walking lightly on earth
I’m over half way in my second pregnancy (29 weeks). It’s going really well. So far not much has changed. My everyday routine and lifestyle is the same as before I was pregnant. I can still move around fairly easily and there are no complications […]
Our three year old (soon to be four) hasn’t been given antibiotics so far. I’m truly happy for this because not only does the antibiotic kill the bad guys but also the good guys, that you benefit from every minute. I’m certainly not against antibiotics because […]
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
Squatting
Carrying
Lifting
Crawling (foot-hand, knee-hand)
Hanging in our arms
Throwing
Practical work around the house
Processing your own food
Squatty potty
Winter bathing or cryotherapy
LESS/AVOID:
Sedentary
Traditional footwear
Couch-sitting
Chair-sitting
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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MEDITATION & SLEEP Last week I talked about toxic free home and personal care and how it was the second lifestyle-change that my family and I made to achieve more vitality and energy. I also listed ingredients to use more of and ingredients and products to use less of (and even better […]
TOXIC FREE HOME & PERSONAL CARE Last week I talked about nourishment and how it was the first lifestyle change that my family and I made to achieve more vitality and energy. I also listed foods to eat more of and food to eat less of (and even better to avoid). If […]
After a 20 hour flight, I started feeling pain in my neck and in that moment I realised that I haven’t “felt” my neck in a couple of months. I can’t believe it, as for many years I’ve frequently suffered from neck pain. My mind was then trying to work out how I’ve healed my neck but I don’t think it can be traced back to one event but rather a series of lifestyle changes. So over a post series of another four posts, I will share, going through step by step, the lifestyle changes I’ve made.
Long and lasting change rarely happens overnight and the lifestyle changes I’ve made is more a journey, step by step, where the changes you make today build in the changes you’ve already made. I strongly recommend that you make the lifestyle changes in your own time but I would like to highlight the importance of keeping focus on the wish to make changes.
I’ve not only suffered from neck pain over many years but also lower back pain, which I’ve been free from for a couple of years. Alleviating my lower back and neck pain was a positive side effect of changing my lifestyle and our family have experienced many more positive side effects like:
I’ll go into detail about our lifestyle changes, which fall into four categories; Nourishment, Toxic free home & personal care, Mindfulness & meditation, and Movement. I’ll cover these four categories over the next four posts so stay tuned and don’t miss out as this could help you minimise or alleviate your neck and/or back pain.
If this post was valuable to you, I would be so grateful if you would share it with your friends and family.
Follow me on Facebook and Instagram.
Sign up for my newsletter that comes out on the four major moon stages – new, first quarter, full and third quarter moon.
