Intuitive Movement? How to Give Your Body What it Wants
I sing like some people garden.
Go with me on this for a minute. Any given day, if you come into my car, or kitchen, or walk with me down the street, you’ll probably hear me singing to myself or making some kind of silly noises. I don’t do this for people to hear - most people have never actually heard me do this at all, even close friends. I don’t do it to be a singer, I do it as a life practice. I do it to get my hands dirty. To cultivate. To spend time in the mud.
I have some “stuff” around singing. As a brilliant vocal coach recently pinpointed to me with stunning accuracy- for me, singing is a practice in self compassion. And as such it is fucking HARD.
My practice is this: I sing when I have some feelings to move through. Sometimes that means a recognizable song, but sometimes that means a baby pteradactyl noise, or a croak, or a single note held waaaay too long. What I’m looking for is where the noise FEELS GOOD IN MY BODY. Not what SOUNDS good. What FEELS good. Not what an imagined audience wants, but instead getting right to the quick of it- what does the quake of my belly want? The buzz in my vocal chords?
I’m going to make a radical proposal to you. Working out can be like this. Your movement practice can be like this.
People have been talking about “intuitive movement” these days- a HAES informed adaptation of the principles of intuitive eating to movement practices. Turns out I’ve been working with a variation of this idea for years. I’ve been coming to it slowly, on my own, for over a decade — because my mental health will not allow anything else, and because fitness should be *adding* to overall well-being, not stealing from it -remember? And yes, I have gotten stronger, still. And yes I have kept moving my body. Neither of those are the point, but they’re not mutually exclusive either.
So, what does it all mean? How could you move like you sing, like you garden? Where would you even start? Here are some things I’ve found along the way. Pick them up and try them out if you like. This is about you, after all.
Design your time. You can set aside some time to move, block it in your calendar, make a ritual of space and time around it, great. That is absolutely valid if it feels right to you. You can also just practice moving when you feel like it. If it’s not a “convenient” time, just move in small ways. Shift in your chair. Stretch your neck. Put your feet solidly on the floor. Just practice giving your body movement when it asks for it. I’ve gone through periods of one, periods of the other, and periods of both.
Commit to doing something weird, or off-plan, or selfish when you need to. This game only works if you commit to doing what you need, not what you think you “should” do with your movement time. Move for yourself, right now. Not for your “future self”. Not to make up for some “past self.” But to get in touch with your right-now self. That alone is likely to feel weird at first. Let it.
Ask your body, “Body? What do you want right now?”. Seriously. And then actually listen. Most of us have been told to ignore our bodies, to “suck it up” and “go hard.” But you clicked on this article because somewhere in your body, YOU ACTUALLY LIKE TO MOVE. So you can trust yourself to find movement that is nourishing to your body and additive to your well being if you let your body take the lead. Sometimes it will say, “give me a goddam nap already”- and that is FINE. Spend your movement time quietly listening to your breath, find a yin yoga class, or - you know - nap. Sometimes you’ll be all buzzing with energy and your body will say “run around the block!” - so, do that run, take that HIIT class, shadow box with your plants. Just make sure you warm your ankles and stuff up first, ok?
Yes, you can still go to class or keep your appointment with your trainer. 100 percent. Intuitive movement doesn’t need to be incompatible with planned sessions, any more than intuitive eating is incompatible with making a crock pot stew for the week to save some time. But, you’ll go into those planned times with the knowledge of what your body is asking for that day. Adapt class to what YOU need. Ask your trainer to shift the plan to match where you’re at. It’s allowed. Most trainers worth their track jacket will so happily give you a rockin’ recovery day full of great info, or work with you on fundamentals, just as happily as a heavy lifting day. And if they don’t, find someone else.
That goes double for a formal program. Even when you’re in a formalized training program you can apply #3. Your body is always yours. if I need to adapt a warmup or do jumping jacks while I wait for my turn because I’m all full of energy, or listen to the next move from a stretch I need that the group hasn’t done yet, or skip the last few reps because I’m losing form? I’m going to do it. If I get called out on that, I will clearly explain why. It’s ok to need something different than the group energy at times. If you always need something different, though, maybe ask yourself if you actually like that movement practice, if your body is actually asking for it right now. You’re allowed to shift gears, make a sidestep, come back to things another time. There is always something else you WILL like.
This is one of my main rules for life: Your Body is Smarter than You. It will tell you what it needs if you learn to listen. But remember what I said earlier- this is also a practice of self compassion, and it is therefore fucking HARD. Re-learning how to listen to your body through movement is not for the faint of heart. But yes, if you ask yourself for real- “do I LIKE running? Is training x times a week actually life-giving for me? Do I feel stiff because I need to move my joints more often? Should I just stick with dance parties and tag for a while, or would something more formalized give my brain a break and feel better?” Your body will answer. It will. Quietly at first if you’ve been ignoring it, but it will. And hey, guess what. All the answers are PERFECTLY fine. Your movement practice isn’t for an invisible audience. It’s for the audience of your whole self.
