23 August

A gap in our education? If you play sport, it’s obvious that you start pretty badly at it, and then with practice you get better all the time. But with the basic physical things we do every day, like stand, walk, run, sit - with those we assume we sort of mastered it in childhood, so it doesn’t need any more work. I think that’s a terrible mistake, and maybe even the single biggest way we end up making ourselves unhealthy. Exercise magnifies the problem, because in sport we know you have to master the basics before you move onto advanced things. But with a lot of our exercise we take some pretty poor skills in even basic things like walking, or lifting, and then magnify the forces hugely. The damage to our body can be enormous, and our bodies are tough so often we don’t get the damage until later in life. Look at all the hip and knee replacements, for example. But not being able to do these basic activities in balanced ways, free of effort, affects everything about our health, not just joints. Ideally, you should be able to as a minimum sit, stand, walk, run, and lift without strain. Without effort, as we call it. Most people can’t do this, which keeps massage therapists, chiros and physios in work. That should include effortless, rhythmic breathing. The root of learning how to do these things is learning how to interact with gravity, rather than seeing it as a force acting ‘down’ on you all day. I wrote about that before a bit, at: http://www.learningmethods.com/posture--the-great-big-rump.htm http://www.learningmethods.com/floating-in-a-sea-of-tissue.htm