I hope you are having a beautiful week. In my last story from The Rewilded Woman I shared some of the juiciest Ayurveda nuggets that I believe are a fast track to helping us live unapologetically as ourselves, to live as rewilded women. The beauty (or is the word relief?) of Ayurveda is that its foundation is not about fixing ourselves but instead coming back to our truest essence.
Yoga and Ayurveda are often called sister sciences and if you go to an Ayurveda doctor it’s very likely you’ll walk away with a yoga prescription to get you moving. This is because yoga is believed to be one of the ways in which we can move prana (a Sanskrit word for ‘life force’) around our bodies and remove toxins and physical and energetic blocks that create diseases.
Bottom line? Movement is absolutely critical to rewilding ourselves and to tuning into who we really are so we can go be her every single day. It is physically impossible to 1) notice how you feel and 2) feel good by sitting on your sofa, at your desk or in your car all day. We’ve all done it, a 12 hour day at the office, a long roadtrip, a Netflix binge, and we all know that these are not our finest moments.
Daily movement is a literal life-saving component to good health and without good health it’s hard to be ourselves. According to the World Health Organization, the global estimate of the cost of physical inactivity to the public health care systems between 2020 and 2030 is around USD $300 billion or $27 billion annually. The benefits of regular physical activity are undisputedly and scientifically both physical and mental.
There’s three key elements here that are worth speaking out loud.
When we don’t move our bodies we don’t know how we truly feel. Mindful movement where we connect breath and movement together intentionally is one way of helping us notice where we feel good or where we feel pain or tightness.
Inactivity means our brains don’t have the chance to increase endorphins, the brain’s feel-good neurotransmitters, or reduce stress hormones which are things regular exercise offers us. Think of a daily walk or 15 minutes on your yoga mat as a way of making sure your mind has exactly what it needs to feel good.
Most people think ‘if only I was in a better mood then I’d go out for that run’ but the opposite is true - (good) mood follows action rather than your mood being the thing to change how you feel. Basically you can’t think your way out of a bad mood but you can move your way into a good mood!
Movement is one of the four systems and bodies of knowledge that I use to rewild myself regularly. In fact the full title of my Bachelor Degree is ‘Bachelor of Health Science, Human Movement’. Yes I was obsessed from an early age! And there are days I wonder if I would still be earthside without movement and the positive impact it has had on my mind. I have yoga’d, run, hiked, walked, danced and swam my way back to sanity over and over again. When I am moving my body I remember who I am, I feel most like myself.
If you are not moving in your favourite way every single damn day then it might be hard to feel like yourself every day too. One of the things that stops me moving - almost paralyzes me - is the idea that it has to be a 90 minute yoga class, or an hour long run or a complete tour of the neighbourhood with the dog. This feels like time I don’t have and makes me feel overwhelmed - maybe it’s the same for you too. New motto? Everything thing counts - absolutely all kinds of movement count, including a morning dance party with your kids, that bike ride to work, 10 minutes on your yoga mat, a walking meeting in the sun, skipping rope - whatever the thing is, as long as you’re moving you’re also rewilding your body to be in its natural state and your giving your body, mind and spirit the absolutely best chance to feel like you.
I shall now step off of my soapbox and leave you to it. But I would absolutely love to hear what kind of movement you’re into and how it makes you feel.
Sending you much love and please keep reading for the last two stories from The Rewilded Woman which are yet to come!