Movement is Medecine
I’ve long believed in the power of kinetic energy. The simple idea that action leads to action, energy attracts energy and movement is a vital life force. The science now proves that moving our bodies has benefits far beyond our physical health and the evidence around improved lifespan is irrefutable.
Yet movement comes in many shapes and sizes. Are the repeated tasks of a factory assembly line as healthy as those of the postal worker delivering mail from street to street? Is a group fitness workout every week as beneficial as playing tennis? Well, the obvious answer is that it all depends. But what I do know is that they all beat sitting still for too long. Even sitting still has benefits to the mind, breath, and mobility in its own way and I’m a big proponent of holding a standing meditation but nothing is better than the act of cycling blood through your body with motion.
After all, we are essentially water beings and we all know what happens to water when it stays stagnant so why wouldn’t we model our lives around the ebb and flow of the ocean and other large bodies of water like rivers, waterfalls, shorelines, the deep sea and even the rain. I wonder what we might harness within ourselves when we intentionally find as many varying ways to experience the movement of water in our bodies.
Much has been written lately about the benefits of walking on creativity, exercising on mental health, sport on dementia, and staying active on lifespan. Unfortunately, those accolades are all attributed to improved cardiovascular, neurological and socio-emotional pathways and networks. We are yet to fully understand what movement might be doing to our minds and bodies at a cellular and generational level. Nor do we fully understand the full complexity of the relationship between movement and internal healing.
Intuitely I understand that movement is medicine because I feel better. I also understand that I was born to move so that I could hunt, gather, survive, reproduce, escape, build, play, explore and much more but maybe those actions were all designed to promote movement so that medicine was the outcome.
