Skills of healthful movement are fundamental to wellbeing

Movement is fundamentally necessary for our good health and longevity. If we stay sedentary for extended durations every day, we risk increasing ill-health in multiple ways. You may have heard this catchphrase, “sitting is the new smoking.”

In historical times, people were naturally moving around regularly throughout the day more than we are now. Our bodies and minds have not changed significantly since then. The shift to being more static, for many people nowadays, is partly because of modern lifestyle. The conveniences of modern times as well as the demands of work—to remain in one place and repeat a task, whether physical or intellectual—means that we do not need to move our whole body as much as we did in the past.

But we are simply not designed with the intent of staying static or repeating only a limited set of movements for long. Movement is protective and nourishing for the body and mind in many ways.

Movement keeps our tissues resilient. Without enough movement, tissues stiffen and weaken. This is itself sufficient reason to try to retain varied movement capacity throughout our lives.

Movement enhances circulation. Without the pumping of the muscles and the squeezing and relaxing of movement, circulation of lymph and blood in the capillaries and veins tends to be more sluggish. An important example is the increased risk of deep vein thrombosis (a blood clot in the deep veins) in the legs from sitting too long in a plane.

Movement improves mood. It is one of the simplest and most reliable measures to help with both low and high energy. Moving is one of the few skills that helps with both anxiety and depression, and indeed, in many psychological disorders.

Movement is a key pathway to unwind the stress response. The key manifestations of the stress response (fight, flight, freeze) are all intimately connected with locomotion.

Healthful movement does not have to take us to extremes—be too strenuous or unpleasant. But to move well does require a variety of skills practiced over time: awareness, strength and endurance, stabilization, alignment, mobilization, relaxation, and more.

The benefits of moving well, lifelong, are tremendous. But most of movement is patterned unconsciously in our nervous system. There are many options to exercise or do yoga. Whatever options we choose, we must cultivate knowledge and habits of good skills of movement, so that they becomes natural to us. Then we will be able to move well, lifelong, with ease.