Movement is everything, literally, without movement you wouldn’t exist, nothing would exist. Everything is made up of movement! Even that solid chair you are sitting in is silently vibrating at a microlevel we cannot see with our eyes. It is movement that we are made off, finding stability far from equilibrium. Change, it is the only constant and the only thing you can do about it is moving along with it towards a more optimal state where possible. You can navigate your movement and steer it into your desired direction. This is where consciousness comes around the corner. It is through consciousness that we can navigate and make better choices.
Move from intention into action!
The movement that we are part of is not just mere randomness, it has direction, it is minded. The root of ‘movement’ stems from the latin ‘movere’ and ‘mentis’ which literally means ‘move mind’. Ever since the dualistic separation of Descartes many people have believed in the concept of a body and a mind as two separate entities. This worldview has had a tremendous influence on the trajectory of many sciences which excluded the mind all together and merely focussed on the matter as the subject of study. But more and more we have come to know that this separation is not true and provides us with a skewed view. We need to look at the whole picture. Our mind is embodied, we experience an embodied consciousness, mind and body both are the same, a complementary pair and can be described as the body~mind. Without the body no mind to experience the body and without the mind no body to live. Both are fundamentally connected.
More often than not, some form of movement is the cure for whatever you are battling with, whether it is dis-ease, a stiff body or a restless mind with a lot of thoughts. Various movement practices will help to get yourself into a more optimal state. The key is in learning what you need in which situation and how you apply it. When to find stillness in movement through a repetitive motion (going for a jog), what can the breath do to release tension, how to move your body in fresh and exciting ways to explore what you are capable off, how to finetune your specialism to enable better sports performance. This all can be a nice search in the process of optimisation. But whatever you do; Move often, move different, break the patterns, get unstuck and move your mind.
We are made to move in three planes! Howeverwhether most traditional strength exercises only move in one single plane (the sagittal) with up/down motions. Whether it is a lunge, squat or deadlift, they are all sagittal plane based. Overload is then created by adding more weight to the bar. Thus the movement becomes even more restricted and limited in other directions. Adding multi-directional movement to your training is the solution! Rotate! Perform exercises where it is needed to move through all three planes of motion simultaneously in order to perform the exercise well. This way you add life to your movements. It is essential for healthy movement with a healthy body.
Everything you do in life is training. If you lay on a couch you train laziness. What you do determines who you become. What you think and feel often determines what you do, but what you do also determines what you going to think and feel later. So hack the chain and start doing it and make that mental override if you don’t feel like doing it yet. Move your mind because we are made to move!
