the skin show

Is it cold where you are? yes? good! get outside to challenge those arrector pili muscles (or goose bumps to you and me) and don't just take my word for it, click the link below to listen to this expert...

Episode 29- The Skin Show

 "You squat, you hang, you climb, and you threw your couch to the curb—all for the sake of more natural movement. But are your arrector pili getting their movement nutrients? Wait, what ARE your arrector pili? Katy scratches the surface of that oft-neglected but serious player in your whole body health—your skin! Of course, this vast subject needs more than one episode, but this is a good start on a fascinating topic."

week 4

SIT DOWN STAND UP.
What is your position in life?

I'm going to copy and paste directly from Katy Bowmans blog Nutritious Movement (go there immediately after this and read EVERYTHING) for this weeks 'become an opportunistic mover' task because she says so brilliantly..

"So, we’ve got a situation where sitting constantly is creating disease and standing constantly is creating disease. Do you see the theme? Although the research and media are going to probably miss the boat on this one, the problem isn’t the sitting (or the standing, for that matter), but the constant and continuous use of a single position.

...As many anthropologists know, the way we move is mostly a result of our cultural inheritances and has very little to go with genetics. Clothing, terrain, temperature, gender, class, and fear are only a few of the many factors that affect how we adjust our joints when sitting and standing. Gordon W. Hewes reported on about 100 resting postures of the world, and I have posted this image from the study so you can see, perhaps, why our Western joint health and metabolism (which is dependent on muscle length) is the poorest in the world.

So, we need to think bigger. There is more than just sitting and standing. Create ten different options of each! If you have a standing work station, stand a few different ways every hour. When you sit, sit a few different ways every hour. Open your mind and open your joints! When you get home, stay out of your chairs and try out a lot of these Worldly Options. (Note: If you don’t have a spear, a broom may work…) Circle the ones you can’t maintain for longer than five minutes and make a note to practice that posture at the beginning and the end of an exercise session. And, parents, don’t insist that kids sit in the same fashion as us stiffer folks and allow them to explore other options. And, join them! They can teach you something about natural movement.

Also, if you do spend a yoga/stretching class cycling through10 or so of these postures, know that while this cycle is a good thing, getting back into the sitting position the other 6-10 hours of the day reduces your health just the same. Adjust the way you sit, as often as possible for a real, deep, and cellular change."

Bravo Katy. I concur!

Saturday Cartoon

Measuring the movement of the skin from Govert Flint on Vimeo.

MovNat

"We’re a mess. So the question has to be why, and the simple answer is that we live in a time and a place where we no longer need to use our bodies in order to make sure we are fed, clothed, and sheltered. Instead we live in a time and a place where we earn money to buy what we need, work primarily in static positions (hey look! I’m doing it right now!), and segregate our movement only to the small portion of time we may spend exercising. This lack of natural human movement is causing a plague of chronic pain and physical dysfunction, as well as contributing hugely to the disease processes of contemporary. culture. In short: it’s a big problem."

-- Brooke Thomas (BreakingMuscle)

Founder of MovNat, Erwan Le Corre's  passion for re-establishing healthy movement habits and building natural strength based on our innate human abilities is contagious. Or at least it is for me. After reading multiple interviews and following along with the workouts that come on a weekly newsletter (sign-up here), I decided a MovNat workshop is on my list of things to do for 2015! 

The following is a list of the basic principles and skills and if that floats your boat then I would recommend getting a copy of the Exploring Functional Movement DVD Erwan has created with Gray Cook of Functional Movement Systems.

The 10 principles that underlie the MovNat approach:

1. 
   Evolutionary
2. Instinctual
3. Universal
4. Practical
5. Vital
6. Unspecialized
7. Efficient
8. Adaptive
9. Cooperative
10. Environmental

The 13 movement skills are:

1. Running
2. Balancing
3. Jumping
4. Crawling and Rolling
5. Climbing
6. Lifting
7. Carrying
8. Catching
9. Walking
10. Swimming
11. Throwing
12. Grappling
13. Striking

I think I'm only regularly ticking 9 of those boxes so far...