YOU ARE HOW YOU MOVE: EMBODY YOUR BODY WITH AWARENESS

I’m turning 50 this year and feeling pretty fabulous!  My relationship with my body wasn't always as positive as it is today, though.  In my 20s and early 30s, I struggled with chronic, debilitating low back pain and terrible migraine headaches - afraid of my own body; the pain it caused me and afraid that I would never find a way out of pain.  

On the road to healing, I encountered a lot of brilliant teachers, and learned 5 very powerful lessons that transformed my relationship with my body and liberated me from pain. These lessons, rooted in the synergy of movement and mindfulness, have become my guiding principles for continuing wellness.  And I want to share them with you in the hopes that they will help you live better in your body too.  

LESSON1: EVERY MOMENT IS MOVEMENT
To explain this concept, I give you the brilliant biomechanist and movement teacher, Katy Bowman. This is a video promo for her book, Move Your DNA.  

Every moment is movement.  We can overdose on certain movements, like sitting, and under dose on others, like running, lifting, climbing or squatting. For many people, pain and dysfunction set in simply because we do not move enough or we're not getting enough variety of movement in our lives. 

My pain was definitely due to a sitting overdose.  When I really *got* that the movement choices l was making were the cause of my pain, it lead to me to make radical changes.  I began phasing myself out of my desk job and started a transition into teaching movement full time.  As a direct result of moving more and sitting less, I resolved my pain problem. This is because...

LESSON 2: HUMAN BEINGS ARE DESIGNED TO MOVE

We’re living in an age of unprecedented sedentarism. As a species, we’ve never moved less. And that’s a problem - because human beings are designed to move.
One of the basic principles of biology is that: structure dictates function
And if you look at the structure of the human body – the bulk of it is dedicated to movement.  

This structure of our bodies evolved in harmony with the environment we lived in for millenia -  which is nothing like the environment we are living in today.

Bodies evolved to move through ‘the wild’ to get the things we needed for our survival – to gather food, build shelter, find a mate, chop wood, carry water, climb trees, and run to chase down a water buffalo for dinner - or run away from a water buffalo for safety. We moved all day, every day; not just for 30 minutes on a treadmill 3 times a week.

We’ve created a world we no longer need to move through to survive in. As a result,  many of us move very little.
We no longer have to chop wood or carry water, we can just turn up the thermostat and turn on the faucet. That’s left us with a problematic mismatch between the way our bodies have evolved to function optimally and the ways we’re using them.

We’ve outsourced movement everywhere in our lives – right down to the chairs we’re sitting on.
Chairs are a form of technology meant to make our lives easier – but they’re not really saving us from anything  - except having to use our postural muscles to hold ourselves up.  And that's what most conveniences really do - save us from having to move.  But the fact of the matter is that we need more movement in our lives.  Not less.

This is why exercise was created. To re-introduce the movement we’ve outsourced to technology but that our biology needs to function optimally.

We literally have to go to an exercise class to learn how to push, pull, and lift things; to learn to use our postural muscles or engage out glutes because modern technology has rendered us unable to perform the most basic human movements.

We’ve known for a long time that we are designed to move and that exercise is good for our health. Recent science has done a lot to further our understanding of WHY and HOW this is so.  It turns out that skeletal muscles do more than move us, they are actually endocrine organs that secrete healing biochemicals into your bloodstream when you use them. 

This leads me to...

LESSON 3: MOVEMENT IS MEDICINE
Stanford Health Psychologist, Kelly McGonigle explains

Here's a quick recap:

Myokines can:

• Kill cancer cells
• Improve immune function
• Improve gut function
• Lower heart rate and blood pressure
• Lower blood glucose levels
• Improve brain function
• Improve bone density
• Decrease anxiety and help you recover from depression and grief

And that’s just a short list. The research on myokines is inspiring and astounding. 
This understanding helps you to...

LESSON 4: EMBODY YOUR BODY WITH AWARENESS

Central to my journey to wellness – and to yours – is being aware of how you use (or don’t use) your body and the effect that has on your biochemistry, mood, and overall health and well-being.

Repeat after me: ‘I embody my body with awareness.’

Then make a practice of really paying attention to the way you move and the way you feel.  Make that connection and make course corrections as you go.

LESSON 5: YOU ARE HOW YOU MOVE

I’m a living testament to the transformative power of movement and mindfulness. By embracing these principles, I overcame chronic pain and cultivated a healthier, more harmonious relationship with myself. Along the way, I learned that movement is more than a physical endeavor, it can be a profound act of healing and self-care. 
As we navigate our modern world marked by sedentarism and disconnection, let’s reclaim our birthright to movement. Through movement, we can find healing and liberation—the freedom to embrace our fullest potential and embody the best versions of ourselves.