I’ve been reflecting on what role movement plays in my life, and what goals I have for it.
Not just, “what goals do I have for my body?”, but “how do the goals I have for my body help me live a life of mastery, seeking truth, and sharing my gifts to others?”
What am I hoping to get out of each time I deliberately carve out the time to participate in the physical area of my life, through movement and exercise?
In movement, as in every area of my life, the concept of MASTERY predominates. So, what does it mean to put in work in the area of physical mastery?
Let’s first talk about what mastery is not.
Whenever we use exercise or movement to uphold an image of ourselves that is tied to our sense of identity, this cannot be mastery. If I am to use myself as an example, I often use exercise to control my body size, or to feel productive while I procrastinate doing something else. This is not mastery. It’s feeding my ego.
But mastery implies not just doing what is easy and doing the thing we know we should do, but don’t want to, because it doesn’t come naturally. Or we find it boring, or because through it we have to face something painful we’d rather not admit to (like that I care far too much about how my body looks and not nearly enough about what it can do).
So, what’s the easy thing you’re doing? And what’s the hard thing you’re avoiding?
If I’m being honest, the easy thing for me to do is make time for movement everyday (for some people that’s the hardest thing!). The hard thing for me to do is to engage with movement from a place in which I’m not using it to punish myself for eating too much, or to avoid doing something (like my taxes), or out of a need I feel to look a certain way (thinner, always thinner, and more toned). If I fess up to these motives, I actually find I have no desire at all to exercise. Like, what’s the fucking point anymore??
And this realization fucking sucks. It hurts like hell to confront because if I admit to it, then I have to question everything I think I believe about why I’m exercising in the first place. I have face how my movement practice is me lying to myself.
And then I have to ask, am I ok with not being in my personal integrity when I exercise? My answer is, no.
But therein lies my practice of physical mastery.
My personal embodiment of physical mastery demands that I suspend everything superficial and exterior I use exercise for, and then, despite my disinterest, do it anyway. I commit to myself that I will try to feel what its like to move from this disciplined place with real awareness of intent, and not from my default appearance-driven compulsion, or fear of getting fat.
What seems to happen is that physical mastery first exists in the mind, and then manifests in the way it shapes the body. Just as laziness first exists in the mind, and has equal potential to shape the body.
So… What does your embodiment of physical mastery look like?
Here’s what physical mastery, in a movement practice, means to me:
Physical mastery means moving with complete awareness. Being clear on our motives. Moving with attention and intention. Attention of intention. Mastery is feeling empowered from within, not trying to exert power over your body, like it is a battle to win, or a problem to fix.
Mastery is pure enjoyment of your physical being. The joy just to have a body. Not because it is already perfect, free from pain, or performing to efficiency, but in spite of it’s imperfections you find reason to delight in it. You find reason to celebrate taking ownership of its needs instead of shirking them.
It’s the knowing that your movement practice is an embodiment of delayed gratification. The knowing that the reward of your work today will come with a delay. Stay cool.
Mastery means seeing your reality, seeing the facts about your body, and deciding to act on what needs to be done, instead of ignoring problems and exercising just to numb out.
Mastery is understanding how cause and effect is at play: How everything you’ve done up until right now is reflected in the way your body looks, functions, and feels. No longer being blind to how past injuries- ones ignored, overlooked, and untreated- are affecting us still, today. And then instead of getting depressed or feeling helpless, seeing this fact simply as untapped potential.
Mastery is not pushing through pain, but bowing to it. Respecting the body’s occasional (or frequent…) demand for rest is an act of respect and strength, it does not show weakness. From this place of self-respect you do what needs to be done, even if that means doing much less, or much more, or just something completely different than you’re used to.
Mastery is not giving up on yourself. Not ever believing that your body is in a fixed state. It doesn’t mean you can stop working on your body, but that you recognize that the work is never done, yet you take delight in working anyway (a client once asked, “how long will I need to do these exercises for until I can stop and just get back to my regular life?”, to which I reply, “how long do you intend to live?”, and do you really want that “regular” life back?)
Mastery is choosing not to be lazy. Doing the hard thing, which sometimes means just showing up, and sometimes means auditing your motives, and sometimes means taking a rest day.
Mastery is birthed in the awareness that when you are doing what is right for your body, it is right for your mind, your spirit, for every other area of your life, and for everyone else in your life as well. It makes your movement practice an act of selflessness (so you can drop the guilt or feelings of selfishness at taking time for yourself).
Mastery transcends attainment of any goal: Getting out of pain or performing better at a sport, improving your posture, losing weight, or getting stronger. Mastery is at play when you achieve these results simply as a byproduct of your intention to do something for you because you care about you, not what anyone else thinks of you or what you think you should do.
Mastery is when your goals are your own, not hijacked by society, your parents, or your friend group. Mastery in your movement practice is when your goals, motives, and values are aligned. Embodied.
For me, physical mastery comes alive when I recognize that I only have this one body to live my life through, and the degree to which I can enjoy my life, share my gifts, and be present, is proportionate to how well I nurture it. Sometimes this means doing higher intensity training to boost my energy and resilience, and sometimes it means lying on the floor for an hour because I’m spent. Honouring this daily flux is one of the hardest things because it demands that I listen.
And mastery is the ongoing inquiry: What more can my body be for me? What is getting in the way? What am I blind to? How can I move with more enjoyment? How can I cultivate health and purpose through my movement practice? What I’m doing now… Would I be able to keep this up forever?
So take a moment before your next training session, yoga class, or jog, and reflect:
How are you embodying physical mastery, right now, in your movement practice?
What is the driving motive for exercise? Is it to attain an external goal, or is it an inner transformation?
Just today’s humble thoughts from your self-appointed body mechanics detective and physical mastery guide…
I had a moment yesterday when I was out for a walk, and it was the first beautiful, spring-feeling day we’ve had in the past week here in Toronto. In that moment, which lasted for just two footsteps, I felt a pure joy at just having a body that I could go for a walk in. It had been a while since I’ve felt that.
And something in me rejoiced with the inward cry: “THIS IS IT. This feeling is WHY you keep working on your body! And don’t you forget it” (for the record, I’ve already forgotten it… And was reminded only when I went back to revise this bit of writing…).
I think this is the ultimate “why” to embody, the longer those of us with a movement practice, practice: We keep working on our bodies so that it becomes like a receptacle into which joy can come. We do the work so we can get our bodies into a receptive state.
And developing this receptivity can only come to be, if you’re not using exercise as a crutch.
However, this feeling lasted only for a measly two steps- maybe 2 seconds. And then I went back to walking and being lost in my thoughts, back into my grocery list, instead of basking in this inherent delight of my body that had come without my even forcing it.
You see in that moment I realized that I didn’t need anything else to feel that life was a blessing, it was this feeling in my body. My body was a blessing that I was living my life in.
But years and years of deliberate hard work needed to happen for that moment to come. And the payoff? Two spontaneous seconds of gratitude. Doesn’t seem like a good payoff, does it… Kind of a pitiful return on investment, when you do the math.
But yet I persevere, because maybe tomorrow I can extend that to four seconds, four joyful steps. If I keep doing the work.
So I want to ask the question: Is there something your are using exercise as a crutch for? Or to put it in other words, what is the current demand you’re feeling from life that you feel exercise can fulfill?
Is exercise just a means to an end? Or is done with the awareness that this is the disciplined action that needs to be taken because you can no longer deny how you body’s baggage, pain, stress, and lethargy are holding you back from a natural state of ease and celebration? Its a bit of a subtle distinction, but you can feel it if you tune in.
For me (and maybe some of this will ring true for you as well) the demand I feel for my body is that I must keep working to understand it better, work to keep it pain free, keep it strong and resilient, and work to respect it.
I feel the demand that I practice loving and trusting my body more, and use my movement practice to actualize that, not to escape into exercising as a means shape my body to an image that society will recognize as acceptable. Sometimes this means the demand is to just REST (I’m feeling that demand for deliberate rest today…).
And I know that this demand is bigger than me. As I do my work to support my body, peeling back the onion layers of strain, pain, injury, and all the times I failed to listen to it, I know I will be able to better understand and assist the bodies all whom I serve as a body mechanics detective.
The reality is that life is constantly going to knock us off course. And there is not one other area of life in which we don’t need our bodies to carry us. In our work, relationships, studies, leisure time… We need our body to show up for us, and the degree to which we can thrive in any other aspect of our lives cannot surpass the degree to which we’ve first attended to our body’s needs.
So maybe you’d like to sit with these questions today:
What is the current demand you’re feeling from life that you feel your movement practice, or exercise program, can fulfill?
And how might you be using exercise as a crutch, a means to an end, or an escape? (what’s the hidden motive?)
Can you see a way in which this time spent tending to your body could manifest to support you in another area of life?
How is developing mastery over your body going to help you live to your highest values, not distract you from them?
Just my humble thoughts about physical mastery, for today.
The following is an expanded version of me talking shita little meditation/reflection from one of the Zoom movement sessions I’ve been running for my clients and fellow movement explorers in this time of lockdown. I wonder if any of it will resonate for you? (~4 min read)
Let’s reflect on this today before we start moving:
You’ve shown up to this session because you must believe that there is something more your body can be for you, for you to live your life through, and there must be something more that you can be in this body you have.
Otherwise you wouldn’t have shown up, would you?
This is on of the first important insights to have, if we are on a journey of physical mastery. Which is the journey I am on. And I hope you are, too.
The first question is: What is this “more” for you and your body? And is that “more” an external result or image? Or is it an internal state?
Because if it is an internal state you’re after, then the exercises we do today don’t have much inherent meaning. Truly, it doesn’t matter if you’re doing Cross-Fit or Tai Chi, or COVID-19 Move with Monika sessions, if you can hold yourself in such a way that your body is already everything it needs to be, and you are simply showing up to celebrate it.
But if its an external state you’re striving for- getting out of pain, getting stronger, losing fat, more mobility- then the exercises, specific protocols, and metrics you follow must be very, very important, because these ideologies become a part of the greater image your are trying to secure for yourself, along with the physical goals.
When you strive for a result it becomes this whole “thing” that is no longer about you, but for seeking something outside yourself to reinforce the “I” you call yourself, currently. In this goal-striving state, there can be no transformation, just reinforcing what is already there.
And then, as a safe-guard, if you don’t indeed get the goal, now you have something to blame: The exercises, the coach, the protocol. Its got nothing to do with you or any failure to execute. And the majority of us would rather live this way.
But this is not the path of physical mastery that I’m hoping to point you towards.
Do you follow what I’m saying?
What I’m saying is how you hold yourself through this session, any movement session, is so much more important than the actual exercises we do.
You need to exist as the internal state in which you already have every capacity to attain whatever external goal. Only then, when you are doing this for you, by you, not by anyone else’ standard, paradoxically, can you attain any goal with a degree of sustainability and ease.
The important thing is not the exercises, but what you bring to them. The YOU you bring to them. Your awareness. Your curiosity. Your self-respect. Your desire to transform.
I personally don’t place too much meaning on the exercises I teach. They are just tools for the journey. They’re not magical, but you can work your own magic through them.
Putting the transformative power on an exercise takes that power away from you.
So let’s reflect:
What is it about yourself you want to feel different after we’re done? Who is that?
And know that if you have even caught the tiniest glimpse of who that is, it is because that part of you already exists, and is waiting to participate in today’s movement session.
The internal state I’m talking about is the deliberate connection to the YOU who is already enough, and who doesn’t need exercise either to prove it, or to make up for any shortcomings. Only in this internal state can you see how this any movement session can be a celebration of you and your body, not a penance. Not a thing to “make up for” this or that.
So I’ll ask again… What is this “more” that you know you can have for you and your body? Is it an image you cling to? Or is it a state you can hold?
Does movement help you find that state? Or can you hold it even before you being to move?
What is the part of you that is already enough, and can you let that part of you come forward in celebration today, as you move?
Just some humble thoughts from your friendly neighbourhood body mechanics detective.
The following is an expanded version of a little talk- a “meditation”- I gave to my students this week at the beginning of one of my virtual movement sessions, via the now ubiquitous Zoom.
Most of my life, my movement practice has been a spectator sport.
Gymnastics, dance, powerlifting, climbing, and even the most mundane work outs at the gym…. If I’m being honest, I probably wouldn’t have done any of it without an audience. It all lacked intrinsic importance without witnesses to make it real.
Indeed, in many areas of life, it is doubtful that I’ll do the thing unless there’s someone else there to compare myself to in regards to how well I’m doing it.
The question of our time: If you do a workout and don’t post it on social media, did it even happen?
Because without spectators how would I know if I was good enough? How can I be the best at something with no one to judge me?
And now, with all the time and space of self-isolation, free from mirrors, free from spectators, free from the usual “out there” pressures to look and dress a certain way, I’ve been reflecting on what role movement truly plays in my life.
What does a movement practice look like with no bystanders as a reference to its existence? In other words…
If no ones watching what’s the point?
Well, I’m still moving, so I must have found a point, even if its just to self-indulgently write about it, here.
So I’ve found myself contemplating more deeply on what goals I actually have formy movement practice. Now that there is no excuse but for it to be a purely nourishing act for me, and not about using it to fit myself into the status quo, or seek recognition, or compete… What the heck am I doing?
Instead of asking, what are my fitness goals? I’m asking, what deeper goals do I have for me that movement can serve as a tool for on that journey?
What might I be using movement to escape from, living in isolation?
As I wrote about in my On Physical Mastery #1 blog post, I think its important to get clear on intention beyond the goal, and investigate the source of the goal. Is your goal even your own?
Most goals have been set for us, not by us, without our even knowing. Most goals are beliefs we’ve been converted to which reduce our ability to learn something new. Belief systems stymie experiencing the new, its a very efficient mechanism…
In any case, my existential question today is:
“if no one’s watching, and I exercise, and I can’t see myself in the mirror, and I have no goal, and I don’t post about it on Instagram, and no one else is even going to see me for the next month at least… What is the role of movement in my life?”
What’s the fucking point?
What am I hoping I’m going to get when I deliberately carve out the time to participate in the physical area of my life, through movement and exercise?
Enter mastery.
In movement, as in every area of my life, the concept of mastery pops up. And I started thinking about it more deeply: What does it mean to develop physical mastery?
Isn’t physical mastery the result of accomplishing your fitness goals?
On the contrary. I think physical results are a byproduct of mastery, not the source.
I think back to when I reached my goal of deadlifting 225lbs in 2014. It felt like mastery. Until the question arose: Now what? Until my body started hurting. Until I lost interest in powerlifting all together.
I did the thing…. Now what’s the point?
If I’m being honest, while I overtly stated (rather, convinced myself) that I was doing it because I was an empowered woman, I was really doing it to prove something to the world. To the ~80% male gym I worked in, that I could keep up. I recognize now that I was a victim of goal hijacking rooted in my needing to prove that I was enough through the outward expression of strength.
But anyway, here’s what I think physical mastery really is.
What is mastery in the physical area of life?
Physical mastery demands moving with complete awareness. Moving with attention and intention. Mastery is feeling empowered from within, not trying to exert power over your body, like it is a battle to win, or a problem to fix (like my deadlift goal).
Mastery is enjoyment of your physical being. Not because it is already perfect, free from pain, or performing to peak efficiency, but despite its imperfections, you still find reason to delight in it. You find that taking ownership of your body’s true needs, not striving to live up to someone elses’ expectations for it, is an act of celebration.
Mastery begins only when you cease to be blind to your physical reality- seeing the facts about your body- and deciding to act on what needs to be done. Instead of ignoring problems and exercising to numb out, mastery demands seeing your body as something to care for, not ignore the feeling of just to do what looks cool.
Mastery is cultivated in your curiosity to see how past injuries- those uninvestigated, ignored, overlooked, and untreated- are affecting us still, today. Mastery demands moving beyond ignorance, wanting to understand how your body got to the state its in now. Tracking how everything you’ve done up until right now is reflected in the way your body looks, functions, and feels. You see the cause and effect, and you see you can choose to be unaffected, should you accept the challenge. In mastery you see your imperfect state not as being helpless and fixed, but as untapped potential.
Mastery is not pushing through pain, but bowing to it and doing what needs to be done, even if that means doing much less, or much more, or something completely different.
Mastery is choosing not to be lazy, but choosing to engage. Mastery begets an awareness that when you are doing what is right for your body, it is right for your mind, your spirit, for every other area of your life, and for everyone else in your life.
Mastery transcends getting out of pain, or performing better at a sport, or improving your posture, or losing weight, or getting stronger. But you can tell you’re moving into mastery when these results come simply as a byproduct of doing something for you because you care about you, free from influence of anyone’s judgements, philosophies, techniques, or ideas.
Mastery is when your goals are your own, not hijacked by society, your parents, your friend group, or your yoga instructor (or me…).
Mastery is the ongoing, loving inquiry: What more can my body be for me? What is getting in the way of realizing this? What obstacles might I be blind to? Is the trajectory I’m on meaningful, enjoyable, sustainable, and healthy?
Mastery is not giving up on yourself. Even when you make mistakes, you can do nothing wrong- Either you make the immediately useful choice, or you learn something important. You see your body as a self-correcting mechanism. When you are not on a path of mastery, your body will let you know. Pain, fatigue, injuries are all signposts pointing out lessons we need to learn, helping us get back on course. Mastery is learning to listen and look for the signs.
Mastery is a never ending journey, not a location on a map. It doesn’t cumulate with the attainment of a result. It doesn’t mean I can ever stop working on my body, but is alive in the recognition that my work is never done. And yet I take delight in working anyway.
Chop wood, carry water.
So what’s the point of a movement practice in isolation?
To celebrate having a body. And celebration requires no witness. To come this place of self-delight demands a degree of physical mastery.
So, perhaps you’d like to take a moment before the next time you move and reflect on this:
How are you embodying physical mastery, right now?
And how might you be avoiding it to maintain a sense of comfort and familiarity?
What small shift needs to be made, could you make, in your physical practice, today, to embody physical mastery?
The following is a thing I wrote as part of a new series of reflections called: On Physical Mastery. (Oh, and I don’t mean “conditioning” as in energy systems, In case anyone’s mind went there. Pun sort of intended…)
I’d like to share my humble thoughts on having physical and fitness goals in this time of pandemic (although I was thinking these things pre-COVID, they seem especially relevant now).
Have you noticed? The government is telling us what our fitness goals should be, and how we should achieve them.
This isn’t really anything new. From the food pyramid, to Body Break (with Hal Johnson and Joanne Mcleod!), society has been telling us what we are supposed to do with our bodies. What appropriate goals should be.
If you’ve read anything in the news lately, the latest “should” is that, despite the call the stay at home, we must keep exercising for our health right now.
And I don’t disagree.
I am happy that in this global health crisis, our collective, primary reason to exercise has deepened. I can see a shift from shallowly chasing a “fit body”, aesthetics-based, physical norm, to authorities encouraging us to “move because your health depends on it”. It is even being acknowledged that movement and exercise are necessary for our mental health. This is amazing.
But there’s still something insidious to be aware of… We’re still being told why we should exercise, and we’re not questioning it.
Society, the government, is still exercising influence over our beliefs about what we do with our bodies. Just that the form in which it is doing so has changed. However, whenever there is an outside source guiding what we should do with our bodies, when we’re not aware that our decisions are not our own, no matter how benign or in our interest it may seem, we cannot truly, honestly be in touch with who we really are.
I hate to break it to you, but your- all of our- physical goals have been hijacked. It just seems a little less in our face right now because it feels like the suggestion is coming from a caring place. Maybe the government does care. True or hidden motives aside, that’s missing the point.
The point isn’t whether or not the recommendation is useful, it is whether or not it bubbled up from a well-spring of truth from deep inside you, or it was dumped on your head from a 3rd floor window.
You see, I struggle with this. My conditioning for a long time has been to believe that exercise is important because one should not get fat. Exercise builds discipline and character (more like stubbornness and rigidity…). Healthy, beautiful people exercise regularly, intensely, and often. Exercise is a moral decision- it simply makes you a better person. This is what I was taught in my family of origin.
I reckon with this conditioning everyday. It rules more than just the physical area of my life. If I’m paying attention, it permeates every decision I make.
Yet I know a deeper truth. If I look at what it means to rise above the “shoulds” I learned, its almost as if I don’t know what to do with my body. Up until recently, I’d never examined if my goals and intentions for exercise were mine- something working through me- or if they’ve been hijacked by someone else- something I was working through.
If you look you will see how many of your physical goals can be traced back to another person or an institution, who taught you “this is what exercise is for”. And they may have had incentive for you to believe in them that were not in your best interest (if best interest means your well-being, freedom, and vitality).
I’m not saying that we should rebel against the government’s suggestions and not exercise daily. I wholeheartedly think we should!
And i’m not rebelling against my parents’ beliefs that staying lean and building discipline are good reasons to exercise, because leanness and discipline are components of health and vitality.
My point is simply that these beliefs need to be investigated. Are they true for me? And is the way I’m acting them out truly serving me?
And I think at the core of it, when I strip away everything I’ve ever been taught about exercise, and tune in to what is important for me, the role for movement in my life is more than health and fitness. More than strength and looks. It’s to keep me grounded. To keep me balanced. To keep me present in my physical home. Its to keep my brain healthy as much as my body. Anything else, any other result I attain, is a byproduct.
If you feel aimless without a clearly defined goal, you might scroll through Instagram to find one, but you’ll only find yourself hijacked.
Is being present with your body enough? Or does exercise need to be a means to an end? Ask yourself, to whom does that end serve? Is it you? Or is it someone else you’re aiming to please?
So yes, do exercise for your health. But do it for you because you care about you.
And yes, exercise because it keeps you lean and strong, but don’t do it mindlessly like a hamster on a wheel. Can you find a way to engage with exercise such that the physical result you achieve is simply the byproduct of cultivating a state of mind in which presence, celebration, and kindness to your body are the goal itself?
Don’t just chase a result because that’s what everyone else is doing. Engage with your body with reverence for its brilliance, and you will be amazed at the result- the inner vitality- that naturally unfolds.
But how do you know if your goal is your own, or you’ve been hikacked? Its not always easy to tell… It takes a desire to see reality as it is.
But you can start like this:
Before each time you step out for a walk, or lie on your yoga mat, or strap on your jogging shoes, or lift those heavy ass weights, ask yourself:
What is the source of the goals you have for your body? Are they your own? Or are they hand-me-downs from your family? Your friend? Our society’s standards for health, beauty, and fitness?
Ask: Is your routine an act of reverence for your body? Or are you chasing a result that you were taught somewhere was the “ideal”, but which could be keeping you stuck in a repetitive pattern. Rigid in your thinking as much as your body’s potential for movement.
And then simply try out how it might feel to have no goal other than to celebrate being in your body. Just see what comes up, spontaneously, from the intent for complete presence. No ulterior motive. No agenda. Nothing to gain, and nothing to lose.
Just a humble reflection from the mind of a human who struggles everyday to understand, “what is reality?”.
Up until now we have been discussing peoples’ common attitudes towards movement and exercise through the use of archetypes and by clarifying some commonly used (or dare I say, misused) terms pertaining to movement practice. I’d like now to switch gears slightly to take a closer look at what I mean conceptually by movement practice, and then further along in this work, why it is important to investigate the form yours takes and your relationship with it.
Double-edged sword
We live in an interesting time in which the sharing and ingesting of information is ludicrously easy, probably to the point which it is making us less good learners (a topic for another sort of essay). With this ease of sharing of information- both of the practical and educational variety, but sometimes also the useless and intimate details of the personal lives of our distant acquaintances and what they had for #healthydinner last night- people are more health conscious than ever. In the time it takes to type in a sentence into Google, or your credit card number to Amazon Prime, you can have access to a plethora of websites, books, and other resources teaching how to be healthier. This heightened health-consciousness, however, comes with a double edge. On the one side, we have an increase in awareness of the benefits of making more time for movement and exercise in our lives. On the other side there risksbeing too much information, misinformation, and the lure to compare ourselves to the others.
As one of my favourite ballet teachers said countless times, “where your attention goes, energy flows”. For those of us who want to include more movement in our lives as part of a healthy lifestyle plan, this abundance of information makes this both an amazing, and yet confusing and challenging time in which we must choose where we want to focus our attention, and discipline ourselves to have a healthy, pragmatic relationship with the information we ingest (and this includes the words I write, too).
This idea of sifting through the rubbish, separating the wheat from the chaff, seems like as good a place as any to start to conceptualize a movement practice. Let’s bring our attention now to the mass of information that tells us what we should do, what is best for us, while remembering that “they” can’t possibly know what is best for you. I certainly don’t. “The others” don’t. It’s only you who can know, and don’t you know it already how difficult it is to interpret the information coming from your own body, let alone trust someone else to do it for you.
Movements and markets within movement
As I’ve mentioned, there is an abundance of information and a surging awareness of the world of health and fitness. Inspiration to move (or, more colloquially, “fit-spiration”, another double-edged sword, which I feel, more often than not, serves to activate our body-image based shame-triggers than provide actual inspiration) exists just a click away. New vocabularies are developing around movement culture and people are latching onto identifiers for their movement and exercise philosophies. We are seeing the advent of “movements” in peoples’ movement practices.
A movement “movement” is seen by us as a new paradigm for organizing how we perform movements and exercise. A system with its own sense of purpose, ideals, and goals. People are drawn to these movements because something about the look and feel of it seems to resonate with them. There is a perceived congruence in the underlying beliefs and goals that both the individual and the movement hold. Often, identifying with a movement (both in movement practices and in other areas of life, such as the intellectual, political, or spiritual) can bring a great sense of meaning and purpose, helping to create a sustainability effect that is necessary for a life-long, pleasurable relationship with the movement practice. If you hate it and don’t find fulfillment in your movement practice, you won’t stick with it long enough to reap its benefits, which is why “enjoyable” is one of the three tenets of a movement practice that I keep repeating (the other two being fulfilling and healthy).
Sometimes this relationship with a movement is not so healthy. Some movements can be cultish. Some movements are well-intentioned but poorly led, leading to misinformation and injury (Cross-Fit often gets flack for this). Sometimes there are movement wars and clashes, debating which one is better than the other: Marathon running vs high-intensity -interval training; powerlifting vs weightlifting (and you’ll find some nasty, useless, and time-wasting exchanges in online forums, of which I personally have no interest in engaging with). Sometimes we’re drawn to movements for the wrong reasons, like that we’re physically attracted to one of its founding leaders, and confuse this for a congruence with our goals. Latching ignorantly onto a movement is another double edged sword of the movement practice exploration.
There is also the irresistible lure to the new and shiny. Ironically, while the advent of a “new” movement can seem like a groundbreaking, sophisticated, or “high-tech” (our interpretation: better) way of interacting with our bodies, many of these movements are only building upon or repackaging something intrinsic to us that already exists, and has always existed, but just that we forgot was there and needed to create a new way of experiencing it again. Some are more or less sensible than others, more or less in line with your individual goals than others, but what all these movements within movement have in common is something atavistic. Something sacred and primal.
As I see it, this is the need to connect with our bodies, use them in the various ways made possible to us by virtue of the miracle of our skeletal structure. Its to delight in the receiving of the inputs of the world around us through the sensory and motor receptors in our joints, and the skin on the soles of our feet and hands (and other body parts should we choose to accept the challenge to get down on the ground and roll around). And of utmost importance, a movement gives us the chance to be a part of a community of similarly minded individuals with whom we feel safe and accepted by. I say this is of utmost importance because the very part of our central nervous system that allows us to have safe, enjoyable social engagement (feelings of love and belonging) is the same aspect of it that also mediates the immune system, digestion, the heart, the respiratory system, our hearing, and everything else related to our systems’ homeostasis, health, growth, and restoration (parasympathetic nervous system function).
A good example of one such movement that has become well-known to the general public in the past decade is the barefoot movement, including the advent of those goofy looking Five Finger shoes (of which I admit I had a pair back in 2013), and barefoot running (which opens up a whole can of worms in the running world, asking the question, “which running technique is best? Forefoot or heel strike?”. And the answer is, in short, it depends. But for the long answer, I implore you to read the book Even With Your Shoes On, by the running coach and fellow Anatomy in Motion practitioner, Helen Hall). But to call the barefoot movement a “new” movement is not accurate. Before we had shoes all the human race knew was barefoot living. I can only theorize that some ancient part of us recognizes the value in feeling the sensitive skin on the bottoms of our feet interacting with the grass and dirt, in allowing the bones and muscles of the foot to adapt to the naturally soft ground with variable terrain and textures. It is unfortunate that, for city dwellers like me, the only readily available option is the hard, linear concrete walkways which are not so kind for barefoot walking.
What is good about the barefoot movement is that it is a reminder of how healthy it is for us to go out into the woods and be on natural terrain: It holds the ability to connect us both with ourselves and with nature, two things crucial for our health. What is not so good is how people misinterpret “barefoot good” as “barefoot everything, even stuff I’ve never done before but will now start to do for the first time with no shoes, is the best, and running barefoot on the concrete builds character even though it really hurts, but I have to do it because some guy online wrote about how great it was.”
In both movement and the human structure, there is nothing new, just depth and breadth to explore, and the addition of scientific evidence intellectualizing of the human experience of movement, which may or may not even be necessary for us to get out of it what we need: Health, fulfillment, enjoyment, and human connection (with ourselves and others).
The commoditization movement
While there are countless examples of movements like the barefoot movement, aiming to reconnect us with something primal and intrinsic to us that we’ve forgotten was important, there is a shadow side that I do not see at all as a healthy revival of primal movement culture. This is the ever burgeoning trendy, niche, consumer fitness classes, which are primarily marketed towards women (for whom the research shows are particularly susceptible to feeling shame around their physical appearance, making them more likely to buy into such marketing).
Stay tuned…
In the next installment of this Movement Practice monster-essay I’d like to further discuss the perils of commoditizing and marketing of movement we see today, and the consumer mentality that can cause the unaware to treat movement as an item to buy and own to show off, fit in, or as a band-aid solution to deeper, unexamined problems, rather than as a gift we already possess, waiting for us to unwrap.
If you are still reading this series, I really appreciate you! I don’t know exactly where this is going, but what I know for sure is that I’m not anywhere close to being finished… Thanks for reading this far.
Beyond Archetypes
In parts one through five (see all Movement Practice chapters HERE) I used archetypes as a metaphor for the various ways people think about, talk about, and act out movement. In exploring this intersection between who people are and how they interact with movement and exercise, we’ve set the stage for the meat of the conversation to follow: What is a movement practice? How is this different than exercise? And, with the assumption that having a movement practice is important, how do we go about creating one that has meaning and use for us?
Speaking of Movement…
My very attempt at writing this may be a fool’s task. Alas, movement is not a medium for which a deep understanding can come through talking about it. Words are poor vessels to help us understand something like movement that is, by its very nature, meant to be embodied and experienced, through our physical structures.
Indeed, as I sat down to write about why this thing in my life and the lives of many called a “movement practice” is important, and what it means to me, I realized that I had a concept, but not the concise words to communicate it (a recurring theme in my life, for the record).
Up until this point I was operating on vague feeling- That a movement practice feels different than a workout, exercise, or physical activity. That the women’s fitness chain Curves’ curcuit workout has different “vibe” to it and attracts a different archetype than a traditional Sivananda yoga class, for example.
I think this subjective feeling is worth identifying more clearly, and in this chapter I will begin the investigation of the words that help to describe the quality of these relationships between mind, body, and movement I call movement practice.
Moving Into Understanding
There are many who, like myself in my “then”, can’t quite describe why their physical situations feel saturated with a sense of lack (of purpose, goals, or meaning), or are indescribably stressful, painful, or monotonous. In fact, many people I work with have initially come to me with the sense that there is something “more” they need, or that something is missing in their lives, usually relating to their bodies and their health, that they can get through movement.
Movement, not words, can be the hand to reach out and turn the doorknob of the door of understanding, behind which we can discover what’s currently missing from us. Where words can fail and confuse us, movement speaks to us on a visceral level. It connects us with a physical feeling, an undertone that we can then put words to. This is why somatic therapeutic practices (like Somatic Experiencing® and Somato-Emotional Release® for example), can be so helpful for individuals with mental health issues.
Think of words as signposts pointing to something greater, beyond the words themselves, for us to examine. For you, the reader, my hopes is that my words may challenge your current belief systems and habits around movement. That by identifying with an archetype, your relationship with movement becomes articulated to you beyond a “vibe”.
The rest of this chapter will define several core terms that I feel to be important for this discussion. I found the definitions from the dictionary to be insufficient for our discussion around movement, and that it was necessary to inquire into the words’ meaning more deeply in this context (as The Transcender knows, context changes everything).
The following words (signposts) are relevant for the chapters to follow, and I suggest you get acquainted with them.
Movement
The dictionary says:
An act of changing physical location or position or of having this changed. A change or development in something.
I am writing this primarily with the movement of our bodies in mind, but think like The Transcender for a moment. Movement isn’t limited to the physical motion of our bodies. Movement is change. In location, position, or in a thing itself. Your internal environment changing. The environment around you changing. Movement is you developing, for better or worse. Movement is forwards, backwards, and sideways. Three (or more) dimensions. Movement requires reference points to observe a change, and thus must be a relationship between two or more objects or phenomena.
Exercise can be movement in many senses of the word, but not all movement is exercise. Likewise, not all exercise is development. Not all exercise can be seen as a relationship like movement must be.
I want to suggest that we think of movement in this broader sense as trajectory, change, development, and relationship. In doing so we can see how movement is inclusive of more elements than the physical movement we consciously do with our bodies when we workout or play a sport.
A movement practice, by this line of thinking, can include things such as I am doing right now: Periods of stillness, introspection, and the act of sitting down to write. In the words of Greek philosopher Heraclitus, all things are flux- Movement permeates and relate to all areas of our inner and outer lives.
Exercise
The dictionary says:
Activity requiring physical effort, carried out especially to sustain or improve health and fitness. A process, task, or activity carried out for a specific purpose, especially one concerned with a specified area or skill.
To use or apply.
Occupy the thoughts of; worry or perplex.
As previously mentioned, exercise is movement, but not all movement is exercise. An exercise can be skilled practice, skilled practice can be exercise, but exercise is not skilled practice. These distinctions are part of what I like to call the movement/exercise/practice fallacy. (There’s nothing I like more than clarifying distinctions between similar terms and discovering fallacies by which we live.)
To be clear, when I compare exercise and movement I don’t want to demonize exercise and put movement on a pedestal. Exercise is an important component of a movement practice, which is why I don’t like to see the two lumped together to rot in the compost heap of misunderstood words.
While for many, such as The Exerciser archetype, exercise can be a detriment, obsessive and unhealthy. Yet for others exercise is a valuable, healthy experience. Exercise can be done with the beneficial intention to improve one’s health, strength, or endurance, even while consciously being aware of not enjoying the physical act of it (such as wind sprints, unless you happen to be a masochistic type). We can be aware that we are exercising only to get something out of it, know that we aren’t being present while doing it, and still gain from it.
Or we can exercise unaware that our mind is in a place of should-be, insufficiency, and self punishment (again, often the case for The Exerciser). The dictate of how reciprocal of health our trajectory becomes is our own awareness of how and what we are using exercise for. There is no end to fitness trends marketed towards The Exerciser with this every intention- Providing an means to buy an experience in which people can tune out from their bodies together, feeding off of each others’ perceived need to be and look like someone their not. To fit in with the “good people” with their “good bodies”, and make up for unhealthy habits. Spinning classes, Cross-Fit, and F45 are just some potential examples of this.
We must also distinguish between an exercise (the noun), and exercise (the verb). An exercise by definition is something in the realm of practice, whereas exercise is something we normally do without the mindset of practice.
Lastly, it is interesting to note the latter two definitions of the word from above. We can use exercise in a way that we are in it to get something out of it, and so too can we be exercised- Stressed, worried, slowly ground down. We can be exercised by our improper use of exercise, which often paves the path of demise for The Exerciser and Over-Identifier.
Exercise and movement have an important relationship both with each other in the space of a movement practice, and with ourselves in the space of our lives. How these aspects of a movement practice interact with each other and impact on you, the user, doer, practitioner, define how healthy and useful it will be for you.
Practice
The dictionary says:
The actual application or use of an idea, belief, or method as opposed to theories about such application or use.
The customary, habitual, or expected procedure of something. The carrying out or exercise of a profession.
Repeated exercise in or performance of an activity or skill so as to acquire or maintain proficiency in it.
Love isn’t the only thing that gets to be a triangle. We can identify three sides of practice:
1) The actual doing of a thing (versus the talking or thinking about a thing). 2) The doing of a thing as a rote, habitual, expected thing to do, to get something out of it, often with little awareness of the impact it may be having in the moment and on the future forecast.
3) The deep practice of a thing that results in a flow state, development of some aspect of self, with the intention of mastery of a skill.
When we talk about a movement practice, type 1 is always implied (or it would be a movement idea or thought- Still movement in terms of changing patterns of neurons, but neglecting the action on the thought that is requisite for the fully fledged physical movement practice we’re speaking of). A defining factor in the quality, meaning, or use of a movement practice is due in part to whether the core intention is type 2 or 3.
Are you type 2: going through the motions, doing it because you feel you should be as an expectation of your peer group or an authority figure? Or are you type 3: your goal is to practice, to develop a skill, to learn and experience flow?
Neither is right or wrong, and each type has its place within a movement practice. We need to know more about the context and the individual to say which type of practice is appropriate for the person at this moment in time.
Relationship
The way in which two or more concepts, objects, or people are connected, or the state of being connected.
The way in which two or more people or organizations regard and behave toward each other.
As previously mentioned, there can be no measurable movement unless we are comparing two objects, people, or phenomena with each other. We need reference points to define the relationship of two bodies in terms of position, location, speed, velocity, etc. As a Complementarian knows, nothing can be understood on its own, without context. And so we cannot speak of physical movement without discussing it as a relationship between two or more things.
As an experiment, just for fun, try for an entire day to use the word movement instead of relationship. The movement between two friends, partners, or family members. Perhaps we have so many challenges with relationships because we think of them as static entities, when in fact it is more like the planets orbiting around the sun- Sometimes moving together, sometimes apart, ebbing and flowing, each with their own trajectory while being impacted on by the gravity of the other.
The relationships I am interested in investigating are the ones we have with movement and exercise, and the connection between movement and exercise themselves (as already alluded). How we regard and behave towards them. How was can become attached to them. How this relationship changes with time. How the quality of this relationship and our perception of it impact on our lives and our health. I think these are questions worth exploring.
Interaction
Reciprocal action or influence.
Physicist Carlo Ravelli, author of Seven Brief Lessons on Physics believes that all reality is interaction. That the human self is a “huge wave of happenings”. He says in a radio interview with On Being‘s Krista Tippett:
“…we do understand the world better, not in terms of things but in terms of interaction between things and how things interact with one another, even in biology. We understand biology in terms of evolution, how things change… We understand the antelope because there is a lion and the lion because there is antelope. We don’t understand them in isolation”.
Bruce Hood, author of The Self Illusion, a lovely book on the neuroscience of self (or the lack thereof), communicates through his research how our sense of self is only possible because of the interactions and experiences. Our identities are inextricable from our surroundings- people, places, and things that formed who we are and will be since we had sufficient capacity to retain memories. “Self” is the sum of the interactions between other people and our material possessions in our lives up until now. He goes on to explain that, “The emergence of self is epigenetic- an interaction of the genes in the environment… In a sense, who we really are comes down to those around us”.
I find these views on interaction go beyond the definition from the dictionary of reciprocal action or influence and express how interaction it is the very landscape of our existence.
To appreciate movement and exercise and their place in our lives therefore it is important to investigate the nature of the interaction both between the two and ourselves. Movement is a “happening”, ever changing, un-fixable in time and space, and we cannot understand it as a thing we study under a microscope, but as the interaction that is a defining feature of what movement is.
Healthy
Not diseased.
Indicative of, conducive to, or promoting good health.
Normal, natural, and desirable.
If the definition of “healthy” refers to promoting good health, then we also must understand what is “good health”? I feel good health is more than the absence of disease and illness, although this is how it is commonly defined (at a detriment to our conventional medical system).
According to the pioneering functional medicine doctor Mark Hyman, “disease arises from an imbalance in the system”. If the opposite is true, then health must arise as a result of a balanced system. In an interview, Dr. Hyman uses the metaphor of a farmer tending to soil quality to produce a healthy crop. Working with the system versus treating a symptom. He describes his goal as a doctor as”creating health”, not treating disease. Working with the ecosystem in an integrated way. In his description of functional medicine he says, “We’re actually taking care of the soil so disease can’t actually occur, or it goes away as a side effect of creating health”.
A system with intact homeostasis, resiliency to stressors; “healthy” is more than the absence of symptoms. We know that it is possible to have a disease that can be dormant for years, unbeknownst to us, yet we feel “healthy”, or “normal”, until we start experiencing symptoms indicative of the later stages of the condition. By this point, we are often too late to effectively treat many illnesses.
Nor do I feel that “normal” or “natural” are descriptive of what healthy is. Especially in our current world state in which what we consider normal is for human beings to cope, numb, and distract ourselves from ill health, physically and mentally, as the average, acceptable way of life.
As one of my clients put it to me as we reflected on her progress over a year’s work with her body, “The thing that blows my mind is that the feeling of unease and tightness used to be my ‘normal’. It was a constant I was unaware was holding me back from being more active and feeling more joy in my life”. If healthy is normal, yet normal is to be ignorantly unhealthy, what is health?
We can say “health is homeostasis”, but what does this feel like? To put put it more poetically, more subjectively, good health feels like the awakening to our potential. Stepping in our own power. Thriving and flourishing, not merely disease free. Health manifests as feeling like energetic and passionate participants in our lives. Good health feels like waking up inspired to interact with our priorities.
Because I am unsatisfied with the current dictionary definition, I would like to add to it. Healthy is not simply the absence of disease, but a state of flourishing, optimal balanced function of all systems in a living organism; efficient homeostasis allowing for an individual to experience a complete spectrum of mental and physical interactions available to them.
“Healthy” can also refer to a relationship or interaction, not a living thing, and we can use a similar definition: A healthy interaction or relationship is one that affords for the individuals and things involved to flourish, be in balanced coexistence, etc.
Integrated
With various parts or aspects linked or coordinated. Combine (one thing) with another so that they become a whole.
For our purposes, integrated refers to a way of interacting with movement and exercise. We can integrate it with or isolate it from the other areas of our lives. We can have it as a thing we consider separately from us, or we can see us and movement combined as a whole, see how movement and our relationship with it is linked to how we interact with the other realms of life.
The rest of this work will focus on how to move in a direction of a healthy, integrated relationship with movement: The Integrator’s way of living. That being said, I don’t believe that everyone should aspire to be The Integrator archetype. We need to consider context. Consider what is now serving you in your current context, and what would happen if we took away this source of comfort or stability- your habits, behaviours, attitudes. How ready would you be to adapt?
Thus, to integrate is my perceived ideal, but it may be a graded process, a journey, to that goal, one which you may never fully reach. Integration is not a destination or a fixed state, it is a path.
Part of the path of integrating is also the understanding that inherent in it is the necessity for things to first be deconstructed, broken apart, and isolated in order to understand them better, before reconnecting them more healthily.
At the end of the day, its not whether you successfully became an Integrator that will dictate the quality of your life, health, and well-being (things we have a hard time defining in absolute terms anyway), but who you were in that process. How you showed up to the challenges, interacted with the “huge wave of happenings”.
Part 5! Today we’ll delve into the last of the six archetypes, The Transcender.
Before we start, I’d just like to clarify that I am not claiming to be a Transcender. Far from it. I struggle daily with my Exerciser tendencies (I’m pot nerfect and I have them). I try my best to be aware of the pull of Over-Identifier-ing. I like to think I possess some of the healthy balanced qualities of The Integrator, but fall short on many occasions. Most days, if I’m lucky, I am able to remember how I aspire to cultivate Transcender qualities. Just remembering is hard (and this is where mantras, in a non-fluffy, practical way come in handy. But more on that later).
The only reason I feel authorized to write about The Transcender archetype is that I have a few mentors in my life that I would describe as such. I’ve been fortunate to spend time with these individuals, seeing how they live their lives over the course of a day, how they think and behave, and the congruence between the two. Observing what they value, what their priorities are, how they interact with their bodies.
It is because of these people that I feel capable of writing this chapter. I hope you’ll be as inspired by this archetype as I have been by The Transcenders I am lucky to know and learn from. Making the time to thoughtfully write down this description was a gift: The reflecting on what qualities and traits these inspiring people have was illuminating. What is it exactly about these people that makes it feel so different to be with them?
Complementarity: A Principle to Live By
The Transcender was a difficult character for me to pin down (also one of the reasons I am writing about him last). To nail his description, I think it is necessary to first discuss the concept of complementarity.
Complementarity is a principle from the weird world of quantum physics developed by Neils Bohr, a leading founder of the field. It states that to understand one entity or phenomena in its entirety, we may need to understand it broken down into two or more mutually incompatible theories. It speaks to the complexity, uncertainty, and indeterminacy of things. Things that have complementary properties which cannot all be observed or measured simultaneously.
A prime example of complementarity in physics is that we cannot simultaneously observe wave and particle properties. Nor can we measure position and momentum at the same time with the same instruments. The stage we’re in now, as a technological species, it is not possible to conceive of or measure properties inherent to the thing in question beyond what is possible with our specific measuring tool: The type of measurement determines which property is shown. In essence, it is near impossible to see the whole truth of a thing through one lens. It only seems possible to garner some semblance of understanding of a thing by reducing it to multiple, contradictory parts, then putting the pieces back together again.
I am enchanted with how complementarity not only describes an aspect of the fabric of reality, but how it can serve as a useful way of perceiving the world and living in harmony with it at an individual level.
If The Transcender had a religion, he’d be a Complementarian. This was a conclusion I came to after listening to an interview with physicist Frank Wilczek on Krista Tippett’s radio show On Being, in which he laid claim to this as his own religious belief (only half jokingly). To him , complementarity wasn’t just a physical principle, but a way of living. He described how he takes his understanding of complementarity and its application in physics into his daily interactions with people and the world around him.
In Wilczek’s words, the practical application of complementarity is based on the recognition that “a deep truth has the feature that its opposite is also a deep truth”. That there are different ways of viewing the world and we need both and all if we want the complete picture, as each is valid in its own context.
Just as we can observe matter organized as a particle or a wave depending on what instrument we are measuring it with, our interpretation of human behaviour, thoughts, and feelings will depend on our lens, context, and reference point of observation. Thoughts and feelings are about as mutually incompatible as particles and waves, and only rarely can we view them together as a coherent whole with any clear understanding of what’s really going on.
What makes complementarity useful for us (other than that it is an organizational principle of reality on the micro scale which it would seem foolish not to want to investigate in the macrosphere we interact in daily), is, as Wilczek explains, “It is interesting, fun, and informative to appreciate there are different ways of viewing things that each have their own validity, but conflict if you try to apply them both at once. Apply one at a time and try to appreciate both.”
His belief, one that I feel to be an astute observation, is that there is virtue and intelligence in being able to live with this uncertainty and inconsistency, that this is an important component of wisdom.
This wisdom, this appreciation of multiple views and ways of thinking and doing all as valid in their context, is the primary defining trait of The Transcender.
The Transcender
The Transcender’s mantra could be taken directly from Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s book, Antifragile: “I want to live happily in a world I don’t understand”. He has a love for the uncertain. He is curious about inconsistencies. He is a seeker of truth.
In our MLAM, The Transcender cannot be confined to a single shell. As a Complementarian, he he is able to jump from shell to shell at any given moment based on the dictates of context: His present needs and goals. He is the model in its entirety, without being attached for too long to any of the archetypes he inhabits. He appreciates how the traits from each archetype serve a purpose that is useful. He can only be fully understood as a whole by understanding the other five archetypes and their ways of living.
The Transcender is rare, but it is likely that you can identify at least one in your life. He is probably someone you admire and look to as a role model. Someone to learn from.
Movement is one of The Transcender’s highest values, but to him movement goes beyond physical exercise (we will look at this broader definition of movement in the next chapter). He sees movement in its every form in nature and is fascinated by it, its reflection and representation and in our lives. For example, how the movement of the seasons mirror the movement of our thoughts, the function of our bodies. His overarching view of movement as seasons, cycles, and patterns, as a fundamental property of everything, explains how he is able to maintain his value for movement at all times while himself being in a sedentary character.
The Transcender is excellent at recognizing patterns and appreciates that his life happens in cycles of complementarity: Cycles of input and output, activity and non-activity, introspection and extroversion, play and rest, etc. He also acknowledges that these cycles may last moments, days, years, or decades, and is perfectly comfortable with that. These patterns are only recognizable with a sufficient amount of time and introspection, and so the Transcender is likely to be at least 30 years or older- Enough time to experience the validity of each cycle in its current context. This understanding is what makes him peaceful to be around. He isn’t fighting the currents of his life, but flowing with them.
In more practical terms, on any given day The Transcender can adopt the characteristics of any of the other archetypes but without becoming stuck in any of their patterns.
For example, The Transcender may have led the highly active life of a Dedicated Mover for 10 years as a professional cyclist, but then out of necessity (a signal to rest such as an injury, or a change in priorities) become a bit of an Indoorsman, deciding to commit his next five years to writing a book he felt compelled to bring to fruition based on these 10 years of lessons as a cyclist. He makes use of The Indoorsman archetype’s characteristics, rather than allowing The Indoorsman making use of him. This is the key distinction between The Transcender in Indoorsman’s clothing, and a true Indoorsman. He play’s The Indoorsman character without carrying these characteristics into other areas of his life in which they won’t serve. It is as if he can put on the costume of an archetype, and change out of it to play the role necessary for the next act of his life, whether it lasts for 5 minutes or 20 years. One of his superpowers is adaptability.
While he is capable of stepping in and out of the shoes of The Indoorsman and Exerciser (two of our archetypes with the least healthy relationships with movement), he was probably encouraged in his childhood to always be moving, playing, and being outdoors, values that stuck with him. As the driving force in his life is his curiosity about movement, most things he deems a good use of his time involve learning about, practicing, or deepening his understanding of the human body in motion. He considers himself a life-long student of movement, and he studies via books and taking courses, experience working with other people, but perhaps most importantly, exploring in his own body, developing a deep awareness of it.
What he knows to be true through his own experience studying his body in motion is that what he observes to be happening in his body also shows up in his life. When he feels resistance and limitation in his body, somewhere in his life he knows this same restriction must exist and he seeks to understand this connection. To him, the exploration of his body is a vital, inextricable part of investigating his life and how he interacts with it. He knows that his relationship with his body and how it moves- what’s going on “in here”, is a reflection of what’s going on “out there”. This is not something he can prove scientifically, but witnesses again and again in himself and the lives of others. This insight makes him sought after for advice. Being with him in is like taking a ride in a helicopter from which we can view a greater expanse of the landscape of our lives. To zoom out and see a fuller picture of reality.
As much as he values and loves moving his body, he is equally able to be with himself in stillness. He can sit down to meditate, scan his body, or to read or write or study for hours. Another one of his amazing super-powers is his resiliency to sitting. Immobilization in front of a computer or on a plane don’t have much of a negative long term effect (not that he enjoys these things exceptionally). He simply stands up, shakes off any feelings of crustiness, and gets on with life with no excuses, regrets, or procrastination, like many of us are prone to do.
It is his commitment to learning about and from himself, his body, and the world around him that define the core intention of The Transcender’s movement practice. In his quest to satisfy his curiosity, he is likely to develop a propensity for teaching, allowing him to share what he is learning and exploring, while deepening his understanding of himself and the human body. Likely career paths for him thus include coaching a sport or movement form, working as a therapist of some designation, teaching seminars, or authoring a book (or all of the above at different life-stages). His ability to play all parts in MLAM serves him nicely in these guiding roles, endowing him with an easy sense of compassion and drawing his “tribe” to him in his capacity as coach, teacher, and healer.
The Transcender is distinguished from the Dedicated Mover and The Over-Identifier by his realization that he cares more to explore, tinker, play, and teach than to compete, win, and be the best. He may have transitioned from being a serious athlete to his teacher/coach/healer role with the understanding that while he loves that particular sport, he gives precedence to having a healthy body and mind, a goal requiring a more diverse movement “diet”, not to become stuck in one pattern.
As his name suggests, The Transcender transcends the need to always be moving: He doesn’t obsess about his training schedule, doesn’t feel guilty for missing a training session, doesn’t succumb to the pressure to exercise because “he should”. He knows to rest when things don’t feel right in his body. He fluctuates between moments of deep focus, relaxation, or calm, and bouts of intense activity, skilled practice, or inspired teaching. Because of this, he is in good physical health much of the time (though he comes in different shapes and sizes).
It is as if his MLAM shell-position operates on a highly sensitive pressurestat* system allowing him to adapt to each moment in time appropriately. For example, if he stops moving for long enough, his inner homeostatic mechanism signals a build up of pressure and cues him to get up and move. And when his system needs a break to recover (low pressure) the signal is heeded; he slows down and enjoys some downtime. This happens at both the micro (seconds, minutes, days, weeks) and macro (months, years, decades) level. He rarely needs to think long and hard about what is best for his body, he is adept at interpreting his inner-pressurestat’s readings.
*A pressurestat is a homeostatic control that reacts to changes in pressure in a system, increasing or decreasing it according to the environmental conditions.
This ability to clearly communicate with himself is mirrored back at him in his relationships and professional life. The Transcender tends to have clear, intact boundaries, knowing when to say “no” or “yes” to himself and others in personal and professional matters. Rarely does he burn himself out, as his internal feedback loop provides accurate real-time information on when to stop, go, or change lanes. That said, he has developed a particularly low tolerance for irrational thinkers, from whom he has learned that life is too short to live trying to convince them of their irrationality or change their minds.
Finally, an interesting characteristic of The Transcender is that he may not consider himself to even have a movement practice, even if it appears to the outside eye that he does. If you ask him about it, he doesn’t feel that he is practicing anything, just that he is living his life authentically according to his values and priorities. In this way, The Transcender effortlessly takes on a teaching role by virtue of modeling how to live a life in congruence with one’s highest values.
The Transcender at a glance:
Superpowers: Resilience to sitting, adaptability, curiosity, teaching, communication. Religion: Complementarian Kryptonite: Irrational thinkers. Vitality: Healthy, abundance of energy, youthful. Relationship with movement: Transcendent. Attitude towards the stairs: Take em’ or leave em’, depends on his pressurestat.
Identify with the traits, not the character
As I mentioned before, these archetypes are stories. Communication devices to frame the rest of what I wish to discuss in this work.
You can probably identify some traits from each archetype in yourself, or maybe fully identify with one of them. Perhaps you have an idea about aspects of your archetype that you are unsatisfied with, that you’d like to change. But I’d also like you to ask yourself, how are these undesirous traits currently serving you, where you are now in your life?
Put on The Transcender’s thinking cap, or take a ride with him in his helicopter. Can you see the broader landscape of your life?
A conversation between an Exerciser and a Transcender from up in his helicopter might look like this.
Exerciser: After reading Monika’s description of The Exerciser archetype, I can see how I use exercise as a way of making up for my unhealthy habit of neglecting my body all week as I work at my IT job at Clean Clean Happy Time Toilets and Bidets Inc. I’m unhappy that this is a trait I possess.
Transcender: Let’s zoom out and investigate this. Can you see ways that this undesirable trait is actually useful for you? What could it be helping you to accomplish and learn? Who else could be benefiting from it? How would you feel if you could let go of this trait, and What would you do with the space you’d free up without this trait as part of your existence?
Your first exploratory mission
Consider this your first step in our systematic approach to cultivating a healthy, useful, enjoyable movement practice.
Exercise 1:
I’d like you to take the imaginary ride with The Transcender described above. Start by writing down some of the characteristics you identified with from each archetype (there will probably be some from each). Go back and re-read the descriptions if necessary. Then, for each characteristic, write down your answers to these six questions:
1. How is this undesirable trait useful for you?
2. What could it be helping you to accomplish?
3. Who else could be benefiting from it?
4. What have you learned from being this way?
5. How would you feel, who would you be, if you could let go of this trait?
6. What would you do with the space you’d free up in your life without this trait as part of your existence?
Doing this reflection and writing down your answers is an illuminating use of time, and I strongly recommend you do it. It will help to give clarity to your “now”, which, at some point will likely be your “then”.
Practical post-archetype semantics
The next chapter of this work will describe and define some important words, like movement, practice, and exercise, so that you, where ever you sit on the MLAM, can gain a fuller understanding of the role movement plays in our lives, and how to cultivate healthier relationships with our bodies on this journey of well-being*. The more you are aware of where you are now on the MLAM by investigating your archetypal ways of living, the more you will appreciate the chapters to follow.
*Well-being: I believe it is impossible to define and measure objectively because it a journey, not a fixed state.
Aaannnd I’m back again. Today we look at the next two archetypes: The Dedicated Mover and The Over-Identifier.
In part 2we looked at The Indoorsman and The Exerciser. In part 3 we painted a portrait of The Integrator, our most balanced, stable character in the Movement-Lifestyle Atomic-Model (MLAM) saga.
Today, we look at the two least stable characters, one of whom (The Over-Identifier) I have been for many years- Maybe you knew me in those years? Man have I changed…
The Dedicated Mover, in hindsight, seems a missed connection to me. I can see now how a few small choices I made escalated and paved the path towards an egocentric movement relationship derailing what could have been a healthy, balanced dance career. It seems as if a few small choices are enough to create a vast chasm separating the Dedicated Mover from the Over-Identifier.
The flap of a butterfly’s wings. The “toaster effect”, if you will.
From Robert Becker’s book, The Body Electric. The “toaster effect” is the new chaos theory.
But I’m not bitter about that (anymore). And I’ll share more about that story in subsequent installments.
Let’s get into today’s archetypes.
Shell 4: The Dedicated Mover
Committed to yet dependent on movement for a living, The Dedicated Mover is a professional mover of some designation. She is the unsexy, unglorified, underrated cousin of the Over-Identifier (who we will meet next). She is everything the Over-Identifier needs to be more like but is in denial of.
The Dedicated Mover excels at living dichotomously. She walks the edge of a precipice: On one side the ground fully supporting her, and on the other a sheer drop into the spiraling, melding, confusion of her identity with her movement endeavor. For The Dedicated Mover, this identity melding is unavoidable, but manageable. In a fine balance she keeps one foot on firm ground, the other dangling over the edge, and she enjoys the thrill and challenge of it.
As an athlete or performer, her livelihood depends on her body’s ability to move and perform in a particular way. As hard as she works at her movement form, she works equally hard at maintaining the balance in her life, and this equal placing of value in life-balance and movement is The Dedicated Mover’s defining characteristic.
The fine balance between dependence on and dedication to. Attachment to versus freedom from. Inspired performance versus pursuing status. Joy of movement versus pride of winning.
Her ability to manage the deluge of successes and struggles on her path will place her at a point on a spectrum somewhere between these two poles. This point is bound to bounce around from week to week, even day to day depending on the demands placed upon her and her ability to cope. This inevitable fluctuating state of existence and perpetual seeking of balance is what gives her her place at shell four, a less stable shell in the MLAM than The Integrator.
As a professional mover, she is aware of the need to actively work at retaining a healthy sense of “I am not my career, I am not my body”. She can take a step back from her professional career and say, “There is this part of me that I love and nurture that has nothing to do with my sport or what my body looks like. I have hobbies and interests and skills that I enjoy developing outside of rock-climbing/circus-performing/football, and I know I won’t be able to use my body for my livelihood forever. I am ok with this and am prepared to make this transition”.
Part of the instability of her place on shell four comes from the unpredictable nature of when this unavoidable transition will take place. However, because The Dedicated Mover’s transition is on the forefront of her mind, it does not hit her like a Talebian Black Swan* as it will for the Over-Identifier, but as a conscious decision met with grace at the appropriate time.
*A Black Swan (referring to the bird, not he ballet), as described in the book by the same name by the statistician and former trader Nassim Nicholas Taleb, is a rare, unpredictable event (good or devastating). Those who know they cannot predict a Black Swan event, but recognize the potential for one are at an advantage as they are able to bolster themselves against the devastating effects should one happen. However, those who are most susceptible to a Black Swan are those who think they can predict the future, think bad things can’t possibly happen to them, and ignore the potential risk because it is so small. For example, if you live in Seattle, a city on a fault line, you are at risk at any time for a massive earthquake to destroy your home. This earthquake is a Black Swan event- A rare, unpredictable event that is impossible to protect against completely. It may happen tomorrow, it may not happen in your lifetime. But it is possible to minimize its catastrophic impact on you by knowing about its potential impact. Bolstering against the earthquake could include a. Moving away or living only a few months of the year in Seattle, b. Educating yourself on safety procedures should there be an earthquake, c. Not owning anything that you know you would hate to lose, etc. None of these are perfect- There is no perfect protection from a Black Swan by its very nature, but with our knowledge that one is possible we can minimize our fragility to one.
Can you identify a Dedicated Mover in your life? They are rare. Too, we don’t hear much about them in the news and media. The Dedicated Mover’s life wouldn’t make an exciting movie. If she wrote a book is would be titled: How Consistent Hard Work, Healthy Choices and Foresight Lead to a Successful and Moderate Life. Contrast that with The Over-Identifier’s best-seller: How to Push Through Pain and Win.
She considers the question: “Will the choices I make today help me succeed for just the next competition? The next few months? Or for the next five years?”.
One of her superpowers is foresight: “Should I take the next three months to recover from this injury now and not compete tomorrow? Should I do the healing I need to do now so that I can compete when I am ready, and have a sustainable, albeit less glorified career?”
When it comes to the unpleasant topic of aging, The Dedicated Mover has a realistic, embracing mindset towards the process, whereas the Over-Identifier meets it with an inner (or outer…) anger and chooses to live in denial, aging signifying the end of “glory days”. The Dedicated Mover thinks of success as sustainability. Success is the fact that she is one of the few who can make a living doing something that brings her joy, versus success as winning and being the best. She thinks long-term, treating her career as a journey, with a higher priority on enjoying it for as long as she can than on surviving for the next competition, game, or performance.
She knows that as she ages things will feel different in her body, but that this is not necessarily better or worse than when she was younger, just a new phase that will require a reframing and a continuously evolving investigation of what that means. When the time comes for her to step back from her professional or competitive career, she will do so with acceptance, and will probably transition smoothly into a support or coaching role, working with younger athletes. Or, she may decide to do venture into an entirely different arena, wishing to engage her other skills and interests that she was not able to while committing her life entirely to her movement form.
There is no denying that The Dedicated Mover will suffer physical and emotional pain as part of the sacrifice she makes for her chosen movement endeavor. Injuries are par for the course with a life committed to movement. But for her, its worth it. She is able to see physical injuries as opportunities to work on her weak areas, as avenues for personal development, and come back stronger than before with a new understanding of herself and her body.
Daily, she is faced with an onslaught of judgement and comparison. Daily, she battles the tendency for fear of failure to serve as motivation. But she is gifted with the ability to make two seemingly mutually incompatible traits work together: A determination to put herself and her health first, and a blazing passion to excel at her movement form. She puts her needs as a human before her needs as an athletic identity. She compares herself more to who she was yesterday than to others. One foot on solid ground, one foot over the precipice.
Balancing work and other areas of life is a challenge for The Dedicated Mover, for whom work is her life. Movement and training are her priority and livelihood, but she is often successful at maintaining quality relationships with herself and others in her life. Through training for her sport she has learned respect, honesty, and how to listen to her body, enabling her to use these characteristics in all life interactions. She doesn’t see herself as better than her non-athletic, non-mover friends, just that she’s chosen a different path, and is equally admiring of the people in her life who are dedicated to their own form of personal and professional mastery, whether physical or not. Her sport is almost everything to her- Almost, because she can detach when there is a true need to prioritize something that will affect her personal moral and ethical codes for living, and her overall well-being.
The Dedicated Mover at a glance:
Superpowers: Physical prowess, self-healing, foresight, dedication. Kryptonite: Injuries, balance, judgement, competition, comparison. Vitality: Physically healthy yet perpetually healing some degree of physical injury Relationship with movement: Dichotomous:Passionate yet grounded, joyous yet serious, dedicated yet dependent. Attitude towards the stairs: Takes the stairs most of the time depending on the need to preserve energy- Whether today was a heavy or light training day, or whether she had a competition.
Shell 5: The Over-Identifier
Finally we meet the much-alluded to, most unstable of our characters (and the archetype I have personally identified with for nearly one third of my life), The Over-Identifier, who sits on the outermost shell of MLAM.
He takes two primary forms:
1. The serious amateur athlete aspiring for admiration and recognition, to make it big (at least in the eyes of his Instagram followers).
2. The professional athlete who’s sense of identity is inextricable from whatever form of movement or sport he has made it his life’s mission to master.
In either type, The Over-Identifier’s distinguishing characteristic is his ego-centric, unbalanced, often unhealthy relationship with movement: The using of it as a means to seek recognition for his physical superiority; his wrapping up of personal identity to his body and his chosen movement endeavor. To separate him from his sport is to tear his world, as he knows it, apart. This fragility to the surety of injury, age, and emotional stresses to erode his career (as is normal) makes him a living, breathing Black Swan event waiting to happen, and is what puts him on shell five, the most unstable shell, of the MLAM.
The Over-Identifier’s life revolves around training and competitions. He is usually a perfectionist. Type-A personality. Obsessed with his exercise and movement forms. Success for him means being the best.
He is known to post videos of himself daily, probably multiple times per day, on social media, using hashtags such as #nopainnogain, and #beastmode. Even the seemingly innocent and healthy #movedaily slogan becomes unhealthy for The Over-Identifier, who blows both “move” and “daily” out of proportion. Intended to be a gentle, achievable process goal, suitable for The Indoorsman’s foray into a movement infused lifestyle, “move daily” is gospel taken to the extreme for the Over-Identifier. If he cannot commit to a minimum of two or three hours of training daily to his schedule, then he has not gotten his “move” on for that day. The day is now a waste. He is a waste. Woe is the Over-Identifier who takes a rest day. (Yes, in the case of professional athletes, they must train long hours most days, but even professional athletes need rest days, something the Over-Identifier sees as weakness and puts him into existential turmoil).
His identity is defined by how his body moves and looks and his value for competition permeates all areas of his life. To be the best and to win is his all-pervasive mindset. If he fails to perform at the high level he expects of himself or loses in a competition, the feeling is not that he has failed, but that he is a failure. The Over-Identifier experiences a near debilitating frustration if for some reason he cannot accomplish a movement goal or skill within a short time-frame, and a deep shame if his body does not look the part (not thin enough, muscular enough, tall enough, etc). If his livelihood is financially wrapped up in his practice of movement and his looks, in the case of a professional or sponsored athlete, the urgency of his need to fit into an aesthetic role increases. Due to the pressure he puts on himself he is prone to eating disorders, anxiety, depression, and other mental illness.
Fear of failure provides impetus for The Over-Identifier’s movement practice. Often resting just below conscious awareness, this fear makes him work hard, and his dedication is seen as admirable to those spectators on the outside who cannot see the truth of how unhealthy his motivating forces are. His unwillingness to give up, to keep pushing, can be so intense that he is likely to become injured before admitting that his relationship with movement and exercise is unhealthy. His attitude is that nothing can slow him down. Sickness and injuries can’t stop him from showing up for training, and if they do, he feels immense guilt for missing a training session, competition or performance. There is a bizarre sense of pride he gains from showing up for training injured or ill. It shows his commitment to his lifestyle, even if he knows he won’t be performing his best, to him it’s better than not showing up at all.
The Over-Identifier feels blissfully, ignorantly invincible. In the dance world there is term to describe this feeling:The indestructo phenomenon. Coined by Sally Fitt, author of Dance Kinesiology, it refers to how“Dancers who have never had a serious injury can fall into the trap of assuming their bodies are indestructible, that they can never become injured.” (Been there, done that.)
Due to this extreme, indestructo attitude, The Over-Identifier is likely to succumb to the over-training effect, the cognitive and emotional side-effects of which are the first to set in. Sooner or later (often sooner) he finds himself depressed, chronically fatigued, and in a brain fog for weeks on end. Then, as if by some stroke of bad luck, he suffers three injuries in a row. Probably while doing seemingly mundane, low level task, like sneezing, tying a shoe, stepping off a curb. Of course, this isn’t bad luck, but a recognizable pattern in hindsight- A direct result of his inability to honestly listen to his body and treat it with respect (he struggles with honesty, listening, and respect in other areas of his life, too). Where the Dedicated Mover has foresight as a superpower, the Over-Identifier must rely on hindsight, although these lessons from the past don’t always stick the first time.
Movement is his priority 100% of the time, making him the polar opposite of The Indoorsman. An admirable value that, again, many observers on the periphery of his life view as healthy, and aspire to be like him. He is likely to put his movement practice before school, work, and relationships, and these three areas of his life may suffer as a result.
In the real world, perhaps you know an Over-Identifier in the form of a Cross-Fit athlete who is obsessed with his workouts, and schedules his social life around them, alienating friends who don’t have the same commitment to the sport as he does; not wanting to commit to any social situation that is not “paleo”. We could be painting the portrait of a professional dancer who works part-time as a bartender because nights are the only time she has to do anything else, and has no time for friend, family, and ironically, for herself- She is always working to support her movement based lifestyle, not to support herself. This could even be the description of personal trainer who feels his livelihood and identity is dependent on how his body looks, and selling his personal training dogmas and routines has become more important than educating himself on what is truly best for each individual client.
The common denominator of these three portrayals is that The Over-Identifier will do what he feels is necessary to maintain his illusory image, his fleeting feeling of success, no matter if he is hurting himself and sacrificing other areas of his life in the process.
His life is a sunk-cost fallacy. A part of him may recognize the need to let go in order to feel at peace and truly enjoy his life, because there must be something more to this existence than being the best. Or is there… He’s invested so much time and energy in this identity, and he’s so close to “success”, so why stop now? He represses this ominous feeling of internal dissonance.
If for some reason he is forced to let go of his attachment to his physical identity, as in the case of an injury or other major life event like an illness or having a baby, he will lose his sense of “self”, and will enter a strange and tumultuous transition as he is forced to figure out, “who am I if I cannot do X, and do not look like Y?” Unlike the Dedicated Mover, this transition will be abrupt and crushing to his ego. However, the upside is that this unexpected transition will alter the trajectory of his life in what is likely to be a salubrious direction. He is then free to discover something more to life than being the best, to see his path more clearly, and to develop a sense of compassion and an interest in helping others. With no other options, in the time necessary for him to take, he learns to let go and jumps to a different shell of MLAM.
The Over-Identifier at a glance:
Superpowers: Physical prowess, excellent body, ability to push through pain. Kryptonite: Competition, perfectionism, losing, over-training. Vitality: Appears outwardly physically healthy yet may be physically and mentally unwell. Relationship with movement: Obsessive, excessive, dependent: Unhealthy and unbalanced. Attitude towards the stairs: Similarly to The Dedicated Mover, takes the stairs sometimes, depending on whether today was a heavy or light training day, or whether he had a competition.
Why Are We Drawn to the Extremes?
Something interesting came up as I wrote this chapter: It was so much more interesting and enjoyable for me to write the description for the Over-Identifier than for the Dedicated Mover. I had fun with it. I giggled to myself as I wrote it. The Dedicated Mover on the other hand was a dry effort (though I tried to make it interesting enough, for your sake). It made me wonder, why? Are we as a species hardwired to prefer the extreme over the moderate? What makes moderation so difficult?
Look no further than social and mass media sources to witness the popularity of hyped-up, extreme ways of living, having, being, and doing. The extreme end of any spectrum is the one most often reported on and glorified from beyond the screen, making us feel like this is reality and we don’t belong. The expectation and pull to live in accordance to these portrayals is strong, sucking us in, or causing us to hide like a turtle in its shell.
And when pull turns to push, in my experience, being extreme is easier: To hide or to throw ones self into something. Not easier in the sense of physical effort, but in the sense that extreme behaviour is a cop out. A way of avoiding important self-investigation by engaging in a distracting activity or limiting thought process. Avoiding inhabiting an issue by staying busy and moving around it, sometimes quite literally with movement (in the case of The Exerciser and The Over-Identifier).
I was an Over-Identifier in the days when I was training to be a professional dancer. I had heaps of destructive habits. But to face them was a challenge beyond any physical feat you could have asked me to attempt. Stand on my head on stage? No problem. Address my fears and limiting behaviours? No thank you. So I opted to use movement, use my body, as an escape. This strategy only lasted so long. Remember that seemingly random mundane injury typical to the Over-Identifier? Mine was to my neck as I lay in bed by just turning my head to the side, still half asleep. I blamed the way I slept. I blamed randomness. I blamed everything but myself and my inability to take an honest look at how I was living my life. I was trying to keep up appearances (look like a dancer, move like dancer, act like a dancer). Trying to fit in. Trying to be the best. Trying to avoid the truth. It was exhausting, but it was easier than facing facts.
I suspect there is a cyclic interplay reinforcing this unbalanced way of living with what censored versions we see of the lives of others. We avoid, we numb , we escape, and then we are presented with even more portrayals of extreme behaviours framed as desirous, entertaining, or “normal”. It feeds into our own avoidance habits. And at the end of the day, what more do we want than to feel like we are normal and that we belong?
What about those who do the hard work of inhabiting the challenging ground in middle? What about The Integrators (and to an extent The Dedicated Movers)? We don’t see them portrayed as frequently to be role models in the media, and by their very nature, they prefer not to seek recognition for their way of life. Their humility keeps them a secret from those who need their example most.
Moderate isn’t entertaining. Integrative living isn’t a good avoidance activity. No one wants to see an Instagram post of your meditative afternoon in your backyard, touting the virtues of your push-mower. The Olympic athlete with the healthy balanced mindset, diet, and training practice doesn’t make the headline. We’ll only hear about the athlete who injures himself or is involved in a drug scandal.
Action sells. Excitement. Physical prowess. Extremes. To watch someone morbidly obese on “reality” television struggling to exercise, then lose 100 pounds. Or to watch a paralympian with no legs compete in table tennis.
In a world that places a higher value on displaying to us the extremes it is important to understand that movement, generally regarded as always healthy, can become an avoidance behaviour. We must remember that the examples for how to relate to movement in a balanced way are best observed in the people who exist in real life, not on the other side of the screen, for what they show on screen is just a snippet of their life we idealize. And away from the screen is just where you can find The Integrators: Engaging with their lives, unlikely to be influenced by what they see on Facebook. Ironically, ask them to show more of their lifestyle on social media to model their balanced way of living and we risk unbalancing them. Or maybe not… Such is the true test of an Integrator’s integrative integrity.
Stay tuned! In the next installment we look at the sixth and final archetype, The Transcender. See you next time.
Welcome back. In part 2 we discussed some wacky ideas about atoms and electrons and archetypes and the MLAM (Movement-Lifestyle Atomic-Model).
If you’re still into this exploration of the implications of how we interact with movement in our lives (hope you are…), in today’s Movement Practice installment I’d like to discuss the third archetype who sits at the center of the MLAM: The Integrator.
Ready?
But first… An important message about this archetype thing:
Its Not Your Fate
You may find you resonate completely with the description of one of these archetypes I’ve described so far, or that you are a blend of several. An Indoorsman/Exerciser. An Integrator/Exerciser. I personally have been a little bit of each at different points in my life (save for the Indoorsman, thanks to the example set by my parents, I was brought up with an intrinsic value for movement, even if it became very unhealthy in my Over-Identifier days. Nor do I feel as if I’ve attained Transcender status, though I know of few of these individuals, and they are an inspiration to be around, providing an example for how to live harmoniously attuned to one’s body and environment).
These archetypes are only stories. Something I made up to illustrate a point.
In the chance that you might identify strongly with one of these archetypes, I’d like you to remember that while the characteristics of one or more of the archetypes may describe you right now, they do not define who you are and how you will always be. If you feel the Indoorsman is representative of you, with a lacing of The Exerciser, you are not doomed to be these traits.
People can and do change all the time but this change does not take place without first asking the questions: Where am I now, how did I get here, and what what realm exists beyond my awareness? The difficulties in change arise in the inexorability of self-reflection and unpleasantness. It is step that most of us avoid, skipping ahead to the “here’s how to be the best you” step: The Indoorsman joining a basketball league without appraising that his health and fitness is nowhere near sufficient for this demand, for example.
By creating a caricature of the traits that you may not be willing or able to look at in yourself because they are too close, too deeply ingrained as patterns, the archetype descriptions can help you to zoom out and identify areas of your relationship with movement that you’d like to change. Stories can be powerful meaning conveying machines, but they are just stories. Our species has using stories since the earliest forms of pre-spoken-language communication to help to convey ideas in ways that conceptualizing and intellectualizing alone cannot.
My hope is that you do see yourself in one or several of these archetypes, but only so that you can get a broader context for the journey forwards as we explore your relationship with movement and how it may be impacting on your life, for better or worse.
What should interest you most is not which archetype you identify with, but the acknowledgement that the journey from shell to shell of the MLAM is what makes up the bulk of our lives, and instead of moaning about where we’re at now, we can ask, “How do I want to show up for this journey?”
With awareness, an explorative mindset, seeing our failures as opportunities to change? Or regret, disappointment, and frustration that you are who you are.
You are not any one archetype, inside all of us is the possibility of Transcender (an archetype we will meet a little later on).
Public service announcement complete, let’s meet The Integrator.
Shell 3: The Integrator
Dynamic and adaptive (in life and in his body), The Integrator possesses a certain je-ne-sais-quoi. You probably know quite a few Integrators who don’t realize they’re Integrators. Let’s demystify what makes this archetype distinct.
Professionally, an Integrator is 40% likely to have a job related to movement and fitness, such as a yoga teacher, sports coach, or massage therapist. There is a 35% chance that his job has a definite degree of physical demand such as being a bike courier, a walking tour guide, or a landscaper. There is a 25% chance that he has a low-movement, indoor, corporate, or office-type job such as a software developer, an investor, or an office manager. The common identifier of these Integrators of various professions and life-paths is that movement and being outdoors are one of their top three values, if not number one.
The Integrator can likely be spotted working out at the gym, but is equally likely not to have a regular indoor gym routine. More than the act of showing up to the physical location, he shows up to spend time in his body. He makes time for movement and activity as an integral part of his life versus seeing it as something to fit in amongst a plethora of other higher priority activities.
His movement practice is a cornucopia of movement forms, exercises, sports, and non-exercise activities that, when habitually engaged with, make him feel subjectively “good”. He has discovered, likely quite early on, that life is much preferable when h:e integrates movement into it (hence his name).
For him, “movement practice” exists on a spectrum with three landmarks:
1. Organized routines and structured practice. 2. practical movement integrations and non-exercise activities.
3. Spontaneous, creative, or improvised movement forms.
The most healthy, integrative integrator has aspects of all three landmarks in his practice, which I call possessing the Movement Practice Trifecta (MPT).
For example, The Integrator who has a fully established MPT may participate in, as his chosen organized movement practice (landmark one), powerlifting, Ashtanga yoga, or karate- Highly structured activities he wants to get better at and see progression physically. As his non-exercise activity (landmark two) he makes time for a walk outdoors at lunch time, and enjoys gardening in his leisure time. And as his creative, spontaneous movement option (landmark three) he may practice contact improv, or the flowing, creative work of Ido Portal, as well as engaging with the unplanned spontaneity implicit in playing a recreational sport.
Not all Integrators engage with the full MPT, and this does not make one Integrator better or worse, just at different points along the spectrum. You may recognize an Integrator as a doctor who plays in a ball hockey league, commutes on his bike to the hospital, and works out at the gym two times per week. You may know a CEO who’s alter-ego is a martial-artist and high level ping-pong player who is also practices carpentry on the weekend. Or you may know a chiropractor who is a StrongFirst kettle bell instructor, who plays with his dog at the dog park regularly, and plays beach volleyball on Sundays.
Many Integrators who are new to integrating do not yet have a trifecta in place, but are likely to have hobbies that can be done outdoors. If the newly anointed Integrator does not yet have a distinct structured practice, play a sport, or go to the gym, he probably has high non-exercise activity levels, as he organizes his life around his value for being outdoors and using his body in some useful, enjoyable way, such as hunting, fishing, carpentry, camping, playing with his kids and/or pets. He can’t imagine a life spent sedentary without movement or play.
Even though his day may be busy with appointments, meetings, or deadlines, he looks at his schedule weekly and makes time to move, treating these times as important appointments with himself. His priority is on weaving movement into his lifestyle. The activities that bring him the most joy and allow him to connect with his friends and family are movement based- He’d rather plan a social gathering around an afternoon gardening outdoors than sitting in a cafe; a camping trip over a gambling trip to Vegas, or a cycle tour of Vietnam over a luxury cruise in the Caribbean.
The Integrators who do have a structured training or gym routine approach it in a different way from The Exerciser. Their intention is less one of end-gaining and more about the process he engages in. It is less striving to be something he’s not, and more based on accepting who he is now, and who he chooses to be as he walks his path. Even as a powerlifter or other metric-based athlete, he is not attached to chasing numbers as a predictor of his success, and simply enjoys the journey he is on- The ups and downs, while aiming for his goals (and due to his process-oriented outlook, he often achieves his goals).
The goal of the Integrator’s training routine is to support his body so he can keep enjoying his favourite activities without omni-present niggling joint aches common to The Exerciser, and normal for The Indoorsman. He takes care of himself so that he can live the life he loves without fear of becoming injured or not being able to keep up. If he loves to hike with his wife in the wilderness, his practice of movement and strength training is geared towards helping his joints to feel healthy and happy so he can continue to do this for as long as he can.
Movement is integrated into his life, be it professionally, socially, or for personal enjoyment and health, and this contributes to his high adaptability to life’s demands. He bikes or walks to commute because it is empowering, economical, enjoyable, and as a bonus, good for his health. He values looking fit and healthy (let’s be honest, we all want to look good) but also truly enjoys working on new movement skills and trying new activities, finding himself looking forward to the peace and clarity that comes with deep practice and entering a flow state. He goes for daily walks not because the doctor told him he should exercise more, but because he knows he feels better when he gets more blood flowing to his brain and body, impacting on his abilities in his mental and professional areas of life. Because of this extra kick of blood to his brain, the production of neurotransmitters unknown to the sedentary, combined with a less chronically sympathetic nervous system state, he is also likely to be a better learner than the average human, seen as more intelligent, having more resources made available for his brain to use for something other than surviving.
His adaptability and vitality earn him his place on the middle shell of MLAM: He is resilient to mental and physical health risks, and his salubrious habits perpetuate a positive feedback loop, further contributing to his resilience. The key factors that distinguish The Integrator from The Exerciser is his moderate attitude, which sounds boring, but because of which we can account for his physical and emotional ease. Whereas The Exerciser fluctuates between highs and lows in her physical practice and mental state, The Integrator is level, enjoying a sense of inner peace and calm that the Exerciser does not, which inevitably trickles into other areas of his life, making him an excellent role model for us all.
The Integrator at a glance:
Superpower: Level-headedness, learning, adaptability. Kryptonite: Inability to engage in a consistent routine, forced to sit for too long. Vitality: Good energy, immune system, resilient to illness. Relationship with movement: Integrated, balanced, trifecta. Attitude towards the stairs: Takes the stairs because he has legs that work and doesn’t take them for granted.
Having fun with this yet? Whatever, I am. In our next Installment of Movement Practice we will meet our two professional athlete archetypes: The Dedicated Mover and The Over-Identifier. Stay tuned! If you really want me to let you know when I have some new writing to share, let me know. I can put you on my “People who actually read what Monika writes” gmail list.
*A Black Swan (referring to the bird, not he ballet), as described in the book by the same name by the statistician and former trader Nassim Nicholas Taleb, is a rare, unpredictable event (good or devastating). Those who know they cannot predict a Black Swan event, but recognize the potential for one are at an advantage as they are able to bolster themselves against the devastating effects should one happen. However, those who are most susceptible to a Black Swan are those who think they can predict the future, think bad things can’t possibly happen to them, and ignore the potential risk because it is so small. For example, if you live in Seattle, a city on a fault line, you are at risk at any time for a massive earthquake to destroy your home. This earthquake is a Black Swan event- A rare, unpredictable event that is impossible to protect against completely. It may happen tomorrow, it may not happen in your lifetime. But it is possible to minimize its catastrophic impact on you by knowing about its potential impact. Bolstering against the earthquake could include a. Moving away or living only a few months of the year in Seattle, b. Educating yourself on safety procedures should there be an earthquake, c. Not owning anything that you know you would hate to lose, etc. None of these are perfect- There is no perfect protection from a Black Swan by its very nature, but with our knowledge that one is possible we can minimize our fragility to one. 
