You can change your movement habits, no matter how old you are and what conditions you have, by starting to move more like how our bodies evolved to move.
Everything I do, feel and think involves my entire body. If my body is tense, I feel limited and wellbeing is just not accessible. How my body feels affects how I feel. How I feel affects how I think, how I think affects how I feel – around, around and back again.
We want to experience flow as much as possible. We want bodies that aren’t in the way of us – flexible and strong at the same time. Like bamboo in the wind, like kids playing catch.
Everything we do, eventually just becomes our life. You may be so used to being tense that you don’t notice the effects on your mood, feelings and thoughts anymore.
Remember how you felt as a child! Remember how your personality expressed itself in how you moved. How you experienced a wide range of emotions throughout the day. And how your mind could wander and imagine things freely.
Back to now. Is there room for improvement?
Inside my skin is water, blood, tissue, muscles and bones that adapt to my movements. My body has evolved to move in many different ways through a complex three-dimensional world.
If I don’t honor this, my body becomes stiff and immobile, creates excessive muscle tension in certain places and not enough activation in others – creating structural disharmony that becomes visible in my posture and personality. I move, act, feel and think no longer as freely as I did as a child.
Here’s a summary of the basic human movement patterns that our bodies have evolved to do regularly
° Crawl, walk, run and climb
° Sit on the floor and squat
° Twist, roll and bend the body
° Pull, push and carry things
° Jump and land
° Hang and support on hands
° Balance in different ways
° Defend oneself
You don’t have to do much.
A movement from zero to one minute a day is an infinitely big shift.
I often recommend clients who want to start exercising or meditating to start with one minute, every day.
One minute is easy to force oneself to do and the minute sometimes turns into several when inspiration takes over.
Something you do everyday becomes natural and easy for you. Like brushing your teeth.
