Move your body in all the ways it can.
For the past few decades, we have slowly moved less throughout our days.
We being, the technologically advanced societies. We are born with a strong desire to jump, play, run, spin, in short, we don’t want to sit still. The truth is easy to find, ask any parent or school teacher about their young ones. The youngsters have to be taught to sit still, don’t jump on that, don’t run, don’t do this, don’t do that.
The problem isn’t that we want our youngsters to be safe or that they need to sit still and pay attention sometimes. The problem is that we don’t foster our youth’s desire to explore what they are physically capable of like we foster their schooling. Physical Education has become a joke, youth are taught once a week if at all. Recess is only for giving kids a break from their constant state of sitting, zoning into a tiny screen, and being bored to death. Our minds are nothing without our bodies and our bodies nothing without our minds. When one starts to rot the other is pulled down with it.
By the time we are adults, we have forgotten how to play without sports.
Most people get hurt playing their recreational sport. This is because no one is prepared for the high demands sport places on the body. Sports are a privilege to those prepared by daily movement, a ticking time bomb for those unprepared for the uncontrolled environment of the sporting field.
Going to the gym doesn’t help either. You either go to the gym to sit on a machine going in one plane of motion to try to lose weight or sit on a machine to gain bulk. The gym is a controlled environment, nice and safe, unlike the real world. You get in shape and lose weight, but forget how to move in the real world. And you feel like you are still out of shape. Or you gain a bunch of muscle and feel the same. You are humbled performing manual labor that someone half your size can do without breaking a sweat.
So what is the answer then?
Get outside, move your body in all the ways it can. Run in the woods, swim, climb, try something new. Lift odd objects, get out of your routine, stretch, dance. Stick to the basics that have served our fellow humans well over the millennia. What we are doing now is making us less human.
