Standard American Movement Diet
I’m four days into sitting on the couch and sleeping more than doing anything else.
No jiu jitsu gym.
No wiggling around on the floor.
Except to pet Maggie dog.
As much as I hate non-intuitive movement, I turned to Instagram and someone sharing “do these three hip movements 3 X 8 (3 sets of 8 per side) to actually get me to do something.
https://www.instagram.com/reel/CpsOq2TDYLH/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=
Vernon Griffith has one of my favorite and few only-movement accounts I still follow online.
From there my spine and ribs and all the juicy muscles around there were crying out for attention too.
Please squeeze me! And release me! Our cells don’t know how to function without regular squishing and release!!!
So I did some more.
It just takes one movement to make another one pop up and then you feel way better.
The statistics on American physiques are not good.
One thing I admired about Robert was surely his. He’s one of those lanky guys with no body fat who looks like a rock climber no matter how much pizza he eats though. Not to give his metabolism too much credit, he has an active job and an even more active hobby and an obsession with keeping the lawn and roof clean - by himself.
Something like 80% of Americans are in a bad way.
We’ve dropped in so much convenience and swung the needle over to coddling so hard that most people’s bodies are for sure trying to get across that they feel like shit, but the language is so foreign they may as well be making it up and the mind is not computing what they say.
Your health depends on moving more!
You wouldn’t believe the number of bodily functions that movement takes care of, and often gets people off of medications with regular progress.
Is it more complicated? Yeah. But it’s also not.
More movement will improve health.
Even if it sucks at first.
Even it’s following someone telling you what to do with your body. Even if it’s a yoga class 😝
Here’s some principles to begin with:
It doesn’t fucking matter what you do. The best exercise is the one you will actually do, so focus on fun. Or focus on a goal. Or a fun goal, even!
If it starts to hurt, ask some questions, look up alternatives, and don’t let anyone scare you into thinking you shouldn’t do it, you just respect your body and work your way back up there with time, maybe more than you meant it to.
But that’s ok, because you’re winning if you’re moving.
I’m a crazy person. I’m also lazy.
I want to construct an environment where movement is less of an “option.”
No furniture, only pillows on the floor.
Floor bed.
Keeping some things manual when tools exist for them. Just some.
Hobbies that keep me moving, like jiu jitsu. Getting up and down off the floor my whole life means I will never fear falling on the floor needing Life Alert because my body doesn’t know how to get up from there.
Regular check ins with my body about any turns we need to take so I can keep enjoying things.
I bet that if you do a few twisty movements, you’ll want to do more of them because it’ll fucking feel good. Twist something right now. Twist your foot. Twist your arm. Then the other way. Good.
Your body will lead you to some weird shit if you let it. And it only starts with doing one thing before another thing pops up and also feels good, and then you’ll feel amazing.
Short term immediate goals: move one thing in a way that feels good and let it lead to the next.
Long term goals: be prepared to do this each day. Every day.
We used to walk for miles each day, bend down, use rapt attention, and have no tv to save us from deep interaction with our surroundings. For the majority of human existence our physical functionality was taken up by our need to move to live.
If you feel like shit, you will feel better if you move more.
One more thing - if you immediately have some voices in your head telling you you can’t or trying to instill fear in you when you try -
1. Shaman hack - wash yourself in white light and send them on to The Light.
2. Meditation hack - just let em be there and keep moving as the observer who knows you are not those thoughts, you’re the thing watching the thoughts.
Move to live.