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I have been to Egypt but I didn't notice any unusual form of walking there. I guess the Bangles' song was based on the hieroglyphic depictions of the ancient pharaohs with bodies facing forward and their head and hands facing sideways. Their palms were bent at 90 degrees and pointed in opposite directions.
As I seem to be rapidly aging, I worry about how I walk. I don't walk like an Egyptian, but I do seem to walk like a penguin more and more each day. The effort to take long, forceful strides has diminished. I find myself content to shuffle along in a short, stiff-legged gait. That annoys Mrs. Pessimist, who thinks that I am just lazy. She gave me a link to a short video on proper walking technique.
It is a good video on how the elderly should approach walking. I found a wide, straight, dead-end street that is entirely shaded in the morning and is exactly one-quarter mile long. So now I time my pace and concentrate on proper form. When I feel a temptation to sway or shuffle, I slightly shorten but quicken my pace. It has increased my confidence about aging.
Speaking of penguins, I highly recommend The Penguin Lessons. On Netflix, I think.
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I don't have your difficulty, but I've been walking mornings for a long time. I fell twice; not sure if it was due to balance (I work on balance regularly), but I'm pretty sure that my stride was too long. I like the idea of big strides, but my body does not. Since I now walk quickly with shorter strides, I haven't fallen.
Good luck and enjoy your new regimen!
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Try walking like Groucho Marx. It's good for you.
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Or William Powell.
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Walking technique is important . The first rule of elder life, as I teach my patients, is Don’t Fall.
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Probably everyone here knows this already, but since I did not know it until @AmySchley told me about it (she used to sell shoes), I will pass it along. Get your foot measured for shoes in a real shoe store with one of those old-school metal foot measurers. She said that as we get older, our feet often elongate, which pushes everything up in the shoe from where it was when we were younger.
This was probably the most important piece of advice I've ever received. :) Sure enough, my feet were a whole size longer than they had ever been. That was why I couldn't find comfortable shoes. Now I can. That advice changed my entire life.
Getting a correctly fitting shoe enabled me to walk easily again after many years of frustration.
I cannot thank her enough. :)
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