Joy In Movement: An Exercise
Set aside 5-10 minutes of your day. No phone, no tv, no podcasts, no music, just you. You can be on the floor, standing, sitting in a chair; work with your own limitations here but I wouldn't recommend using something like a couch or bed that is so soft you want to just sink into it. Take a couple breaths to relax and check in with your entire body to get a sense of any sensations, tension, temperature, antsy-ness, ease, soreness. You're not trying to find problems to fix. You’re just turning your awareness to your physical body and opening a channel of communication there.
After a few moments ask your body, "what movement do you want to do?" And then listen. A response might come as a thought. It might come as an image of something you can emulate or interpret through movement. You might have a memory arise of something you used to do. You might just have a vague feeling in some part of you that it wants to move.
If and when you get an answer, give it a try! It could be as small as twitching a finger. It could be as large as a cartwheel. If you don't get an answer, you can take a few moments to just relax, or you can start experimenting with small movements and see if anything feels right. There's no right or wrong answer. Maybe stretches or yoga poses come to mind, maybe you want to get up and dance or shake out your limbs, maybe you want to writhe around like a worm, maybe you want to just slowly rock back and forth. Don't be afraid to get weird! The idea here is not to look cool or have good form or impress anyone. You're just following the impulses that your body is giving you. It can be slow, fast, tight, loose, sporadic, repetitive. And no matter what position or movement you find yourself in, play with it. Play with shifting your weight back and forth, tensing and relaxing different parts of your body. Imagine that you're a newborn baby, pulling and pushing all the buttons and levers in this new machine to see what it can do! Have fun with it. Be goofy. Be stupid. Pretend you're a deep sea creature. Just stay open to what arises and take in the sensations.
Give yourself at least a few minutes to really explore, and that's it! No need to think too much about it or psychoanalyze why you did what you did. Maybe the next time you do it the movements will be completely different, maybe they'll be the same. It doesn't matter. What you're doing is spending time with your body in a way that allows it to be a living expression of you, as opposed to just a vehicle that gets you around. And if you do this experiment with any frequency, you'll find that your relationship with the movements you do in your everyday life will shift.
