Re-Bodying: Movement and Play

I’m reading Full Catastrophe Living again. I don’t know how many times I’ve read this wise book, but every time, it makes me more awake and aware. The chapters on mindfulness of the body inspired this blog post. The author, Jon Kabat-Zinn, reflects on how the words remind and remember can be interpreted as re-mind—come back home to your own mind, and re-member—become a member of your own consciousness, and then he suggests we may need the word “re-body.”

Children and animals know: it feels wonderful to move around. It’s not natural to hold still and sit for hours. I recently took a trip to visit friends in North Carolina and in Georgia, and the long drive left me craving movement. My friends are walkers and yogis, not runners. Walking and yoga sustained me for a while, but by the last day of the trip I was craving full flight. My Atlanta friend brought me to a trail along the Chattahoochee, and she walked while I took off in an explosion of delight, faster than I normally run. The novelty of the trail added to my energy. I had no idea what was around each curve or over each hill, and had to stay one hundred percent in the present moment to dodge roots and rocks and poison ivy and still take in the beauty of the woods and water. The speed and surprises were part of my joy, along with the sensation of my feet connecting with the earth, the springy strength in my legs.

We don’t all take joy from the same things, but whether we walk, run, dance, practice yoga, lift weights, do tai chi or go ballroom dancing, it doesn’t matter. We’re designed to move. And when we find the movement that matches our spirit, it’s like coming home every time we do it. I like to think that people who say they hate “exercise” haven’t discovered the kind of movement that will make them happy. They’ve been made to do activities incompatible with their nature. However, somewhere in every human is that child who had to be told to hold still. That child loved to jump, skip, run, and climb. It was play. For me, that new trail was play, the game of finding the next footfall on an unpredictable landscape. Yoga is play in the field one’s self, exploring the organization and sensation of each asana, the interaction of the posture and the breath. After decades of practice, I still find even the most basic poses fascinating.

For some people, the word exercise takes the play out of movement. Years ago, I read a study on why women exercise and why they quit. Reasons for starting: weight loss and looking better. Reasons for sustaining exercise: the discovery that it reduces stress. Reasons for skipping exercise or quitting: time pressures and stress. In other words, movement reduces stress, but when women are stressed (and I would guess this is true for men, too) they tend to forego it, as if it were a luxury. It can feel like one, in either the negative sense of an extra that can be cut from the time budget or in the positive sense of deep pleasure. It can be a luxuriant sensation to move, to be fully embodied, present and in motion.

When I’m writing and the story gets stuck, I find that if I stand up and walk around, ideas come to me. It’s as if the stuckness of sitting starts to affect my brain, and the energy of movement clears it. Movement is as essential to mental and emotional health as physical health, but “it’s good for me” is the last thing on my mind when I’m enjoying a run or a yoga practice or just getting up from my desk and re-bodying for a few minutes. I’m playing, following my movement bliss. What’s yours?

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Image by Robin McConnell originally posted on Flickr