Movement Health™
Movement Health™ refers to the health of the body’s movement system. The body’s movement system is made up of the following components:
nervous system (brain, spinal cord & nerves),
the articular system (joints & joint structures),
the myofascial system (muscle & fascia), and
the skeletal system (bones).
Movement Health™ describes the capacity and quality that a human being has to move. We are born with a tremendous capacity to move. Take almost any preschooler and observe how they inhabit their body. They have the ability to move in their bodies in seemingly endless ways. The range of motion to express positions and motions throughout their body and within each joint is full. The average person starts losing this ability before they leave grade school. Most of us have come to believe that this decline in our ability to move comes with aging and that we have no control over it. I’m here to tell you that is simply not true. There is a principle call the SAID Principle (Specific Adaptation to Imposed Demands) that states that our body adapts to the demands we place on it – no more no less. Therefore, if we don’t work with our full capacity to move, we’ll lose it. The lack of proper movement stimuli will gradually result in the loss of our freedom to move over time. If we don’t understand the nature of the body and the nature of the body’s relationship to movement forces, it’s inevitable that we’ll inhabit our body in ways that lead to movement compensation and premature or accelerated degeneration of our body’s movement system.
Explore for your Movement Health™. What is the status of your left hip joint? Do you have adequate range of motion to perform all the movement tasks you ask of it? Are you free of joint dis-ease - pain, pinching, aching, tension, degeneration? Can you sit on the floor comfortably? Do you have the strength and freedom of movement to get up and down off the floor without using your arms/hands? Can you cross your leg comfortably over the other to tie your shoes? Can you squat down and pick something up off the ground without limitation, discomfort, or fear of injury? Can you perform your daily chores or engage in physical activity without your body communicating to you that there’s an issue? Can you participate in your job or in school without discomfort of some sort creeping into your awareness? If you can, without hesitation, answer yes to all of these questions, it’s likely that your Movement Health™ is still quite good. If you’re like most adults and now even teenagers, you are answering no to at least one those questions which is an indication that your movement system has been impacted in an unfavorable way by the way you have inhabited your body up to this point.
Movement Health™ is largely an unknown and unappreciated component of physical health. Despite being an area of health that all humans must tend to throughout their life, there is no societal awareness and, therefore, no systematic education on how to nurture and support Movement Health™. Additionally, there is no systematic emphasis placed on the prevention of conditions related to the body’s movement system. The current healthcare system places attention on managing movement system related conditions once they have developed with the support of rehabilitation branches like physical therapy, chiropractic care, acupuncture, and massage therapy.
If you are like most people, you have been conditioned to think that traditional modes of exercise are the pathway to good physical health. My experience as a movement and massage therapist for the past 15 years clearly says otherwise. There are countless examples of people who are doing the “right thing” by incorporating exercise into their lives who still end up with movement system degeneration and chronic pain. In some cases, those who exercise regularly experience more degeneration and chronic pain than those who don’t. What does that say? It says that exercise can create or exacerbate movement system related compensation patterns and degenerative conditions if you approach it with no awareness of Movement Health™.
My objective is to make you aware of your body’s movement system and the best ways of caring for it to support your Movement Health™. You will come to see movement as a foundational and essential component of being a human being and its importance for living a high quality of life. You will grow to view exercise, physical activity, and fitness through the lens of movement. Furthermore, you will see that a lifestyle of intention as it relates to movement, A Movement Lifestyle™, belongs as a staple of your daily routine. When you become a practitioner of A Movement Lifestyle™, you become a steward of your Movement Health™. The restriction free years of your life go up and the quality of your life improves substantially. Contact Me today to begin your journey to better Movement Health™.