I’m mega anti-pilled on movement/exercise at the moment. I’m very non-coercive with myself in life right now and that includes “exercise” [shudder].
When I feel like it I dance, walk, stretch and swim in the sea, but none of those are “for” movement they’re for fun / for the body. I really want my day-to-day life to put demands on my body, rather than go to exercise classes, run, hit the gym, or whatever. Sadly modern life doesn’t have much call to moving a lot, but I try to move “for fun” whenever I am called to.
However, it’s good to remember that any type “doing exercise” that we do is to plug the gap between the ideal amount of movement needed for an ex-ape versus the amount of movement we as moderns actually get. But plugging that gap need not be arduous!
Then there’s “movement” when lying still. When bodyscanning I can encourage my muscles to be extremely twitchy or relaxy. Attention/imaginal/intention makes them move all on their own even though I look like I’m lying still.
I’m pretty sure I read a study that if you get athletes to “imagine” training instead of actually training, they experience 70% of the expected gains compared to the control group who are actually training.
Also I think part of this scanning work is about the importance of being energetically aligned and being breath-aligned. [I’m not great at this yet]. Exercise without this might actually harm, not help.
I basically think movement practices are a cope if they’re using up valuable coercion capacity, and somewhat not needed if you’re doing bodyscanning/imaginal/fun.
Reflecting more: I do a lot of “practices” but none on a schedule. I sit on the floor alot, I am playful with my body, I’m not sitting still all the time, although I sit still a lot. Perhaps I’m saying I have tried to go FULL non-coercive with every aspect of movement.
One more thing: inspired by the idea that the chemical reaction in muscles by default means they STAY contracted, and that this is what rigor mortis is…. and that a separate chemical process needs to occure to un-contract them, I’ve come to think that exercise is being taught wrong / ineffeiciently and that you should have intense movements followed immediately by shaking/breathwork. I’m not sure if this is repeatable within a very short time frame but early tests on my body suggest yes.
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