we are walking much less. In some other countries, they walk much more, but again, depending on the city, you know, some cities you walk less, some cities you walk more, but there’s a direct correlation with the step, the walking and mortality rate, cancer rate, cardiovascular disease, even things like dementia, color, and depression, insomnia, the other interrelated, so you know you don’t need to achieve the 10,000 steps, that’s everybody’s, oh, I have to do the 10,000 steps, but that was based on the Manco Pi, which was a step counter from Japan, a pedometer that worked like a little bit like a clock, so everybody was, you know, during the 1964 Olympic, you have to get this, and that’s how the mid came up, but most of the research says, you know, if you achieve that, you know, and then you know, over, you know, 7005 or 8000 you’re not really gaining that much benefits, but what you can do instead of doing the steps, is you can start to practice things like the tai chi walks to improve and enhance your balance, because we know that over the age of 65 the rate of falls on seniors increases, and of course the severity of the outcome from that within one year, you know things go pretty much on that, so you know the ability to have the fall prevention aspect, which is very, very strong for the practice of the tai chi, mainly the catwalk, and also what we have in our book, the Golden Rooster Walk, but it’s a transitional step in the tai chi that makes you really aware how to step slowly with your heel, and then roll out of the foot, so you get that whole momentum of the conscious movement of the foot, which is really, really important, and also enhances your proprioceptors, so those are really important aspects that are part of the tai chi practice, and there’s over 1000 studies that demonstrates the effects of tachy practice for fall prevention. Originally done by Emerald University, with the backing and the encouragement of Rosalynn Carter, which was the wife of Jimmy Carter, and she has had over 50 year practice, lived to be in her late 90s,

Manon Bolliger  13:22

interesting. So, what is that? What did you call it, the extra step, because I mean the whole thing increases your proprioception, but when you were talking about there’s a, the golden step, or

Dr. Jacques MoraMarco  13:40

the golden. No, these are the couple of the exercises in our book. We have taken one is called the catwalk, which is stepping in a very conscious, very slow method that you just consciously step with your heel and roll out, and then the golden rooster is basically stepping and having one leg lifted, very similar to a flamingo stance, which they testing flamingo stance. If you can stand for 10 seconds, you’re in good shape. If you don’t stand for 10 seconds, you need to work on that yogic practices one leg stance. And then in the book, we’ll have a more advanced stepping pattern called the Bear Spirits step, so that’s very specific for that tai chi chapter, but we even talk about in the beginning part of the book, such as retro walking or walking backwards. I don’t know if you see many people walking backwards around the parks in your area, but I first saw those in China about 30 years ago. There were people walking backwards, and just recently I noticed in the last six months at a local park in our area, there’s an uphill, and I see these people walking up the hill backwards. Of course, it’s the concrete, there’s no, no, no chances of falling off because it’s pretty level, and I say what. What prompted you to do this? Oh, well, my doctor said this is really good for me, because it saves on my knee, works on my quads, strengthens up my buttocks muscle, and of course works on the proprioceptor. So that backwards working, we mentioned that in the traditional walk, which is in chapter one, but the key thing about that backwards walking, even though most people have not heard of it, it was done in 1915 and there was one individual that walked from San Francisco to New York back.

Manon Bolliger  15:30

Oh my gosh, it

Dr. Jacques MoraMarco  15:31

was monitored, and it was to be done under one year’s time, and at that time was $5,000 bet, and he walked in 260 days, so that was quite a feat. He had a mirror, of course, and he had the monitored, and they wrote him up all the way through the different channels in the different cities, so you know there’s so many different methods, you know, the Japanese walking, which is a dynamic walking, three minutes fast, three minutes, so, so there are different walking in the traditional style, but we went to go into the breath work and the coordination of steps and walking, which include one of the specific walk, which we call it the vitality walk.

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Dr. Jacques MoraMarco  17:25

okay, the key about that walk is coordinating your step with dynamic breathing, and I first saw that in the Malayan region almost 50 years ago, and I noticed that individual in their 5060s they were walking so fast up the hill when I was in my early 20s, I said, “How’s that possible? And they employed this step, it’s called dynamic breath with the steps, so you count your steps and you do the breath, so the breath is a very dynamic breath. I will just demonstrate they can hear, so you breathe into the nose two very fast. fast breath, and then you breathe out, and then you do two empty steps, so it’s super oxygenates your body, gives you extra oxygen, and you have that power in the dynasty that goes back to this whole idea of vitality. Vitality, say a few things about what is vitality.

Dr. Yun Kim  18:20

Well, a little more about actually the breath work. There’s more and more research is showing that certain kinds of breath work, like the inhale and the exhaling, can calm the nervous system. The version of this particular kind of breath pattern is being taught at the VA for veterans for PTSD to calm the nervous system to bring you to the parasympathetic mode, the rest digest relaxation mode. So, the walking plus the breath work and the mudra.

Dr. Jacques MoraMarco  18:52

Okay,

Dr. Yun Kim  18:53

so the mudra involved, which is a spiritual gesture, so very simple, you fold your thumb into the middle of your palm, and right here is a very important acupuncture point called the Lao Gong, and then you fold the rest of the fingers, and you’re activating the lung channel to help respiration, very primordial position, and babies often you see the babies in

Manon Bolliger  19:23

yeah

Dr. Yun Kim  19:23

position, and so this is part of the vitality walk. So, when you have, when you combine the mudra, the walking, and the breath work, it’s incredible. Your mind doesn’t wander,

Manon Bolliger  19:37

right?

Dr. Yun Kim  19:38

Nature, the mind to wander, right? There’s nothing wrong with that, but sometimes it’s too much.

Manon Bolliger  19:45

But is it like in this case? I mean, you’re paying attention to this, that’s right.

Dr. Jacques MoraMarco  19:52

Yeah,

Manon Bolliger  19:52

you’re also breathing,

Dr. Yun Kim  19:55

and you’re counting your steps,

Manon Bolliger  19:56

right? You’re counting the steps, so your mind is busy. See, it’s just

Dr. Yun Kim  20:01

it’s

Dr. Yun Kim  20:01

concentrated, though. It’s concentrated, right? Yeah, it’s it’s paying attention, paying attention to the body, right? Very different than when your mind just kind of

Manon Bolliger  20:13

is

Dr. Yun Kim  20:13

anywhere, your spirals,

Manon Bolliger  20:15

right? Right. So, so how does the, the steps align with the breath?

Dr. Jacques MoraMarco  20:21

So, so it’s a very simple at first, it might be a little bit difficult to do, but you know, you do it for even five or 10 minutes, and you get the rhythm, so the steps align that you are doing two inhalations on the first two steps, then you do an exhalation on the third step, and then you have two steps where you have empty breath, which has also its own health benefits, but the key thing about the mudra, one of the secret methods about this mudra is that when you do this, you cannot look at your phone, you can be on the

Manon Bolliger  20:58

phone,

Dr. Yun Kim  20:59

can’t text her hands with,

Manon Bolliger  21:01

I mean, it’s so many people, you know, wearing the stuff on the ears, and I mean, they, it’s like accidents waiting to happen, you know.

Dr. Jacques MoraMarco  21:14

Yes, absolutely,

Manon Bolliger  21:15

absolutely not paying attention to anything, but I don’t think they’re paying attention to themselves either, you know they’re just out walking, counting steps, maybe, or getting them counted for you, so okay, so it’s two out breaths, while

Dr. Jacques MoraMarco  21:33

two in breath,

Manon Bolliger  21:34

in breaths, okay, while you, while you make a step,

Dr. Jacques MoraMarco  21:38

one breath per step,

Manon Bolliger  21:41

one breath per step. Okay, so you breathe in, you breathe in, and they’re short breaths,

Dr. Jacques MoraMarco  21:48

yeah, but dynamic, very dynamic,

Manon Bolliger  21:50

yeah, fast, like,

Dr. Jacques MoraMarco  21:52

yeah, yeah, okay, all through the nose, okay. And then you do one strong exhalation,

Manon Bolliger  21:59

and through the nose or the mouth,

Dr. Jacques MoraMarco  22:00

all through the nose, this all through the nose, and then you do two more steps empty, so that in philosophy you have a yin yang balance, so this,

Manon Bolliger  22:10

yeah,

Dr. Jacques MoraMarco  22:11

active and passive, so that’s the active phase, then you have a passive phase, and they all complement each other,

Manon Bolliger  22:18

okay, so step with in step with in third step out and then empty and then empty and then holding the whole time

Dr. Yun Kim  22:34

the mudra.

Dr. Jacques MoraMarco  22:34

This is the primordial mudra. In mudra is a typical word in Sanskrit that means hand gestures, right? You know, we all know about, you know, the ring finger and the thumb for the basic meditative mudra. A prayer hand is a mudra, the admin mudra. So, you have so many different positions in Tibetan Buddhism, they have different mudras for different mantras, so you know those are all key, key components that are now being discovered. Well, you know, looking at the brain and seeing that in the brain there is the homunculus, the little man, they call it the projection. You see, the thumb, it’s a big, big part of that, that brain. So,

Manon Bolliger  23:16

yeah,

Dr. Jacques MoraMarco  23:16

even working with the hands and just having this position does power up the system, so it’s a bioenergetic functioning, and you know, going back to even the embryogenesis, the development of the embryo, when we talk about acupuncture and the outer parts of our skin, they are part of the ectoderm, which is really the nervous system, so it’s integrating this primordial system that we have embedded in ourselves into your daily practice,

Manon Bolliger  23:46

and is this, let’s say, like those steps, but done for half an hour, is this what you would also use for PTSD to to rebalance the other autonomic nervous system.

Dr. Jacques MoraMarco  24:05

Yes, absolutely. You know, and that’s the key thing on on this breath work. It does work, it does affect certain person, penetic mechanism, and you, of course, you have all the neurotransmitters, all the activation of the serotonin, and everything else that

Dr. Yun Kim  24:21

the cascade of those neuro activators

Dr. Yun Kim  24:25

and you could take a very short break I used to do this all the time we had an outdoor walkway in our office and I would just go and do it for 10 minutes or walking to the bathroom or walking to the

Manon Bolliger  24:36

right the

Dr. Yun Kim  24:36

parking lot

Manon Bolliger  24:38

yeah

Commercial Break  24:39

it’s it’s very invigorating

Dr. Jacques MoraMarco  24:42

so it’s, it’s also called super oxygenation, right?

Manon Bolliger  24:46

Yeah, yeah,

Dr. Yun Kim  24:47

that’s one

Dr. Jacques MoraMarco  24:48

of the, one of the methods that we use there, but we have different ones, and there’s another interesting chapter called immune support, or the immunity walk, and that’s a very specific walk, it also. Has the in Chinese Shi Shih, her. It also happens to have the two breath and one breath out, which is very interesting. From a different part of Asia, you know, this one was more or less developed in China by a very famous artist called Wolin, and she developed this in the 1960s She was diagnosed with terminal cancer, and at that point she did this breath work and had some amazing remission, went into remission. So now that part of practice, the bullying work is a cancer support method, and most parks all over China, they have this group of individuals that meet and do this breath practice with their cancer patients, and see, totally integrated into the practice of, you know, traditional Asian medicine with Western medicine to integrate those two components, because it’s, it’s the times are changed, and it’s no longer alternative medicine, it’s no longer complementary medicine, it’s really becoming, becoming integrative medicine.

Manon Bolliger  26:02

Yeah, yeah,

Dr. Jacques MoraMarco  26:03

that is the evolution.

Manon Bolliger  26:05

So, so it would help the body alkalinize, I would imagine, to be effective that way. And what about people? Because many people have sleeping issues, how is there a time that’s the best to walk, or you just walk when you walk, or

Dr. Jacques MoraMarco  26:28

now you, you don’t want to necessarily do the vitality walk before you go to sleep, right? So you might want to do maybe the bagua walk, which is the circle self-reflection walk, and we do have a walk that’s called Bagua. It’s the Bagua style walking. You walk around a circle, and walking a circle, it can take 16 steps to start in a circular pattern, and you go to eight steps. Bagua is the trigrams that you might see, like on a Korean flag, or you might have a mirror where you have it in different Chinese or herbal stores or other grocery stores. They might have a little mirror with this little broken and solid line called the diagrams, and what you do, you walk in this circular pattern, and we know that throughout history, different tradition from different parts of the world, they use the circular pattern works called circumstance, and they do it on sacred side, like the Portola in Lhasa in Tibet, and they might even do around the big mountain, Mount Kailash, or they would do it on the labyrinth in a lot of places in Europe, they have this labyrinth in old churches, where people would do this circular pattern walking, but the circular walk done in this fashion really activates the lymphatic system, especially in the gua, which is the hip growing area with a lot of lymph nodes, so it’s very particular walk, and the nice thing about it, you can do it indoors, in your house, in your living room, if it’s cold and raining and windy and snowing, or if it’s very hot, you can still do it inside.

Dr. Yun Kim  28:07

You mentioned sleep issues, that’s so prevalent, and this is not in the book, but I recommend to my patient this self-massage, really massaging around the ears. What you do is you take your middle finger and put it on the tragus of the ear, the index finger behind the ears, and massaging this way like that, up and down, up and down, up and down, and you’re getting all those wonderful acupuncture points around the ears, and this calms the nervous system.

Dr. Jacques MoraMarco  28:40

Yeah, so the index finger is on the mastoid here,

Manon Bolliger  28:43

right,

Dr. Jacques MoraMarco  28:43

and the middle finger is on the tragus.

Dr. Yun Kim  28:46

Yeah,

Speaker 2  28:47

and

Manon Bolliger  28:48

yeah,

Dr. Yun Kim  28:49

recommend that. And patients love it, you know, it’s not just one thing, you know, sleep hygiene, and it’s, oh

Manon Bolliger  28:55

yeah, there’s

Dr. Yun Kim  28:56

hiding the mind, and yeah, putting your locking your phones in the safe, someone, someone was sharing a hotel room with his cousin, and he was on the phone, so he locked his phone in the safe,

Dr. Yun Kim  29:09

and

Dr. Jacques MoraMarco  29:11

it was a time change, so I was up in the middle of the night, put in the safe, and that was it, you know,

Dr. Yun Kim  29:18

yeah, your phones away,

Manon Bolliger  29:21

yeah, but I do, I do find that it’s helpful sometimes when you give, you know, there’s a little routine, you know, whether it’s closing the blinds, you know, like you say, you know, putting phones away, self massage, you know, I mean, these are all, you know, things that tell the body that you, you, you’re meaning business here. He won’t sleep. Yeah,

Dr. Jacques MoraMarco  29:45

yeah. So, the circle walk in our book would be one of the walks you might want to do before.

Dr. Yun Kim  29:51

Okay, because

Dr. Jacques MoraMarco  29:52

it’s self-reflection. It’s a calming walk, it’s a patterned walk.

Manon Bolliger  29:56

Okay. So, you have a copy of your book. Right, that handy. Yeah. Do you mind showing everyone? Okay. Great. Walking away, perfect. And, and is it available on Amazon or

Dr. Yun Kim  30:10

your website at Amazon at Indie Bound for some of the folks who want to patronize independent bookstores, Target, Barnes and Noble,

Dr. Jacques MoraMarco  30:23

and also it’s available in the audio version and Kindle, and even like a spiral version, so they, you can have a workbook here, so in different countries have different availabilities, so depending where you are, certain aspects of it are available, just maybe some of it is just the audiobook and the written book, the paperbacks coming out, so depending on the country, like in Australia, the paperback edition just came out yesterday,

Dr. Jacques MoraMarco  30:54

they had the audiobooks before,

Manon Bolliger  30:56

so we, our time is up, it’s already half an hour, it’s goes so quickly, but your, your goal, why don’t we speak a little bit about that, and and then we’ll leave it with that.

Dr. Yun Kim  31:10

Great. Well, I’ll, I’ll end this session with my favorite quote from the Yellow Emperor’s Classics, which is the foundational text for East Asian medicine. We quoted the beginning of our book, it says superior physicians do not cure diseases, they prevent diseases. So, treating a disease after it’s risen is like casting weapons when the battle has begun, or digging a well when you’re thirsty, it’s too late. So, really want to emphasize the concept of prevention that’s the highest form of medicine, and so we want to start these practices when we’re relatively young and relatively healthy to prevent what’s to come in the, in the future. So it’s important to start now and begin where you are, you know, just, just start with the mudra. I always say,

Manon Bolliger  32:03

yeah,

Dr. Yun Kim  32:04

if you feel like you have physical limits, just start with the mudra, one block around your apartment or your house, and you build from from there.

Dr. Jacques MoraMarco  32:12

Yeah, and I just want to end with this quote from our chapter five on the animal walks for tachy for balance. He says, What is the aim of Tai Chi Chuan practice health and vitality and eternal spring? That was from a great teacher from last century.

Dr. Yun Kim  32:28

Okay,

Dr. Jacques MoraMarco  32:29

so health, vitality, eternal spring.

Manon Bolliger  32:32

Well, thank you very much for sharing this knowledge and practical tips that people can do. So,

Dr. Jacques MoraMarco  32:40

thank you for having us.

Dr. Yun Kim  32:41

Thank you.

ENDING: 

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