The Liturgy of the Feet

The Ghost at the Swing Set

I am pushing my daughter on the swing. Push. Return. Push. Return. It is a perfect rhythm of presence, or it should be.

But then I realize she has been saying my name for ten seconds.

I haven’t heard her because my phone is in my hand. I am physically standing on the woodchips, but mentally, I am trapped in the gravity of a single Slack message from work I just received. My brain is busy constructing the possible futures that this message could entail—catastrophies, confrontations, subtle shifts in status—or, it might also be nothing.

This is the work of The Fixer.

In my Internal Family Systems (IFS) practice, he is categorized as a “Manager” part, but he acts more like a smoke alarm that won’t stop screaming. He believes the rotation of the earth depends on his thinking and solving. He is constantly replaying the tape of the day, making up signals, and looking for patterns, all in a desperate attempt to protect me. He is a diligent worker. But he has taken over the boardroom, locked the doors, and refuses to let anyone else speak.

The Walk as Exorcism

About a year ago, my doctor told me I needed to start walking for my physical health. So I did. But while I started for the cardio, I stayed for the clarity. I realized I had to leave in order to return.

When I first start these walks, The Fixer does not quietly clock out. In fact, he gets louder. It feels like multiple managers are shouting at me, listing grievances, flagging risks, demanding attention.

But then, the magic of the physiology kicks in.

Through the process of walking—physically taking one step after another, the bilateral stimulation of left-right-left—I give those managers a chance to shout themselves hoarse. I don’t try to silence them. I just let them walk with me and listen to what they have to say.

And somewhere around mile one, the noise begins to settle.

I don’t know if I’ve tired them out or if the simple, rhythmic motion has disrupted something deeper—what neuroscientists call the Default Mode Network (DMN), that neural loop of self-referential thinking that keeps us trapped in rumination.

I realized that walking isn’t just movement; it is the mechanism of unburdening. It is how I gain awareness of when the Managers are speaking, how I set them aside, and how I finally, truly, come back to Self.

The Boardroom Reset

I used to think my inability to “turn off” was a spiritual failing. I now know it is simply biology.

The DMN I mentioned—that loop The Fixer loves to control—is actually the brain’s “resting state” that activates when we aren’t focused on a specific task. It is the brain’s Time Travel machine, responsible for ruminating on the past and simulating the future. In my internal world, the DMN is The Fixer’s office. It is where he paces, planning and protecting, constantly spinning stories about who I am and what is threatened.

The breakthrough was realizing that the DMN and the Task-Positive Network (TPN)—the network used for engagement and flow—are often mutually exclusive. You cannot be in both.

Walking is the cheat code. It engages the brain just enough—through spatial navigation, optical flow, and the rhythm of the body—to gently nudge The Fixer out of the chair. It doesn’t require the high-stress focus of “work,” but it demands enough presence to break the loop.

It is an act of bodily wisdom. I stop trying to think my way into peace. I simply submit to the reality that I am an animal who needs to move. I let my feet lead my head.

Dust and Divinity

But the walk is not just a biological reset; it is also a sacred reset.

When The Fixer finally sits down, the boardroom doesn’t stay empty. The silence I find at the center of my walk is not a void; it is a meeting place.

In the stillness of that rhythm, I often feel a profound integration. It is the sense that my spiritual life is not separate from my physical one. We often live as if we are just disembodied intellects, treating our bodies like basic transport for our consciousness. But walking reminds me that I am a whole creature—dust and divinity woven together. I cannot tend to my spirit while ignoring the vessel it lives in.

The anxiety doesn’t disappear because I solved the Slack message; it disappears because I remembered I am not a computer processing data. I am a soul in a body, and sometimes the only way to hear the Divine is to quiet the noise of my own self-protection.

Returning to the Village

The walk always ends at the same place: my front door.

But the man who opens it is different from the ghost who slipped out an hour ago. I am no longer vibrating with the phantom energy of a thousand potential futures. I am here.

The walk allows me to leave the battlefield of my mind and return to the sanctuary of my life. I walk back into the living room. The phone is in my pocket, silent. My daughter is there. And this time, when she speaks my name, I don’t just hear it. I answer.