As Emily ran past our group at the track, we all remarked at what beautiful running form she had. She seemed to float across the ground so effortlessly that you could hardly hear her feet touch down. The moment seemed almost otherworldly, and she became the role model for everyone in the class.

Emily is a 3-year-old whose parents were taking a ChiRunning class at the track that day.

Children run naturally. When they want to catch their friends in a game of tag, all they do is focus on who’s It, and their body just follows along. They’re not thinking about running. They’re enjoying the game of tag and having so much fun running that there is very little work going on. Since little effort is involved in their movement, there is little chance for injury. There isn’t any pounding in their joints or any tension in their muscles that could be the hot spots for pain to reside. How could there be, when their movement is based on fun and play?

Sarah Hughes, upon winning the gold medal in women’s figure skating at the 2002 Olympics, said, “I wasn’t thinking of a gold medal, I went out to have fun and a great time… All I wanted to do was skate my best.” It was easy to see how much fun she was having. Her sense of freedom and joy allowed the energy in her body to fill the arena, infectiously sparking the audience. On the other hand, Michelle Kwan, five-time world champion, was caught by the camera just as she was about to go on the ice. The anxiety in her face displayed the pressure she was under to produce a gold medal for her country. She looked anything but relaxed and playful. My heart went out to her, The tensions that she was carrying prevented her best energy from moving through her body, resulting in a performance below what she was capable or and landing her the bronze medal.

I would venture to say that most of us could run pretty easily back when we were in grade school and not feeling pressured to perform. But we have since lost that wonderful sense of ease. Like Michelle, we often have performance anxiety that makes us uptight and blocks us from feeling ourselves and doing our best. In order to regain this ease and joy, we need to consciously teach our bodies how to relax and move so that running can feel as effortless as it once did.

A great way for me to learn to relax has been my study of perceived effort level (PEL). Your PEL is the amount of exertion you sense from yourself. Let’s say that Joan is an average runner in decent shape. She does out for her morning run and puts in a few miles at a 9-minute-per-mile pace. She’s been doing it for weeks, and she has a distinct physical sensation of what that pace feels like. To her it feels like a nice, comfortable, easy pace. Then she goes to a party that evening and dances to some great rock and roll after having a couple of beers. The next morning she drags herself out of bed to run with her next-door neighbor, who also likes to run at a 9-minute pace. As they As they get into their run, she asks him how fast they’re going, because it feels like a bit too much. He tells her that they’re exactly on pace: 9-minute miles on the button. Meanwhile, she’s feeling like she’s hustling to catch a crosstown bus. Her legs are tired, she’s breathing like a freight train, and she’s not sure how much longer she can keep it up. Her PEL feels way higher that it was yesterday, though they’re running the very same pace.

Perceived effort is what you feel like you’re doing, regardless of what you are actually doing. The emphasis of Chi Running is to set yourself up so there are no energy blocks in your body. This means three things: maintaining good posture; keeping your joints open and loose; and making sure your muscles are relaxed and not holding any tension. If you’re practicing these, your PEL will feel lower than it normally does, at whatever speed you are capable of sustaining. As your running form becomes increasingly efficient, you will be able to run faster and/or longer at a lower PEL. There’s no reason why getting into great shape needs to hurt or feel strenuous, and there’s no reason on earth why it can’t be fun. As your ability to run well increases, so will your sense of joy. Likewise, as your joy increases, so does your ability to run well.

The ChiRunning technique will completely alter the way you approach running, because it combines relaxation with biomechanically correct running form. This book is designed to train your mind to focus and direct your movements so your body doesn’t have to work as hard. One of my favorite quote from Master Xu is “The body wears out… the mind lasts forever.”

A Sampling

Here’s a sample exercise that will give you a sense of PEL. It will help you feel the difference between using lots of leg muscles to move your legs (hard work/higher PEL) and using your core muscles (easy work/lower PEL).

• Set this book down and stand upright and tall.


• Walk in place for 10 seconds, picking up your feet.


• After walking in place for 10 seconds, bend over at the waist – like you’re bowing – and walk in place for another 10 seconds.


• Now straighten your body to the vertical position and keep walking in place for a few seconds.

How did it feel to “walk” bent over? How did it feel when you straightened up your body? Was it any easier?

Here’s what’s happening. When you stand tall and upright, your psoas muscle (pronounced “so as”) is stretched, and it acts somewhat like a rubber band to lift your leg when you walk in place. Those psoas muscles are some of the strongest core muscles in your body, working to lift the weight of your feet, which means there’s a large muscle group doing a tiny job. That’s why your PEL is lower.

When you bend at the waist, your psoas is collapsed, and you have to lift the weight of your leg with your quadriceps, which feels like more work. As you straighten up, your psoas is engaged, and the work of lifting your leg feels easy again. In this exercise, you should sense a lower PEL when you’re standing upright, lifting your legs, than when you’re bent over. If you sense that standing tall while picking up your feet is the easiest way to go, that’s because it is. This exercise is intended to give you a sense of how much harder your legs have to work when you’re not holding your posture in a straight line. In Chapter 4 I will talk about how to take your nice, straight posture and tilt it to lower your PEL while running.

Before I get into telling you more about how running will be easier, let’s talk about why you would want to run at all.

The Benefits

Let’s put it this way: I might sounds like a fanatic, but I love running. It’s like having an old friend that is always there when I need a lift in spirits. Once I get myself out the door, the world opens up, no matter how hemmed in or bummed out I might be feeling. I can call a friend to come along and explore a new trail or spend a morning cruising canyons and watching waterfalls. Running gets you outside, and if you run all year long, it does a wonderful job of keeping you in touch with the changes of the seasons.

You know what else happens while I’m out there having the time of my life? My heart gets stronger, my bone density increases, I burn a ton of calories, and my aerobic capacity improves. Not bad for a day of play.

It’s inexpensive and required minimal gear. You can run almost anytime and anywhere. And there is nothing like a good run to clear your mind and put life’s problems into a more sane perspective. When you travel to a new city, it’s a great way to learn the lay of the land and get an intimate feel for you new surroundings. One of my favorites; it’s a great way to cleanse my body of overindulgences.

You can also develop qualities from running that can be transferred into the rest of your life, like perseverance or consistency or willpower. Maintaining a solid running program teaches you how to set goals and work towards them, how to develop a strategic action plan, and how to use setbacks as lessons. In fact, there is almost no situation in your life that cannot be approached and handled from what you learn about yourself through running. Running can be a study of life itself.

Why People Get Injured

For all the good that can be gained from running, it is also fraught with many potential dangers to your body. It can damage your knees, hips, shins, and back. It can take its toll on your fee, and it has even been said to damage your eyesight (from all the jarring and pounding). People are led to believe that running inherently creates these injuries. That’s a myth I would like to put to sleep.

I believe the primary causes of injuries are poor running form and poor biomechanics. Running is a natural movement. Poor biomechanics cause you to move your body in an unnatural way, which leads to undue stress on muscles, joints, and ligaments; these areas then become vulnerable to injury. The most common theory says the primary cause of running injuries is overtraining. I believe this to be a myth as well, although it is a factor, especially in result-oriented training. If you have poor running form, you can injure yourself at any distance. I’ve seen people get shin splints after half a mile. When there is an imperfection in your biomechanics, it will eventually show up as an ache or pain. You need only run far enough, and each of those little imperfections will eventually take its toll on your body. I guarantee it.

The upside is, by improving your biomechanics and your running form, you greatly decrease your odds of getting injured at any distance or speed.

Paul, age 35, was an average runner who wanted to challenge himself to complete a marathon. The farthest he had ever gone was six miles, because every time he ran, his shins would start hurting in the first mile, to the point where they hobbled him. He came to a ChiRunning class in July, with a goal of running the Honolulu Marathon in early December. With the help of the ChiRunning technique, he was able to run all of his mileage upgrades while decreasing the pain level in his shins. After months of dedicating himself to his new running form, he was able to run his first marathon in 3:37 without the debilitating pain of shin splints. He told me later that he would not have thought it possible to complete a marathon before working on his form. Now he’s thinking of trying to qualify for the Boston Marathon!

I would attribute almost all injuries to the current paradigm of running, which I call power running.

This article is excerpted from ChiRunning by Danny Dreyer. To read more or to purchase this book, you can do so by clicking here.