Movement is a nutrient: Learn how embodied mindfulness can nourish you and your world

Movement makes your world go round – literally, your movement matters!

Your movement matters and as Bio-mechanist, Katy Bowman says, movement is a nutrient[1]. You know about nutritious eating, have you thought about nutritious moving?

Movement assures the healthy functioning of your various systems and supports homeostasis. Moving keeps you moving. When you feed yourself a balanced moving diet, you invite the ‘feel-good hormones’ such as dopamine, endorphins & serotonin to the party. You also boost your immune system, lubricate your joints and strengthen your bones. Who wouldn’t want that?

Nourishment lies in the quality of your movement as well as the act of the moving itself. Moving with embodied mindfulness invites you to feel more, know more and self-regulate. This cultivates a presence to the live moment, and after all, it’s the live moment that ultimately moves us all!

Every time you move, you change your perspective and open yourself to possibility. When you move, you gather information. So, if you want to figure something out, then move to work out the next move.

It’s well established that you need to move for mental, physical & emotional health. Movement is critical to your safety and survival - you’ve been doing it since you were in utero. You are forged in movement. Your cells move, your world moves - everything is moving all the time. Movement makes your world go round, literally. Your movement directly affects you and your world. As Bowman says:

You have a role in the ecosystem, and it’s not a static position at the top of a food chain as you were taught.  Your role is a dynamic one, critical to all the other living things on this planet (p.1)

The more mindful attention you pay to moving the more awareness you bring to your embodied interconnectedness and thus your impact in the world. This cultivates the conditions for responsibility and care - needed now more than ever, as we face the personal, social and planetary challenges of the 21st century.

3 key ways to cultivate nutritious movement:

Move with Mindfulness
Be present to sensation as you move, and feel your dynamic breath underscoring your moving.

Move with Curiosity
Notice the pathways & sequencing of your moving and how gravity plays with you as you move.

Move with Other
Keep other things & other people in your awareness as you move. Tune into your relationships and how your rhythm, touch and intention impacts.

Dare to move and be moved.

[1] Bowman, K. (2016). Movement Matters: Essays on movement science, movement ecology, and the nature of movement. Washington, DC: Propriometrics Press.

Learn how physical mindfulness exercises 'get you out of your head'

Are you someone who wants to ‘get out of your head’ and ‘into your body’ but don’t know where to start?

We hear you, and we’re with you. Starting is not as hard as you might think - you actually already have what you need, there’s just a little twist involved. Your head and body are not separate so ‘getting into your body’ is more about being in the whole of you. Rather than thinking about yourself in parts, which leads to experiencing yourself in parts, what would happen if you started to think of yourself as an integrated whole and approached things from this perspective…?

You are embodied and woven into your environments with others. You can draw your attention to this reality and experience the whole of you while going about your daily business through physical mindfulness exercises. Physical mindfulness is about growing your embodied presence.

4 key things to know when growing embodied Presence:

1. Your head and body are not separate.

   Your body includes your head. What we’re really hearing underneath this statement is a call for a different quality of being. So let’s take a moment to rephrase the statement - ‘I want to get out of my head and into my body…’
   How about: ‘I want to stop over-thinking and feel more’
   or
   ‘I want to be in this moment with everything I’ve got’
   Does that catch your sentiment? This way you have not cut yourself into parts when what you’re after is a more connected holistic experience. Let’s literally talk the walk.

   Learn more...
   

2. The Matter of you Matters

   People have no problem accepting that the brain is a site for knowing but it’s commonly not acknowledged that all our living tissue (our heart, skin, guts, blood, brain, nerves etc.) has capacity for unique knowing. Much of our attention is drawn to thinking - it gets a lot of love. When in fact your cells are a site of knowing - in fact the first to know so let’s give them some love. Growing your Embodied Awareness is about turning your attention to your living tissue, and the knowing that lies here in these cells. Taking time listen to this often non-verbal pathway of knowing is worthy of your attention. The matter of you matters.

   Learn more…
   

3. You are multi-sensory.

   Information comes to you in multiple ways through your senses.
   Try this… wherever you find yourself right now, take a moment to notice what information you are receiving from your senses - what can you hear, what are you touching - notice the texture, what shape are you making, what is the temperature around you, what can you see at the edges of your vision?

   This collection is merely scratching the surface of a cascade of sensory information coming to you in any one moment from your interior and exterior environments. Some believe we have over 30 senses. We can only be conscious of a small amount of this at any one time - where do you want to place your attention?

   Learn more…
   

4. Movement is a nutrient.

   Everything is moving. Nothing is fixed. We are fluid and immersed in an ever changing world. As Biomechanist Katy Bowman says, “Movement matters. Not just movement - your movement. Not only to your physiology, but to those in your family and your community. Your movement matters, not only to those you see on a daily basis and yearly basis, but to humans elsewhere, that you’ve never met. Your movement matters to the forests and bees in your local area…You have a role in the ecosystem, and it’s not a static position a the top of a food chain as you were taught. Your role is a dynamic one, critical to all the other living things on this planet.”
   

Bowman K. 2016, Movement Matters: essays on movement science, movement ecology and the nature of movement, p.1

Experience the transformative power of physical mindfulness exercises, try our 4 week introductory course starting soon…

Grow Your Embodied Presence

What are Embodied Practices?

Embodied practices are experiential and often non-verbal. They focus on what you hear, sense, touch, feel and imagine as well as what you say and think. All of your intelligences are engaged so that your action reflects the full scope of your unique insight & knowledge. This is how you activate & engage the life that animates you.

The health benefits of a regular moving practice that engages the whole of your sensory capacity are undeniable and now widely accepted.

Our work sits at the intersection of art, education & health. It is experiential, deeply therapeutic, creative and transformative. In this blog we regularly share our thoughts, experiences and ideas for building an embodied practice. We’ll also throw in some experiential goodies for you.

Movement, touch & sound are our entry points into the embodied practice process. Everything is moving always, sound ripples and reverberates through the human organism and makes known to itself the liveness of the cells. Picture how ripples move through water…

You can attune to your environment, the people around you and what’s going on personally, as you might tune an instrument for dynamic range. If you spend time noticing how you listen and then experiment with different ways to listen, you are proactively growing your ability to engage, connect, and be clear.

How do you listen?

Your ears are amazing, but they’re not alone in the listening landscape. There’s a whole lot going on when sound touches you. You can learn to actively engage more than just your ears when listening - it can become an embodied practice of sensing, feeling and imagining. You literally absorb the vibrations of sound through all of you.

Pop on some headphones or plug me in. Press the play button below & imagine listening through your skin, with your gut, your bones…

“Wholesome attunement replicates the optimal functioning of any living organism whose cells share information through resonance. Molecular Biologist, Candace Pert in her ground breaking work Molecules of Emotions, explains that hormones and neurotransmitters throughout the human organism communicate with each other through distinctive vibrational sympathies.” - Russill Paul

a lot happens when listening.

listen again.

change your position

change it again

and so on

Imagine . . .

What did you notice?
How does your moving affect your listening?