Why I believe Natural Movement is Essential for Human Beings

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Wouldn't you love to be able to keep up with your children or grandchildren?  Or move with the feeling of youth and vitality? What about feeling confident with the process of aging and maintaining your abilities to get up and down off the floor, improve posture, increase muscle and bone mass, and maintain a sense of strength and ease in day to day living throughout the course of your ENTIRE life?  

Sound too good to be true?  Like something reserved only for the "lucky ones" who somehow manage to escape the aches, pains, and aging that is inevitably life...

What most of us don't realize is that maintaining a superior quality of life is not some super-human feat designated for the lucky few.  Our ancestors lived and thrived well into their old age because of the lifestyle they lived.  In today's modern society, we are far, far removed from the active lifestyle of our ancestors.  We generally spend a startling majority of our day sitting - sitting to eat, sitting to work, sitting to commute, and sitting to relax and socialize.  Sometimes we'll allocate a few hours a week to exercise, or walk the dog in the morning or spend the weekend hiking.  And while non of these things are inherently wrong or bad, over time we start to repeat a limited variety of movements in a very structured and unvarying environment.  

So what does that all mean for us, right now, today?  Chances are, most of us have lost touch with what it means to be a truly capable and functional mover (i.e. a capable and functional human being), in today's world.  We've adapted to our sedentary and controlled environment.  

Enter MovNat®, also known as Natural Movement®, a brilliant physical education system based on the full range of natural human movements.  My aim, through MovNat, is to teach you to become a more capable human being, with a more practical and functional tool box of movement aptitudes, and to inspire you to reconnect with your environment, especially your natural surroundings.  This means learning to move safely, first in an indoor, safe and controlled environment.  It means practicing these movement skills, emphasizing technique over quantity.    And then, in MovNat's purest form, taking it outdoors and adapting your new movement skills to varying environments.  

The MovNat mindset allows for both practical movement and for play.  Re-engaging with movements you likely did as a kid - and may not have re-visited thus far in your life - is not only exhilarating, but also vital.  These movements are the ESSENCE of who we have been as human beings for millenia.  Our disconnect from this once life-sustaining movement has left us less complete, less capable human beings.  And if we continue this way...with each generation becoming more and more plugged in to our ever evolving technological world while rapidly de-volving out of the natural movement world...how will we be capable adults and raise capable children and grandchildren for the next generations to come?  

So, while "exercise" and "fitness" are often seen as optional activities, hobbies, or specific hours of time we carve out to look better and to keep us out of the "sitting is the new smoking" category, movement - natural human movement - is not optional, it is not just a leisure activity, and it is not limited to a specific hour time slot a few times a week.  Natural Movement is inherent in our genetic make up, and it is something available to all of us, of every age, gender and ethnicity.  Natural Movement is available anywhere, everywhere, in any given context, environment and situation.  When we begin to reclaim the realm of Natural Movement each of us was born into, when we cultivate that call in our biological wiring for Natural Movement, we begin to thrive, we discover capabilities previously un-imaginable, and we reclaim our true nature, our dignity, and our essence as human beings.