NATURAL MOVEMENT

In the previous posts, I share how our lifestyle-changes within nourishment, toxic free home & personal care and meditation & sleep have improved our vitality and health problems including neck pains that I’ve had for years. If you haven’t read part 1, part 2, part 3 or part 4 yet, I recommend that you read those first.

In this final part, I’ll talk about how natural movement has helped me reduce tensions and pain in my neck. Natural and ancestral movement is about moving as our human body has evolved to move. It’s also about being less sedentary and moving the whole body instead of isolated parts like just your fingers on the keyboard or restricting your feet and toes in traditional shoes 😉

When we as a family learned this, we started walking more either bare foot or wearing minimal footwear and carrying more; like for example our shopping and our three your old son instead of using a stroller or driving the car. We also reorganised our home, selling our couches to facilitate more movement rather than accepting a sedentary lifestyle full of furniture that creates a development-crippling environment, that inhibits our natural movement. Additionally, we’ve installed a standing desk and ditched our bed pillows when sleeping. At the time our son was very young and we asked ourselves ‘why had we become so attached to sleeping with pillows?’ Why is it that as we got older we sleep with pillows, when babies and young children do not? Just like walking bare foot and wearing minimal footwear, we chose to transition over a period of time to become accustomed to, and build up strength in under used areas of our bodies.

Movement is much much more than exercise, every movement or position that you place yourself into will impact your body shape and adaption. This is why we need a greater variety of movement and positions during our day. You should think about “movement” on a cellular level impacted by loads, squeeze, pull and push from external and internal forces. I also think “movement” when my body and vascular system contracts when I go for a dip in cold water in the winter.

Now that you’re thinking about this, you can perhaps start finding ways to organise your own home and daily activities in ways that will support moving more and in a more natural way. Think about how you move, sit, stand, sleep etc and find ways to combine or “stack” your activities. So that you can incorporate more movement when you for example, do gardening and squatting forage for food when walking in nature, play with your kids and achieve more exercise and walking while carrying groceries by leaving the car at home when you go shopping.

Below, I list my ideas how you can get more natural movement into your day.

MORE:

Natural movement

Greater variety of movement

Walking

Balancing

Squatting

Carrying

Lifting

Crawling (foot-hand, knee-hand)

Hanging in our arms

Throwing

Floor-sitting

Barefoot

Minimal footwear

Gardening

Practical work around the house

Foraging

Processing your own food

Squatty potty

Furniture/ couch free living

Standing desk

Winter bathing or cryotherapy

LESS/AVOID:

Sedentary

Traditional footwear

Couch-sitting

Chair-sitting

Sleeping with pillow

Learn more about natural movement in NUTRITIONAL STACKING FOR YOU AND THE ENVIRONMENT, MAKE EVERYTHING FROM WALKING TO DANCING MORE ENJOYABLE and HOW TO MAKE SITTING MORE NUTRITIOUS

Learn more about how to reorganise your home to facilitate movement in IMPROVING OUR HEALTH BY SELLING OUR COUCHES

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