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It is you who is deciding to do the walk because you like it and know that it will help you in various ways and senses.

The reason for this, the fundamental thing is that it is undeniable that for the mind to flow better the body must be in good condition, and what better than walking enough. The body is the support of the mind: Mens sana in corpore sano.

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This phrase has been used since ancient times until today, representing the indissoluble health binomial between body and mind.

And there is no doubt that walking is one of the means to comply with this maxim. Walking is healthy.

Let us then comment on how we can be a good walker.

As we have already mentioned in writing ALTERNATE VARIETIES IN THE TYPES OF WALK, there are several ways to practice walking, and all of them can be applied within the WALK-RWD system, with the fulfillment of certain characteristics that obey the type, the place, the equipment, and other elements for its practice and development. But regardless of that, the results are almost identical.

The qualifier “good walker” we use it in two scenarios. One of them, just as important as the other, is that it serves us as an effective and safe exercise, giving adequate results to improve our health, both preventively and correctively.

The other scenario is to make us like or passionate about walking.

As I said, both have the same hierarchy in importance and, if one of them fails the other could not be achieved. They are co-responsible and corresponding.

My personal experience about feeling the pleasure of going for a walk I mentioned in several previous posts, and fundamentally supported by the 3 structured activities within the WALK-RWD system, however, a subtle organization is also required to go for a walk and the condition physical and mental disposition to develop the variety of walking that we like to do.

The numerous benefits that we have mentioned, generated by walking, are enough to be a good walker.

However, these scenarios of health achievement, or that of the combination with reading, writing and drawing, are sometimes not enough to be passionate and motivate us to walk.

We know that walking is good for our physical and mental state; it prevents diseases, corrects them, and we can also improve our behavior and attitude towards society and within our work.

Anyway, my experience tells me that with all that knowledge we have about the activity of walking, which drives us to do so, it would be enough to transform us into an excellent walker. However, a high percentage of people do not feel like doing any type of walk. Let’s transform into a good walker. But how?

I will not repeat what I mentioned in the previous posts, about how to motivate ourselves to walk.

I will mention on this occasion 5 conditions by which some people are unable or unwilling to go for a walk:

1. That you have suffered an accident that prevents you from walking

2. That he is bedridden by a surgical intervention.

3. Suffering from angina pectoris, arterial hypertension or coronary stenosis

4. Arrhythmias with great difficulty breathing

5. High fever.

If you are not in any of these circumstances, then: What do you expect to do your walk?

Let’s not expect a medical prescription that prevents us from walking or being in a situation like the previous 5, to tell us how would I like to go for a walk! I would love to go for a walk!

Let’s get moving, because the good walker is achieved by walking.

Enjoy and have fun walking to be a good walker.

The daily adventure can be achieved by good walkers, who are those who walk every day.

The good walker is achieved through the awareness that he is not immersed in the 5 negative circumstances we have just listed, and that he can enjoy an outdoor walk, hic et nunc. (See writing THE “HERE AND NOW” WITH THE SYSTEM).

If this awareness manages to repeat it daily, for a whole month, it will have managed to be a good walker.

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In a previous writing I commented on the concept of symbolism (WALKING AND ITS SYMBOLISM), and also on a suitable model – a bit difficult – to know and familiar with the images that are generated in the unconscious, itself that I have titled thresholdism (DRAWING AND THRESHOLDISM, TO KNOW OUR INNER SELF) and finally I have expressed why we should devote some of our time to drawing (WHY AND WHAT TO DRAW FOR?). Now, I would like to suggest some ways and actions so that a person can GENERATE AND EXTRACT, in the best way, the images that he contains in his mind and can draw them. I could not call them techniques, because they are only oral, mental and physical mechanisms. Namely:

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1. Repeat a word -or phrase- as for example “draw”, as many times as necessary, until we can block the words, reach the mental limit where nothing verbal is contained. This is nothing more than using the known “AUM” technique, repeating this sound so many times until verbal thoughts are completely eliminated.

2. We well know that striving to attract something to our mind, it rejects or hides it. If the previous form (paragraph 1) does not work properly for us, then we can use what Viktor Frankl called “paradoxical intention”. For example, to repeat ourselves: “I don’t want to draw” and we probably will succeed, that is, we can attract graphic images, dissociated from the verbal.

After a few minutes (15-30 or less), the resulting symbolic visual ideas can be expressed a) orally, b) through drawings or c) in written form. All of them should be drawn according to what has been visualized: Project on a paper the symbols that have appeared in your mind.

Very early on, when the human being began to speak, to emit his first words, he only had in his mind symbolic images; therefore, perhaps drawing was our first structured artistic language, a kind of symbolic language.

One way to draw while walking is, using the right lobe of the brain because it is the creative one, transcribing the images caused by walking reading and/or writing to a drawing block -Sketch pad- Any image that comes to mind, however simple, ridiculous or grotesque it may seem, we must draw it on paper.

The symbols that each person uses to represent their ideas or any thought, is unrepeatable; it is different in each individual, although they may contain similar features in their symbolic graphic manifestations.

In general, these images are far from the aesthetic and in the beginning are unintelligible, however, they always contain encrypted information that makes it easier, many times, to better understand what the human being encloses and represses in his interiority.

These symbolic ideas that are generated in our unconscious and that emerge to our consciousness, as images, apparently incomprehensible, difficult to express orally, complex to explain, allows us to obtain different descriptions: representations of our way of feeling , regarding ourselves and the outside environment.

In the case of our comprehensive walking system, each walk can be started with an objective in mind, from which we want to obtain some related images; and, if we also have a book or document that talks about that topic from which we wish to obtain some images, let’s take it with us. The actions we can perform are:

1. First of all, use some element to encourage the creation of images, for example, reading an attractive book (essay, poetry, novel, etc.), which is related to the subject from which we want to extract images from our unconscious.

2. Keep in mind the theme or issue to be represented by graphic, visual, non-oral images. We can always facilitate the process by dividing into subtopics, both in written and graphic images.

3. Define some topics or words that are related to the fundamental theme.

4. Try to rationally define, at the beginning of the walk, some visual-graphic symbol of the schematic abstract type, trying not to use any words.

5. Allow the mind to generate those images for each of the topics or the fundamental theme, as the walk is made, either reading and/or writing.

6. The images created in the mind, whether voluntarily or not, are pristine representations of each individual, which are created according to their essence and form (psychological structure).

7. Respect the essence of what the symbolism drawn from the mind represents, since it is primary and fundamental information of the interiority of each being.

8. The images that are thus transcribed to the paper must maintain their simplicity or complexity, as well as their colors.

9. It is also recommended that the images be transcribed to the paper at the precise moment they are generated in the mind, during the walks either reading, writing and drawing.

We must keep in mind that these images can be forged during reading or writing. I believe that the most effective, immediate, comfortable and economical way to feed the imagination is by reading and writing. As I recommend in reading and writing, through an analogy (Manual for walking reading, writing and drawing, pp. 45-54), I advise In the case of drawing. What type of reading is acceptable for this? You yourself will discover and know what type of reading that encourages your drawing creation, following the recommendations and indications above.

A good warm-up practice to directly invite our unconscious to generate images so that we can release the hand better by drawing, is to make quick sketches of what we observe, while walking; with a frequency of 3 or 4 of them in a span of 10-20 minutes.

This process is reversible, back and forth. In my experience it has happened to me that writing feeds my paintings and at the same time, after months or years, that painting inspires me a poem or some story; in fact, some of my sketches that I have developed during my walks I have used in some novels, specifically, there are several that I am using at this time in the realization of my novel Dialogues in a place of La Mancha.

Despite this, the important thing is to point out the force that exists in the reading that drives the unconscious to recover part of what has repressed the conscience and that it exposes as graphic images.

Finally, let’s remember and keep in mind that this process is an engine to revive sensitive images (which are introjected through the senses) produced by previous perceptions, by reproductive imagination and inspiration, and that within us (unrepeatable and personal) they generate combinations of all these images captured to give rise to new image units, and which are extracted outwards by our creative force. It is therefore also important to use the system Dintornism (*) for the interpretation of symbols in plastic creation (to understand and interpret the images that are generated in the unconscious), as well as referring to the thresholding (See writings: DRAWING, TO KNOW BETTER OURSELVES and DRAWING AND THRESHOLDISM, TO KNOW OUR INNER SELF) to know our inner self, it is a heterodox way of knowing our particular fantasy and our ability to build graphic images (also mental) based on real and imaginary impulses.

Let’s walk and draw while we walk.

(*) LoyaLopátegui, Carlos, Dintornism. A plastic-philosophical theory of reality, Emulisa, Mexico, 2012. Available on Amazon, Kindle Edition: https://www.amazon.es/dp/B0D6C18SS9

(*)LoyaLopátegui, Carlos, The Dintornism in the Plastic of the Ancient Mayas. Emulisa, Mexico, 2015.

LoyaLopategui, Carlos, Dialogues in a place of La Mancha, EMULISA, México, 2019: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CJ3BW1T1.

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In my book “The Mayan Arch Route” (2010), I present 10 different routes (tours) through which its inhabitants in those times communicated and moved from one village to another. Each route was, in Mayan antiquity, defined by white paths (in Mayan Cuxan-Sum or Sacbé: sak, white; bej, path).

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The lengths of these 10 white path journeys (Sacbe’ob plural Maya of Sacbé) vary and in its development that we present, we find several villages, which in their time looked splendid Mayan arches, always preserving their “baying” style, with different shapes and sizes.

These road networks are truly “Wonders of the World.” Unlike the Roman roads, the white roads were not defined to go to a hegemonic center, as were those of the Roman Empire, but they obeyed the strict communication needs for the flow of people and goods, between all peoples and housing centers of this nation. Its construction system, as we can see in the following images, was basically based on the supply and functional placement of Sascab (in Mayan Sahkab: white earth).

One more of the outstanding elements of the Mayan region was this system of communications through white roads. Eric Wolf comments in his book Peoples and Cultures of Mesoamerica: “Cobá is the oldest theocratic center in northeastern Yucatán; its origin dates back to the year 623 of our era (…) It had sixteen roads, 15 feet wide that connected the city with the surrounding centers. The longest road was about 60 miles and linked Coba with Yaxuna, not far from Chichen Itza. ”

These roads were built with sascab or saskab (in Mayan Sahkab: white land), which is a material that abounds throughout the Yucatan Peninsula, coming from limestone rocks, a kind of road with a width that varied from 13 at 33 feet, same that started and ended in Monumental Arches. It represents part of the architectural urban conjugation that was carried out by locating those majestic arches at the entrance of each of these ceremonial centers, which were communicated with these white paths, and that had a spiritual symbolic meaning. All this that the Mayan culture did was extremely great and one thing that we must keep in mind is that those GREAT WHITE ROADS always linked MONUMENTAL ARCHES and that fundamentally symbolically meant the routes that the ancient Maya made in those lands of the New World

For informational purposes, the Mayan arch is located exclusively in the Mayan region and is originally from this culture. It is a structure built with stone ashlars on both sides of it, which are joined towards the center until they are closed at their highest point in a shotstone or also called a keystone. It is an arch of the cracked type, so it is also designated by this name. Regarding its geometric layout, we can identify the Mayan arch, according to its different geometric shapes, with a dozen of the types of arch that are handled in the current architectural environment. The so-called Mayan vault or “saledizo” uses the same construction principle. Referring to the symbolic meaning of the Mayan arch with the white path is explained as the spiritual passage from one state to another that places the being in a new sacred space.

This cultural architectural artistic binomial “WHITE ROADS-MONUMENTAL ARCHWAY” of the ancient Maya allows us to lead ourselves through a spiritual path that crosses a time portal to enter the different moments that ancient people had to travel in their daily journeys, as well how to cross each arch as spiritual thresholds to use them in such diverse artistic and constructive uses.

The sacbe (sak: white, bej: path) is a divine symbol that in the Mayan worldview represented the union of the Earth with the Sky, a clear hierogamy. The white paths or sacbéoob were symbolic representations of the trajectories of certain astral bodies (astral symbology) and the Ceremonial Centers themselves, which may have been defined by this astronomer people, in attention and representation of some stars. Coba may have been a Cosmic Center where a greater number of astronomical routes affected, since a large number of these white roads converge on this site.

At present, some of these wonders have been rebuilt, retaining their original traces, and can be used to walk, walking as the ancient Maya did, important parts of the archeological regions, which are truly a very important cultural legacy for Humanity.

DEVELOPMENT OF WHITE ROADS AND CONSTRUCTION ASPECTS

The development of white roads in the Mayan region, progressively took place over time. Initially they were built to serve within the same ceremonial and residential centers, that is, between the same buildings that made up those centers. This first stage was generated in the period of 250 B.C. at 250 A.D.

The next stage took place between 250 and 600 A.D., giving rise to white roads that linked several ceremonial and residential centers, including their planted areas.

Finally, there is the stage of the great and extensive white roads that unite the main housing centers of the Mayan nation, a stage that occurs between 600 and 800 A.D., and that they remain that way until the bloody conquest of the Spaniards.

The most widespread construction section was the trapezoidal shape, as shown in the following figure:

The lengths of both sides varied according to the terrain and the technical needs of the roads themselves.

Of course, it depended on the situation of the topography of the terrain that the sections varied, however, the following in importance was the triangular shape:

In one of the most important cities, Chichen Itza, these white roads connect the Central Ceremonial Square with the Sacred Cenote.

In Labná it connects the Building “The Palace” with most of the buildings in the southern part of the ceremonial center.

In Dzibilchaltún, there are three white roads. The first communicates the Grand Ceremonial Plaza with the “7 Dolls” building, which has a distance of 1,500 feet; the second connects Gran Plaza itself with the group of buildings in the South, with a development of 2,500 feet; and the third, also communicates to the Grand Plaza with the group of buildings of the West, with a development of 4,000 feet.

The second stage was developed practically throughout the Mayan region that covers 135,000 square miles (*), equivalent to the surface of Germany, or 3 times Portugal, or the same as Italy.

The third stage is officially conformed, according to its great distances, in 5 regional systems. These systems can be clearly located in five regions of the Yucatan Peninsula: the most important because of its length that reaches 62 miles, on the way, the white Cobá-Yaxuná road, with an average width of 33 feet, located in the eastern part of the Yucatan Peninsula, from which other roads of the second category depart. The next white road in importance is the Aké-Izamal, which has a development of 18 miles and in some of its parts has a width of 40 feet and 13 feet at other points of its development, located in the central part; the third and fourth have the same distance of 11 miles, one is towards the north central part, the Uxmal-Kabah, and another is the Ucí-Cansahcab, located towards the north-eastern part; finally, the fifth, Cobá-Ixil, with 12 miles of development, in the eastern part.

This system of the great white roads are those that in modern times have been able to properly point out and rebuild in part. Huge distances can be traveled walking along these white roads of the Mayan nation. All the journeys take us to that ancient era and its great architectural skills and technical capabilities can be observed directly in this type of constructive development, as well as in the great pyramids and the excellent Mayan arch, in its different artistic varieties.

Let us make an effort and imagine that we are traveling through these Mayan jungles with their white buildings and roads, or, we make a greater effort, and we dedicate a few days to vacation in those wonderful places, which will lead us to cross the threshold of time, practicing a MAGICAL TREKKING (Future Post MAGIC TREKKING. PART I).

Let’s not think about it anymore, let’s practice that MAGICAL TREKKING. There is no doubt that this region evokes magical passages that, in addition to implementing our WALK-RWD system, can be complemented with other attractions that give more form and sustenance to other collateral activities -in addition to reading, writing and drawing-, such as meditation, contemplation, emotional balance and many other aspects that please us when we are practicing the walk, that in these Mayan places are truly full of magic.

(*) “The Mayan people occupied, during the time of their major growth and extension (IV-X centuries A.D.), an immense territory located in Mexico and Central America, around 350 thousand square kilometers [135,000 square miles]. This area completely covered the Yucatan Peninsula and important areas of the States of Tabasco and Chiapas, belonging to Mexico; large areas of Belize and Guatemala, as well as a part of Honduras and a small strip of El Salvador. ” Loya Lopategui, Carlos, The Mayan Arch Route, EMULISA, Mexico, 2010, p. 14.

CULTURE OF THE FOUR SEAS

The Mayan nation is the only culture in the ancient world that, when it settled in its territory, was able to look out over four seas. We now call them the Pacific Ocean, the Gulf of Mexico, the Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, and all four are perfectly distinguishable from each other as they belong to different oceanographic formations. These formations include underwater topography, ocean circulation, water temperature, current patterns (with the Gulf Stream and the Atlantic Current). A difference between deep and shallower trenches, all with a wide expanse of abyssal plains. The Caribbean Sea, for example, has a smoother underwater topography compared to the other 3 seas. These characteristics influence and play an important role in the climate of the entire Mayan region. The 4 seas interact with the region and influence the temperature and weather patterns associated with each of the 4 seas. There is also a difference in marine biodiversity and ecosystems vary between the 4 seas.

The Maya settled in this region of southeastern Mexico to communicate with and through them, which is why we have designated it as the Culture of the Four Seas.

This nation developed significantly in all aspects, and from my personal point of view, the location of the lands that the ancient Maya chose were decisive for their cultural development.

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Walking is a natural exercise in humans, so no pre-heating is required. However, the following preheating exercises are recommended for any type of walk, although they are not essential.

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They can be done according to the needs of each person and the physical state in which they are. One only, two of them or several.

I have been asked for an exercise to strengthen the back, in this month of July 2020, and I gladly incorporate it into this preheating series, with the number 5:

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