In Part 3 of the Story of Your Body, I discuss the impact culture has upon our movement via our ideas of health, sport, and exercise. I offer an alternative to these that is customized for you and walk through a simple exercise to become more aware of what your body wants and needs.
Meet your Teacher
Sydney NSW, Australia
Transcript
Hello, I'm Nathaniel Hunter and welcome to part three of the story of your body. In part one, We examined how a child might start to manage its behavior and how that overmanagement can affect us even now. In part two, We looked at the greatest detective story of all time, The case of how your management system came to be and how you might start uncovering and dismantling it. In this part three, I want to examine how culture affects how we move and the problems that occur with that. I also want to show you an alternative to the way we commonly think of movement and this is a way that's free of the strictures of culture and it's custom built for you and for no one else. Have you ever taken the time to watch children move? It's so beautiful. They can't help themselves. It's like they're so light, They barely touch the ground. Once they learn to walk, They want to run as fast as possible. They flap their arms around, They twist and turn. They've got no hesitation in dancing. If someone puts on some music, They talk to themselves as they walk, Imagining monsters or heroes or friends and interacting with them using their whole body. And they use their voices too, Because voices are part of the body. They scream and squeal and murmur and shout. They babble incoherently or they make up words to convey what's happening in the game. And then something happens. Somewhere around 10 or 12 years old, They slow down. Perhaps this happens even earlier if they play a lot of video games. Movement becomes organized via PE classes at school or weekend sport or maybe even going to the gym. At this age, We suddenly become afraid of looking foolish for just moving. The most natural thing in the world. This ability to move naturally and without hesitation, Fluidly, Following only our desire for pleasure in the body, We lose it. We no longer move simply for the pleasure of moving. So we get older and become adults and then we must move. We must move in order to lose weight, Get fit and get a nicer body and tone down, Bulk up, Improve our respirate, Lower our blood sugar, Improve our heart rate variability. In other words, It's all goal oriented. The only way we now feel comfortable moving is if we're working towards an achievement of some sort. Even if our body is telling us, I need to move. We translate it as, Oh man, I really need to get to the gym or to the yoga studio or out for a run. Have you noticed that there's very few Westerners who are moving? There's very few Western culturally appropriate ways we can move our bodies as adults. So dancing is one, But most men and many women of my generation at least need a couple of drinks before they tackle the dance floor. We have plenty of exercise regimes. Running, Walking, Going to the gym, Hitting the stepper, The rower, The elliptical. We might go for a bike ride or bushwalk or perhaps you're more adventurous and you like to go kayaking or rock climbing. Or maybe you do some yoga or are a member of one of the hundreds of sporting associations around. Maybe you play golf or tennis or soccer or perhaps you even garden. And there's nothing wrong with any of these. They're wonderful ways to move. But the point I'm trying to make is that this movement is curated. Someone else has created these movement patterns that we call exercise with a goal in mind. I'm saying that if the body is given a chance, It will move in a variety of ways that don't look like exercise or sport, That look a little like dancing or yoga. And it's inherently pleasurable simply because there's no goal besides movement. So here's a thought experiment to play with. Maybe you've done a bit of yoga. When you do a yoga class, The teacher will guide you through the postures like the tree pose and the warrior pose, Mountain pose, Etc. There are right ways and wrong ways to perform these postures. And the teacher's role is to show you the perfection of the pose. So when I do quote yoga, I may start with a known pose. As I tune into my body, My body tells me how long to be in the pose and where to take my body next. I might move into a position that you would never find in a yoga manual, But it's a place my body needs to be for a while. I can stay there as long or as little as I like, Always listening to my body. I believe that this is how yoga was probably originally performed. A yogi would teach the basic poses, But then at a certain point of proficiency, The student would discover the voice of her own body and begin to follow it instead. Our Western culture has such a need to codify. We need to have everything laid out for us with little room for experiment, Which is why we now have the structure of poses in modern yoga. We're so afraid of doing things wrong and we're so afraid of injury, Which actually is the right for you to have if you've stopped listening to your own body and the signals it sends. The problem is that now we need an outside source, An expert, To tell us what's right and wrong for our bodies. We need all our movements written down and taught with quote, Proper form, Because we cannot just move. We're no longer the experts of our own bodies. There's a regime of fitness and strength experts and sports coaches, Doctors and gurus who know the best way ever, The most efficient way to perform the movements that you're into. This is great to improve at a sport, But in order to simply move, Well, This is terrible. All sports inherently emphasize certain parts of the body and they understate others. And in order to use our entire body to get maximum health, Well, We have to move at all. But we have so completely given away our agency over our bodies that we no longer trust our bodies to tell us the right way to move. We don't even see any movement alternatives besides the sport and activities that we perform. Imagine being a toddler and somehow knowing every language on earth. Imagine that because of this, You were able to describe everything possible. You could describe time and space and abstract concepts in a huge variety of ways because of all the differences that are in languages across the world. Then you grow and forget. And now as an adult, You only know how to speak English. All those other languages that you used to move fluidly between, All those beautiful possibilities for expression and description, They're all gone now. And you have to move and you have to speak. They're all gone now. And you have only one mode of language. This is what we've done with movement. We start with every option as children. And as we grow, We lose and forget and end up thinking that the only way to move involves dumbbells or jogging shoes or a stretching regime from an expert on the internet. I once had a friend ask me if I knew a coach who would help her with walking. She wasn't sure if she was doing it correctly. Walking, The most basic movement a person can do, A movement almost all of us learn at about 12 months old. And she was questioning herself and her ability to do it correctly. Now, Have you ever seen a child ask an adult how to move? I'm a father. And when I've given advice on how to move, My kids run away. They have no need for experts, Not even from their own dad, Because they know that they are the expert of their own body. For some reason, We need experts to tell us about our bodies. But I contend that you don't. You own your body. You are the expert of your body. You need no one to tell you how to eat, How to move. Part of our current health crisis is because we don't listen to our bodies. We've shut ourselves off from the body and the signals that it sends when we're full, Or when we've eaten the wrong food for us, Or when we're sedentary, When we've sat on the couch for three hours, Binging on Netflix, Eating that big old bag of Doritos. Why is this? Well, Our management system from part one, Those muscular boundaries on our behavior, They muffle the messages from the body. Those important messages that tell us when we're damaging it, When it's hurting, And when it's feeling great. Your body, If you take the time to listen, Will tell you precisely how to live your best, Healthiest life. It tells you how to eat by giving you feedback on your food choices. It tells you how to move when we allow the body to move itself. It tells you how to live a good life by following your intuition, That deep sense of rightness that comes from deep body knowledge. But this is not an easy path. This is a lifetime task. This is not a free ticket to doing whatever you like. If you listen closely to your body, You will quickly become aware that it does not want to do whatever you like. It has clear limits and boundaries that your mind might not like at first. But the wonderful part is, If you continue to listen, Your body will continue to speak to you and will eventually convince you of the right way to eat, To move, To be. In the same way, Your body will not allow you to rush. It won't disinhibit anything it's not ready for. In the end, Awareness of your body is what counts, And gentleness. Be gentle with yourself and keep revisiting your body, Checking in. Here is a simple exercise that I really enjoy. If you're in a safe, Comfortable place where you're alone, Stand and start to feel aware of your body. Run your awareness through your body from your toes to your scalp and become aware of anything that wants to move. Slowly start to allow your body to move in the way that it wants, Following your body and your pleasure. There's no right or wrong way. You might quiver or shake or roll your shoulders or sway your hips. You might jump up and down or you might stand completely rigid. You may even find yourself doing some sort of pseudo yoga routine, But this is absolutely not the goal. In fact, There is no goal. The only rules are awareness and gentleness with your body and with yourself. If you feel pain, Stop. And you can continue for as long as you want until your body tells you that it's had enough. I hope that you've enjoyed this lecture and I'll see you in part four of the story of your body.
