Movement Practice (part 10): Instant Gratification and Exercise

And now, a less obvious critical juncture

When we think of instant gratification and exercise and their relationship with each other, the imagery that probably springs to mind is that of a “lazy-person” (perhaps an Indoorsman), choosing to sit on the couch with a box of Tim Tams instead of going to the gym.

Yes, this relationship- a complete disintegration of an idealized values system (exercise more, eat less), exists. This struggle is real and I’d wager we’ve all felt it. However, a less obvious relationship between instant gratification and exercise exists in the choices we make when we finally do decide to get off the couch. At this  juncture, the allure of easy, trendy, and consumer-oriented choices in what to do for exercise, which may not ultimately serve you , is hard to resist. Yet this juncture is critical to be aware of, and less binary than the choice that comes before it (exercise or Tim Tam slams?).

Today’s question could be summarized as, when we have finally made the decision to get up and move, how do we know what to do? What will be “best” for us? As we will see, the impact of our choice at this moment gets its weight from our awareness of whether we are choosing from a place of void-filling instant gratification, or of critical awareness and introspection based on our true needs, goals, and values (in other words, honesty).

But Monika, I hear you ask, why does it matter? The important thing is that I’m exercising, right? I’m off the couch. Why worry about the minutiae?

The reason is, and take it from me, a reformed Exerciser/Over-Identifier hybrid, awareness of the minutiae are what make or break the sustainability of a movement practice on your long-term health. I’m only able to write this essay because of the exercise choices I made between the ages of 15 and 25 that were largely based on my unhealthy goals and motivations which, at the time, were: “How can I look how I want as quickly as possible without worrying about how my body will feel if I continue to think and move like this for the next year”.

How I thought about my movement practice, and how I moved about my thinking practice, led to many physical insults and injuries, which then perpetuated their psychological origin.

So now, dear reader, a long-ish* exploration of this synapse: When mind meets the desire to move, how do we choose with awareness what is “best”?

*I recommend you give yourself 10 minutes and a cup of coffee (or tea, you weirdos who don’t drink coffee). 

All the stuff out there we can buy

For a movement practice to be healthy it cannot be treated as a market commodity (as discussed in some depth in part 9). 

And while a movement practice is not something you can buy, there are no shortage of people trying to sell you one.  A movement practice, in the terms I define it by, is something you develop for yourself through the qualities of creativity, exploration, and self-awareness (which, interestingly, are all practices in themselves that can be embodied in a movement practice).

The evolution of a healthy movement practice is guided by a sense of enjoyment, fulfillment, and well-being. The practice itself can fulfill those feelings of “something’s missing” so common to us, not with more stuff, but by filling that void with our authentic selves.

“I need more things. I’ll be happy and complete if I have that pair of sequinned space boots.”. A huge source of stress often just below our radars is the belief that there is something out there that you need to be complete that you can’t immediately have. What I’ve found is that in those moments of intense wanting, all I need to do is lie down on the floor, connect to my body, feel my spine moving, feel my breath, and I realize I have everything I need. I have a body, the only place we truly can call home in this life.

In the words of the samurai Miyamoto Mushashi, “There is nothing outside of yourself that can ever enable you to get better, stronger, richer, quicker, or smarter. Everything is within. Everything exists. Seek nothing outside of yourself.”

Values in Motion

A movement practice can be (I would dare to say, should be) an embodiment of our true values and goals, and a means of investigating, exploring, and expressing them with movement. I believe that you can tell a lot about a person by their choices for movement.

Is your movement practice more of a transaction, or an act of expression of values? 

I hope that I don’t need to convince you that the latter is healthier for the long haul, but buying stuff is just easier, and it probably always will be because of the way our brains are wired.  Common sense as it may seem, I write this because I feel we (especially me) need the constant reminder from various voices to keep us from tripping into the sinkholes of instant gratification, commoditization, and fitting in with the others we admire that plague our choices around movement.

Wired for Instant Gratification

Being a consumer takes no effort. That is, it feels easier in the moment because it requires less thought, less reflection, less tinkering, trial and error, and less up front work for the end reward. Consumerism, by contrast, is easy, and often is accompanied by a sense of immediately gratifying ease. We know this to be true in many of life’s domains (I personally would fail the famous Stanford marshmallow experiment. If you’re not familiar with it, please take a moment now to read the linked-to Wikipedia article describing it).  To me, it is interesting to see parallels between this experiment and how instant gratification shows up in our choices around movement and exercise.

Let’s use the example of a high intensity bootcamp class touting appealing fat-burning health-claims. It is an easy, convenient choice to buy a pack of 10 bootcamp classes because it requires little more from you than to pay, show up (with or without your brain), do what you’re told, and feel fulfilled by the physical exertion. You trade money for exercise, and it feels like you did something useful. But this neglects to consider that, in the long-term, this might not be the best thing for your health, your joints, and your satisfaction.

Let’s say, in the marshmallow-experiment spirit, I give you two options. One: You can have that 10 class boot camp pass right now, for free. The caveat is that when that pass is done you will not be allowed to come back to that studio ever again. Option two: If you can wait until next week, I (or a similarly minded professional) will sit down with you and talk about what you want your ideal movement practice to be. What your goals are. What your needs are. What interests you. What’s healthiest for you. And then the following week we will start a process of trying out a few things, which I assign to you as homework to do for a month until we meet again to check in.

Which option would you choose? Door one: The easy, transactional choice. Or door two: The slower, more involved process.

If we read those two options with our rational brains, it should be obvious that the second option seems of higher value, doesn’t it? Its a similar “get two marshmallows later versus one right now” choice. Can you wait just a bit longer for a more valuable reward?

In the second option, in exchange for your patience, and with some expectation of self-efficacy on your part, you get a personalized experience geared towards helping you find what’s best for you. In the first option, you don’t need either of those attributes, but (or and.. depending how you look at it. A favourite movement mentor of mine would always point out the different connotations of “and”, and “but”) you get the free thing that takes little effort on your end other than to show up physically. If you go with option one, you also choose not to think about what you’ll do after those 10 classes are done, and, blinded by having something you perceive to be great right now, you fail to correctly evaluate which choice will be of highest worth to you in the long term (remember our discussion of worth versus value in the previous chapter?).

This leads me to another question that many of us fail to appreciate due to the ease of instant gratification: How can we know with certainty what is truly going to be best for us?

What’s “best” for you?

What do  I mean by “best for you” when it comes to a movement practice? What’s to say that 10 bootcamp class pass isn’t truly the best option? What if one marshmallow right now is actually better than two later (from a lower sugar consumption stand-point, option one wins provided you don’t go out and buy a whole other pack of marshmallows to mow down later that afternoon). 

I don’t presume to know what is best for anyone. In fact, even when I was on my own destructive, unhealthy path, I can see now, in hindsight, how maybe that was what was best for me at the time, because it led me to where I am now. The mistakes I made paved the way for my better understanding of what my body truly needed for sustainable health. That said, I could have avoided a lot of suffering if I knew how to ask better questions. All water under the bridge now.

What I  do believe is that we can remove the veil of ignorance draped over us by commodity marketers by asking questions designed to help us develop some critical awareness.

Critical awareness

In her book on shame and vulnerability, I Thought it Was Just Me, Brene Brown distinguishes awareness from critical awareness as follows:  

“Awareness is knowing something exists, critical awareness is knowing why it exists, how it works, how our society is impacted by it and who benefits from it.”

So you’re sitting in a room with two doors. Behind door one, the bootcamp pass, and door two, the path of movement exploration, values inquiry, and practice. As you vacillate between the first door and the second, you can practice critical awareness by asking those questions: Why do each of these options exist? How do each of those options work? How could society be impacted by them? And who benefits from either option?

Take a moment with these questions, and you should be able to clearly see the larger impact and usefulness of option two- The cultivation of movement practice with a little guidance from moi- over the bootcamp class pass.

In going a step farther, we can ask these additional, more specific questions to exercise (get it?…) our critical awareness around our movement choices:

Are bootcamp classes really enjoyable for you to do? (be honest… does anyone really enjoy getting their ass handed to them and feeling their joints ache, then throwing up in the change room after?)

In your past experience with this sort of thing, do you feel subjectively better, fulfilled, more clear of mind, and good in your body after the class? 

What’s your current stress and recovery level like? Is a highly strenuous (read: stressor on the body) class really what your body needs, or is the intensity of the class making you feel run down?

Is this something you think you can keep up in the long term as part of a healthy movement practice? (the number of times I’ve signed up for such a pass, gone to two classes, and never gone back… It’s too high to admit without embarrassment.)

The answers to those questions require some time and thoughtfulness on your part, but are crucial to the development of a long-standing movement practice. In essence, is it healthy? Is it enjoyable? Is it sustainable? Appropriate for your needs right now? Which door will you choose? 

In a recent conversation, I reflected on this idea by distinguishing between my mindset as an Over-Identifier professional dancer in training before and after I started a yoga practice. It wasn’t until I started yoga when I was 18 that I understood that what I perceived to be a “good” feeling in my body after a dance class, was actually my body feeling trashed and me being proud of myself for it. In dance training it is common to associate being sore with how well you danced, and pain as a measure of hard work. No pain no gain. And then, after doing a yoga class (with a quality instructor) I felt calm, grounded, centered in my body. The restorative intention of the class was what my body craved, and I had no idea until I had the experience. “Oh! This is what “good” feels like!”.

The lesson is that all we know is what is currently in our perception. Step out of the space of known variables and we can get a better sense of the big picture. The truth of “what’s best”.

The ease of outsourcing your brain

We’ve been speaking of the easiness inherent in making decisions based on instant gratification and what we already know exists. There is a more specific perceived sense of ease that revolves around outsourcing your decision making and critical awareness to someone (or, to something, ie. the internet) which saves you the energy of having to learn about something (or someone, ie. yourself).

What I mean is that it easy enough these days to go online and find a set of values and accompanying set exercise routine, which you could do every day, verbatim: Same number of reps, same duration of time, same exercises, same favourite music playlist getting you through it. 

The above is exactly what I used to do. It was like I was on auto-pilot. I found the cool-looking exercises with the fat-burning, muscle-toning claims, put them into a routine, and would basically do the same 60 minute session- same number of sets and repetitions of the same exercises to the same music- for months on end, every single day in an attempt to get stronger and burn fat. Can you guess why didn’t I get anything useful out of this practice? 

As a general rule, we want to avoid practices that put us on auto-pilot like this (and particularly for my strength goals, which require an appropriate amount of variety and progressive overload to actually create a training effect). We must be aware of anything that we become too accustomed to, even the seemingly healthy routines we slip into can become unhealthy when they become just that: Routine.

Routines that we feel dissonance in breaking are indicators of us living in a comfort zone, ceasing to develop and learn and experience new things. Stymieing ourselves and becoming stagnant in our abilities to grow. (Although I recognize that some habits and routines are good to keep on autopilot, like brushing your teeth and bathing. But a fun practice might be to change how you brush your teeth and how you bathe. Get out of your pattern of ease wherever possible). 

For the nouveau-mover (the movement-curious Indoorsman, for example), the easy entry to the world of movement- the mindless bootcamp class, the celebrity routine- can actually be an excellent starting point, but must come with the understanding that it won’t work forever, and probably won’t be sustainable. 

The truth is that “what’s best” will never be a fixed routine, but is in a state of constant flux requiring frequent checking in with. What’s best is the appreciation that this is a journey. It will be ever changing with the seasons of your life. This need to adapt in perpetuity cannot be understood without engaging in a process of self-directed, introspective movement investigation (door two) which is a key component of a healthy movement practice.

In the words of Robert Pirsig, author of Zen in the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, “Its the sides of the mountain that sustain life, not the top”. 

Self-directed introspective movement investigation? That sounds hard, and complicated doesn’t it? Maybe. But that depends on your definition of ease.

What is “ease”?

What we’ve been talking about up until now are two ways we can perceive ease (which I call type-1 and type-2 ease. It is possible that someone somewhere has already made this distinction more eloquently, or more rigorously scientifically. Whatever). 

The first type is as convenience and immediate gratification. Of outsourcing our critical awareness. It fulfills a sense of uninvestigated lack. It demands the hasty resolution of uncomfortable tension. It disregards rational thought. It bypasses the pre-frontal cortex, the part of our cognitive selves that appraises whether the perceived value we’re getting from the choice is congruent with our true needs and goals. Type-1 ease is a dopamine-mediated reaction, not the true cultivation of effortless living (we’ll talk more about dopamine in a moment). Type-1 ease is a cyclic phenomenon, as the grasping for immediate relief from tension perpetuates the original sense of lack with higher intensity. In fact, the “solution” we find that is most convenient and immediately available often becomes an entirely new problem.

In terms of movement practice, taking the path of apparent ease can can lead us to hop from class to class, trend to trend, product to product. A great example of this is that device worn around your waist claiming it will “give you abs” while you sit and watch TV, that became popular when I was a kid in the 90s. But another less obvious example is how many of us are more likely to choose door one and take the 10 class bootcamp pass when what will actually be of greater benefit is to do the door two consultation and ensuing process (which may lead to the realization that what is best for our health is to sleep an extra three hours each night and walk for half an hour daily. Way less sexy and Instagrammable than the bootcamp).

The second type of ease is what I also call the ease of longevity, which can only exist with a bit of foresight, and paradoxically, with a lot of hard work. Type-2 ease requires the sacrifice of immediate gratification for the unknown which has the capacity to be much more rewarding if we can just be patient enough to choose door two. We create the opportunity for type-2 ease in our lives when we slow down and delay the urge to make the most convenient choice available. This is sitting with whatever sense tension we are feeling and taking the time to ask, “what is the source of this?” and, “is this something I should buy my way out of?”.

In context of a movement practice, it is using critical awareness. It is taking the time to ask, “what does my body really need to be healthy? What is truly enjoyable and interesting to me? What am I naturally drawn to? Will this be sustainable?”. Type-2 ease is the result of asking, and then listening patiently and moving honestly through the process of exploring their answers. It is only after this that we attain this true ease, in our lives: Improved markers of health, mental clarity, and somatic-based goals (strength, movement skills, decreased pain, etc). Talebian anti-fragility. Even enhanced relationships with ourselves and others. 

In short, remember that type-2 ease is something we earn through true hard work, patience, and critical awareness. Type-1 ease is something we can buy without thought, have immediately, and fades quickly keeping us coming back for more of the same.  

For a healthy movement practice, the ease we should be seeking is type-2: The ease of tomorrow, next week, 10 years from now, not the ease of right now that we can buy. Ease, paradoxically, is a result of the hard lessons, the learning that happens along the way, not in reaching the final destination.

Don’t be a dope(amine)

And now let’s talk about our friend dopamine.

We know from research in the field of neuroscience that there is an association between experienced reward and the release of our favourite feel-good neurotransmitter, dopamine, in response to our anticipation of a gratifying event. Note the word anticipation: It’s not the actual event or thing itself that we get the reward from, its the anticipation of it. The build up. And what’s more, its not just the anticipation of a reward that releases dopamine from our pleasure pathways, but the unpredictability of receiving the reward heightens this response. 

A perfect example from my life is that of my teenage-self who just started dating. On Monday we’d set a date for Friday night, causing the anticipatory dopamine release starting on Tuesday, which slowly rises until Friday night. Then, 15 minutes before our scheduled time, I’d wait in my living room staring out at my driveway in anticipation of his car rolling up. More dopamine. Then I’d see the headlights of a car shine down my street. Then I’d see the car slowing down, and my pleasure center really starts freaking out- Is that him? Will the car turn into my driveway? Or is it just my neighbour coming home? Remember the unpredictable nature of it all causes an even stronger dopamine response. But then when he actually showed up and I went outside and got into his car, while I was happy to see him, that dopamine induced thrill had dropped off. 

A more interesting factoid, relevant to our modern technology dependent lives, is how that ping of our smart phones when we receive an email or text message also triggers a dopamine release.  While I am certainly no expert on this neurotransmitter’s role in addiction and the science behind the sensitization of our brains to dopamine requiring us to need more and more stimulus to get the same feel good dopamine hit, this conditioned response speaks to the scary reality of smartphone and social media addiction, in which the inner, physiological response is similar to a drug addict’s.  “I know this behaviour is really unhealthy for me, but its going to feel great when that dopamine hits my bloodstream, let’s do this!”. And there goes hours scrolling through Facebook because there just might be something good.

Dopamine, exercise, and instant gratification

In a discussion that mentions dopamine, addiction, and exercise, you might expect that I write something about addiction to exercise. While this is a real issue for many people, and one I have experience with, it is a little outside the ballpark of this essay. Perhaps in a future revision of this chapter it is a topic I will go into in more detail. For now, what is of interest to me, and which is probably fundamental to exercise-addicted personalities, is the ease of instant gratification which, whether we’re aware of it or not shapes the decisions we make about our movement practices.

So we know that it is the anticipatory, unpredictable quality of the dopamine response contributing to why it is so hard to resist instant gratification. In the context of movement, this is why, before making decisions about what to do with our bodies, we have to use foresight and ask ourselves, “once I buy ‘X’ (the training session, exercise class, yoga mat, expensive workout top, etc), then what? Will I have gained what I really was trying to get? Or did I just buy a hit of dopamine to tide me over?

As Dr. Robert Sapolsky writes in his book on the stress response and stress-related diseases, Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers, “if you know your appetite is going to be sated, pleasure is more about the appetite than the sating”.

This describes how people often operate when starting an exercise program (when in a dopamine seeking mode). It starts with a vague goal to be “fitter” and “healthier”, and lose 10lbs. This is the “appetite” Sapolsky describes. Then, with a little encouragement from dopamine an easy solution is identified (without critical awareness), buying it and getting that feel-good hit, “Ah, now I have in my possession this 10 class bootcamp pass, and soon I will have the perfect body and can compete with Sally Jones, that b!@&h”. Anticipation? Check. Unpredictable nature of how this scenario will play out? Oh yes. 

And then comes the “sating” act- the actual participating in the thing, in this case the bootcamp classes. What if, after the three classes you realize you don’t enjoy it, you flare up your old knee injury, and finding it completely unsustainable you fall “off the wagon”. At first you may give up hope, become sedentary, and gain 10lbs rather than lose it. Then, still under the same dopamine spell, you hop to the next “easy” thing to provide the next dopamine release as you anticipate how the latest fitness trend will help you lose that weight.

We see this pattern all the time when people buy gym memberships around January first, fueled by the good intentions and excitement that come with visions of turning their health and bodies around, but then never show up to do the work, or get hurt and disillusioned before they see any progress. 

I think that holding a consumer mentality towards exercise is inextricable from the dopamine release inherent in instant-gratification-fitness. In fact, Dr. Sapolsky continues by differentiating between the “appetitive” stage and the “consummatory” stage. The former is the expectation of working for the the reward, and the latter is the stage at which the reward commences. I don’t think this use of language is any coincidence.

The good news

You are not doomed nor bound by your current biological patterns. Critical awareness saves the day, again.

The good news is that  just by being aware that the “feel good” we so crave comes from the appetitive stage- the anticipation, purchase, or build up- we can consciously slow down and ask more critical questions about the truth of what we’re doing.

Sure, buying a stylish, high-performance workout top might provide an invaluable source of motivation in getting yourself into a movement routine, but its still not addressing the real issue or creating a sustainable healthy practice. Its obvious that the reason someone is struggling with creating a healthy movement routine isn’t because they don’t have enough workout clothes. But it is much easier to substitute the true, challenging to identify source of lack with one that has an immediately available fix- a shopping trip (or better yet, 20 minutes on Amazon, the epitome of instant gratification). I have a client who compulsively buys a ton of workout clothes thinking that having nice new outfits will motivate her to be more active on her own, but it rarely translates to a sustainable change in behaviour. It only provides her a boost of dopamine associated with the anticipatory thoughts of how fit she;s going to be now that she has “real” motivation to exercise. 

The truth, as often is the case, exists in the paradox: The ease we seek in our lives is earned through hard work. In many ways, struggle and ease are two sides of the same coin, spinning and blurring together into one. The challenge is to ask the difficult questions and take the more investigative path to find our own unique version of a movement practice that we can sustain. Not Tracy Anderson’s version. Not Beyonce’s. Not Hugh Jackman’s.

As hard as it is to face our truth- Our unhealthy habits, thoughts, actions that stymie us- the impact of ignoring them is harder.

It’s not (all) your fault

Don’t beat yourself up about it. It’s in our DNA to seek immediate gratification. 

While this addictive, pleasure seeking nature can be devastating on the addiction end of the spectrum, it served us in the early stages of human evolution when it was advantageous to take the low hanging fruit because each day’s goal was “survive”. For us humans today, however, the immediate goal on many of our days is centered comfortably around, “feel good right now” choices, not “stay alive”.

So as easily misguided and confused our decisions can be when it comes to the components of our movement practice, and not taking the easy, instant gratification route, it’s not all your fault. But that doesn’t mean you can blame your biology completely. It is your responsibility to take ownership of your actions, and not just for your own sake, but for those you interact with everyday.

There are entire businesses built around speaking to our intrinsic “feel good now” goal, and their messages inundate us everyday, often just below our conscious level, influencing who we are and what we value and how we engage with the world around us. This again speaks to the importance of questioning using critical awareness.

Why does it exist?

How does it work?

How could society be impacted by it?

Who benefits?

When it comes to “Big Fitness” (by which I mean all forms of consumer-oriented fitness industries valuing quantity over quality) benefiting, their success relies on us continuing to make consummatory, instantly-gratifying, cyclic, dopamine-mediated choices. Critical awareness breaks the cycle.

Who thrives on our ignorance?

Who we think we are and how we act are predominantly a reflection of the culmination of all interactions and relationships we’ve had up until this point.

Our identities and behaviours are largely influenced by who we associate with (families, friends, coworkers), and what we read and see portrayed to us from media sources. This means that even when the people we associate with are good influences on us, if we are inundated daily with the messages from the media telling us what to value, what to buy, and how to “feel good” (and worse, that feeling good all the time is good, normal, and realistic) these beliefs become our own. Then, because we tend to aggregate in groups with similar values to our own, we seek out these identifying factors in other people and sources. This further polarizing us, separating us from those with different views and values from which we could learn. Marketers know this all too well, and they make a profit, they benefit not us, when we’re kept in the dark and polarized by their ideals. 

We are consumers primarily because there is something there for us to consume, and people telling us to consume it. This is prevalent in the food, health, and fitness industries (in fact I have a lot to say about how “Big Food” and Big Fitness are mirrors of each other in the next chapter). 

Imagine there was no mass media, no industries profiting from your consumption, no one trying to sell things to you daily to “improve” your life. While this applies to all areas of life, many of us have not considered how it applies to our movement practices. And because there is no conceivable way of separating you from your body, what you do with your body- how you train it, move it, punish it, or cherish it- will have a massive impact on “you” as a holistic unit.

A Thought Experiment

Imagine a scenario in which you were taken out into a remote area for a week-long retreat from humanity and the media. Into the woods, or a remote farm-land, untouched by the technologies of modern civilization. Just you, your body, and the land. Not a screen, magazine, or even book in sight. Nothing to distract you and nothing to compare yourself to. No one and nothing to reflect your identity off of. No arbitrarily decided societal norm portraying the way you “should” be, think, and act. 

What would you do? What would be required not only to survive, but to feel fulfilled and entertain yourself? Here’s what I think would happen.

Chances are your movement practice in this circumstance would manifest itself organically from the physical labor needed for you to survive (forage, hunt, build fire and shelter, etc.), or in playful, explorative, creative movement for the inherent enjoyment of it (since there’s no Netflix). You would spontaneously be more likely to rest and recover, and do more restorative movements and stretching, as you become more in tune with how your body feels. You’d  probably move further from “feel good all the time” as a daily expectation. You’d be more in tune with what is healthy for you, focused on what is important, without worrying about what anyone thinks about your choices.

Do you remember the last time your movement practice was shaped by the simplicity of survival-necessity, enjoyment, and fulfillment? For me, the last time I remember interacting with movement in this way was as a kid, camping with my family, or more recently on a five day hiking trip in the woods with my brother and a friend. On these occasions, our movement practice was the collecting of firewood, fetching water from a creek, swimming in the lakes, inventing games, and walking in woods. No mirrors, no media, no hip hop bootcamp fat-blasting spin class. 

Nature: The Great Educator 

I’d like to bring this rather long chapter to a close by following my above tangent  on the role of nature in a movement practice.

The importance of spending time outdoors away from civilization is hard to refute. In fact, numerous studies show that time in nature has proven beneficial effects on the brain and cognition. But what about the capacity it has to change our movement practice and attitude towards it?

Take my above examples of hiking and camping. Whenever I am out in nature, away from screens, advertising, and civilization, I am reminded of what a gift it is to have a body with a full spectrum of movement options, and I delight in how a movement practice seems to come naturally. Out of necessity, really. Hiking, setting up camp, and play become natural parts of life outdoors, not things to schedule in, time the duration of, count the calories burned in doing them. Who cares how many calories you burned while hiking to the lake? The last thing on your mind while chopping wood to make a fire to cook food on is what muscles are you toning and how many reps is optimal for hypertrophy or fat loss or whatever goal you would normally be working on at the gym. While I’m out there, the last thing I’m thinking about is getting in a workout or needing to do exercise.

After being in nature for a few days, sensing the sudden cessation of the barrage of media messages we are subjected to, the impact it has on us becomes readily apparent. Even being away from seeing our reflections in a mirror helps us pay less attention to how we look, and more tuned in to how we feel. An excellent experience for anyone who suffers from body dysmorphia. Too, having the option to look beyond the one foot (or less) our screens normally sit from our face gives our eyes a break and chance to move differently.

I could go on. And many writers before me have (read stuff by Katy Bowman, Galina and Roland Denzel).

It seems only to be in cities that we need to structure our movement practices and exercise routines because our lives are set up in ways that disconnect us from nature and our bodies. Getting back to nature is an incredible educational tool. Too, it makes impossible choices based on instant gratification and mindless consumption, an attitude which we can embody and take with us back to the city (if we can stay strong to the barrage of media upon our return).

Unfortunately, not all of us have the luxury of access to remote nature easily (myself included). As a person who lives in Toronto, a large city, without a car, it is difficult to get away, but I can still take the mindset of being out in the woods back to the city with me, learn from it, and find a rhythm that works.

Instant gratification, the commoditization of exercise, city-bound lifestyles, and the messages portrayed by the media are things not likely to change anytime soon. In fact, I predict these detriments will becomes more poignant over time, and so I encourage you to evaluate where else in your life you are taking the path of type-1 ease that could be moving you farther from the “ideal” Integrator’s movement practice.

As one of my clients recently told me, he feels he squanders his limited downtime in which he wants to engage with his creative, movement-based, and outdoor pursuits, but it is all too easy to get sucked into Youtube. Its easier to call someone to do your physical labour for you (your gardening, cooking, and cleaning).  Its easier to pay someone to you take through a workout three times per week. But it is also harder on who you will be five years from now, still living an uninvestigated life, lacking self-sufficiency, in which movement exists in a bubble separate from the rest of it. 

There is an earned ease in the struggle when it is an honest one. A movement practice that provides regenerative health is also always, at its core, a practice of honesty, while exercise and activity don’t need to be.