Maybe your body doesn’t want what your exercise plan wants.
It’s interesting how we have intellectualized our movement needs, often in opposition to what it is our body is telling us. Movement, exercise, can so easily (and has in many instances) become an intellectual pursuit. We form identities around our activities- I am a runner, I’m a swimmer, I am a gym go-er- and become driven by aesthetic outcomes without allowing our movement choices to match our body’s needs on any given day.
I might have decided in advance that I’m going to run five times a week, but this body of mine might be communicating a different set of desires, a need for something other than those pre-decided ideas.
Something we might not hear because we’ve become so disconnected– or choose not to hear because of our attachment and addiction to the exercise cycles that help us feed into our illusions of control.
Adaptive, responsive, regulated nervous system desire and thrive on novelty, of the type experienced in movement.
A body who has been through the experience of fight flight, but who has been forced to sit all day, at a desk job or similar, will need a burst of high activity to burn off the physiological reality still coursing through their system.
A body in collapse or shut down needs support and movement that is gentle, consistent and functional.
We could be any of these on any given day. In the ideal world, movement matches the needs of the body, it’s not something pre-decided. It’s another way of honouring what is and moving from that place.
