Movement is more than just exercising. Movement is life. Did you know that there’re ways to move to get more energy?
1. When we move our spine we boost our brain and elevate our spirit.
2. Thinking and moving like animals can help us move more efficiently and conserve energy.
By watching and visualizing animals move, our nervous system can remember our primitive inheritance
Move with poise and pleasure
It’s not a secret that Pilates exercises derive from natural movement. Toddlers, nature, and also animals. Amy Taylor Alpers, our teacher in Boulder loves using big cats imagery in her classes. Because of the way they move with grace and speed. She uses Cheetah imagery to teach us how we can also move with more ease and less tension. We embody all the kinds of animals. And animals are our real ancestors. We carry a history of life within us. So if we’re animals at the base, then we should be capable of moving like an animal. Leaping, hopping, stretching and undulating just as they do. So why not!
Because above all, the key point that Joseph Pilates made when he related to animals is this. : Animals do not have diseases and don’t get sick and they don’t bulge their biceps to stay healthy. ( read this hilarious article by Joseph Pilates)
This means that it should be easy for us to create fluidity and ease of movement inside ourselves. And that should be more important than building oversized muscles. How? By watching how animals move our nervous system can remember our primate inheritance – moving with freedom, ease and grace just like a cat.
Focus on small movement for bigger strength
While we have lost some of our basic animal instincts when we evolved to humans, there’re ways to gain some of them back.
I was watching this documentary call our Inner Fish. While dissecting a hand from a human cadaver, Dr Neil Shubin mentioned something that struck me ” The fine muscles of our hands, these tiny little muscles that lie along the tendon. These are the muscles that control the fine motion of our fingers. These are the ones that are quintessentially primate and human.”
And this is true to every muscles group in our body. This reconfirms what we’ve been saying already, toning smaller muscles have more impact on our health than larger muscles on overall. When we train those little muscles our body becomes stronger and more balanced. And there’s no need to bounce up and down for that. All we have to do is use our brain while moving. Here is how.
As you lay down on your back shut your mind off from noise and concentrate. This is key to awaken deep muscles that support our entire body. Be quiet inside your mind and sense the muscles that are moving even if you don’t feel it at first. Act as if you do. Picture an animal. I love octopus, the way it moves it’s eight limbs with control.
Your challenge this week is to find an animal of your liking. For one week you gonna try to think how it would feel like to move like an animal. Can’t wait to see and hear which animal you’ve picked. Try it and let see what happened!
