Why Practice Movement?

Throughout most of human history our lives must have been filled with movement. There were no permanent buildings, no offices, no cars, no computers. We would walk on uneven surfaces, hike and climb from location to location, run to our prey and away from our predators, crafting and hunting and foraging and fishing. We would entertain and transmit knowledge not through television or YouTube but with dance and song and mouth-to-essence storytelling. Movement would permeate every moment of our lives like breath.

Now we live in boxes, fixed and unchanging. We work in boxes, by looking at boxes, and press on little boxes with our fingers. The floor is flat, predictable and safe. Food is brought to us (in boxes) and we munch away while captured by the device, digesting life-hacks by influencers who do not know or care about us. We do much of this sitting, forgetting the body even exists.

As romantic as it feels to imagine returning to our roots, it’s not possible for most of us. We were born into and are products of the modern world, right down to our DNA. We can’t put the proverbial toothpaste back in the tube. I also think it’s untrue to believe everything in our past was better. There are certainly benefits to modern living that would seem miraculous to our ancestors. Rather than try to replicate or ruminate nostalgically about our past, it’s more useful to ask: what can we learn from our forebears that can inspire and enliven us today?

Obviously I’m inclined to suggest more movement in our lives, but I think it’s worth expounding on why. In particular, I want to share with you some ideas on why movement and not fitness.

Contemporary fitness culture began around the 1970s and was formed out of political and commercial interest and influence. Aerobics and bodybuilding were, and still are, the primary modalities that most people associate with “fitness”. We generally agree that leanness, endurance and/or visible muscles are indicators of “fitness”. On the other hand, it’s not so common to describe strength, skill or flexibility as being the primary qualities of “fitness”. To the layman, a marathon runner is “fit”, a sumo wrestler is not. But why? What’s the difference? To be “fit” means just that, to be suitable for the circumstances (e.g. a square peg will “fit” in a square hole). As long as one is well suited to live the life they’ve chosen, they are certainly “fit”, however we don’t generally associate this meaning to the word. Something is missing.

Movement practice, on the other hand, is about maintaining the continuity of a natural evolution that began in childhood. Children organically develop their movement complexity as they age, and everyone is delighted by this. The first breath, the direct eye contact of a newborn, the baby learning to crawl, then stand, then step. The child learns to run and jump and climb and throw and catch and swim and cartwheel and handstand and flip and on and on and on. Then at around age 5 or 6 the great suffocating influence of “education” begins to stifle this natural, stunningly beautiful process as children are told to sit in chairs and listen for hours a day, only being allocated specific periods where physical movement is permitted. The child who can’t be sufficiently still is labeled pathologic and subsequently sedated.

I see practising movement as being about reigniting and sustaining the deep, organic and necessary drive towards physical expression and progressively evolving complexity that we all possess. It’s about reconnecting with the threads of our personal history, picking up the pieces from where we were before we were taught that movement is only for external purposes such as fame, entertainment, money and aesthetics, and not for ourselves. Movement is food for the soul. It’s about reconnecting with the deepest parts of ourselves, tending to the wounds caused by its absence and actively participating in a process of self-evolution that is our birthright.

This is why we practice and this is why I teach. Not to return to a past long gone, but to help sustain a living current to carry us forward to the future.

Keep moving,

 With love,

🙏🐒