bodies_in_motion

There've been a cluster of Dreamwidth posts lately with interesting comment discussions, about movement practices that are useful for everyday life and long-term functional ability, particularly to do with balance, falling, and getting up and down (whether from a chair or the floor).

It started when I posted:

Falldowngetup

So I "invented" an exercise thing?

(On this topic,

lizvogel linked to Everybody Falls at Book View Cafe.)

jesse_the_k linked to my post and got further interesting comments, including some from people who found it didn't work/wasn't suitable for them: Fabulous Exercise for Many People

Then they suggested an alternative:

A More Appropriate Exercise for Those of Us With Cripped Bodies

Then I added a third practice and a book rec:

... and a third thing

rydra_wong

monanotlisa wrote a thought-provoking post about her experiences with what she summarizes in the cut tag as "[a]ble bodies and disability, genetics and appearances":

monanotlisa: This is not the long post I've been meaning to make

mad_m

Hello fellow Bodies in Motion! Wondering about your stories of healing and recovery. I'm on the road back from a long layoff from running related to overtraining and muscle imbalance, and a major rock fall last September. Without getting into the details of the problems (long, boring, trust me), I finally owned that I'm getting older and simply taking a few months off with stretching just won't cut it anymore. That was a long road of getting past depression of not being able to move the way I wanted, at the speed and with the power I used to.

I hate it when I get the advice from medical professionals or massage therapists to not run, not push it, perhaps take it easier - I found the right mix of body work with an acupuncturist. After a few months of work with her, and on my own (stretching, rolling muscles, and pushing tennis balls into my trigger points at home), I'm now able to do some walk-running, body weight exercises, and the occasional short dyno at the rock gym. I also got outside to lead a few easy sport routes over Easter weekend. I used to be too proud to mix running into my walking, wouldn't climb routes I thought were beneath me, and didn't think strength training had a place in improving my climbing (totally bought into "if you want to climb, then climb!") In short, I was holding myself back with standards that my injured self couldn't meet, standards that were arbitrarily set. After letting them slack a bit, I realized how much I really can do after all, and that I'm on the road back to where I want to be.

What are your stories of breaking and rebuilding? What personal myths did you need to overcome?

alexseanchai

okay so like

exercise that

* won't fuck with any of my disabilities
* won't feel impossible to start or maintain
* won't get blockaded by my executive function or wtfever before I get started
* won't cost money
* won't make me feel like a fail on the grounds of continuing to not meet the 150 min/wk moderate exercise guideline
* won't tempt me into excessive ambition
* will help me learn patience
* will help me increase some number of my strength, flexibility, endurance, and cardiovascular health
* will start where I am wrt all four such
* will be enjoyable, not chorelike

am I chasing a unicorn here?

(I really appreciate the effort you all put in last time I posted here! just none of your suggestions stuck. /o\ and it's incredibly frustrating.)

(also I don't understand why I chose today to start caring again? I have been complaining all week about through-the-roof pain! this is maybe not the week to reinstate a practice of physicality?)

rydra_wong

If you're in the UK ~~or can use proxies to convince BBC iPlayer that you are~~, you can currently watch all five episodes of the BBC series The Beauty of Anatomy from 2014 on iPlayer.

(It's also available to buy online.)

It traces the development of knowledge in human anatomy through the use of art to illustrate and communicate anatomical knowledge, and to represent the work of anatomists.

Episodes cover Galen and Leonardo, Vesalius, Rembrandt and Ruysch, the Hunter brothers (the surgeon/anatomists behind the two Hunterian Museums in the UK), and Gray's Anatomy (the book, not the TV series ...).

So, very relevant to those of us who are anatomy geeks, and/or interested in how art represents human bodies (insides in particular).

I'm partway through watching, so can't provide content notes for the whole thing, but (predictably enough) there's footage of dissections during medical training and preserved human remains, and (in ep 3) a painting of a dissected dead baby.

alexseanchai

A complaint I have been having is, I like physicality. I like (subject to caveats) embodiment—and frankly I suspect the cause of one of those caveats (body-wide owie) is insufficient exercise, which is to say, insufficient attention to my embodiment and physicality! I just. Time and cope, and weather outside my apartment (especially in summer and winter) and "Hurricane Alex has devastated the region" inside my apartment, and. Long story short, I spend most waking hours in one or another computer chair. As you might imagine, this is an undesirable situation.

For reasons I do not care to discuss outside lock, my cope has increased dramatically. (Shit I've literally procrastinated for a year and a half? Dealt with.) I wish therefore to try a practice of attention to physicality. And, hey. I cleaned my apartment! My living room and dining nook have a substantial open carpeted space now, so something like a YouTube video or channel that I could follow solo three mornings a week is an actual possibility!

Therefore: rec me exercise Youtubes?

I'm looking for something interesting enough to keep my attention over a span of time measured in weeks or greater, but basic enough that my (probable near-total) inexperience in the activity will not be a barrier. My priorities exercise-wise are, in order from the top, lung capacity, endurance, strength (full body), and flexibility.

I like to dance, but the only type I'm any good at is square dance; this is far too social an activity to work as my 3x/week solo morning exercise. I'm going to look for Irish dance exercise Youtubes later, though. I'm also going to try to get out to the city park to walk on the regular, but it isn't yet warm enough around here that I want to do that.

Thanks!

rydra_wong

rachelmanija has a review of an article and the documentary about the Barkley Marathons ("the race that eats its young") which segues into a fascinating discussion of why extreme physical challenges can appeal, and what you might want (or not want) to do if you could wave a magic wand and make it possible for you: if you could, would you want to try the Barkley?

rachelmanija: The Barkley Marathons and pushing your limits

I think this might be relevant to many people's interests, and there's already some very interesting discussion happening in the comments.

sixbeforelunch

I hope this is okay to post here. I came across this vintage footage of lady wrestlers and it seems like the sort of thing that a number of people here might be interested in. The narration is sexist in the way that old narration generally is, but the images themselves are fascinating.

( Embedded video below the cut )

rydra_wong

What's movement for you right now?

Pointless? A resource? Calming/energizing? Something that costs too many spoons? A distraction? A way of owning your body? Impossible? Preparation for fight or flight? Selfish? Self-care? All of the above? None of the above? Something else completely?

ETA: please feel free to interpret "right now" as widely or narrowly as you want, whether that's "right now" as in "at this point in my life" or as in "in the last couple of weeks, in the face of the US election results and other world events". I was thinking of the latter when I wrote this, but either is valid.

rydra_wong

Because I thought it might be interesting to see where everyone's coming from ...

Here's a thread to say hi, and say a bit about your interest in movement/embodiment/whatchamacallit.

What movement things do you do -- or not do? Or: what did you do in the past? Or: what might you be interested in learning more about, but haven't tried yet? Or: what do you love reading about even though you'd never want to do it personally?

I suggest that people feel free to jump all over each other and ask questions if you're curious about something someone else mentions (if you'd rather not answer questions, please just say so), or want to say "me too" or compare notes.

lunabee34

*waves*

Thanks to

rydra_wong for creating this community.

For those of you who don't know me, I'm Lorraine (or lunabee34), and I've been moderately to intensely active for most of my lifetime.

I took a hiatus from exercise this spring because being diagnosed with two autoimmune diseases, Hashimoto's (thyroid) and celiac (gluten intolerance), made me really depressed. I am starting back my exercise regime this week, and I'm curious about "runner's high."

I have never experienced a "runner's high." I've experienced satisfaction with getting stronger or glee at biking faster than the person on the bike next to me or a kind of meditative state when exercising but never anything that seems close to what others describe as "runner's high."

So, I'm wondering whether you've experienced "runner's high," what it felt like, and the conditions that induced it. I think what I'm really wondering is if I can find a way to cultivate that experience for myself; it sounds awesome.

rydra_wong

This is a comm for exploring the experiences and meanings of movement practices, whether a practice is labeled as “sports”, “art”, “exercise” or something else completely, whether it’s Olympic lifting or Zumba or rock climbing or ballroom dancing or tai chi or Pokemon Go or a walk around the block. Let’s compare notes and geek out.

What I originally wrote when floating the idea of the comm (minor edits):

I’d want it to be a place where people can share and compare experiences (and books and films and random thoughts) across disciplines. I want to know how my experiences with climbing relate to other people's experience with ballet, or yoga, or Brazilian ju-jitsu. Or long walks. I want to hear from people who don't do a particular movement practice any more because of reasons. Or why a particular practice connects for a particular person. I want a place to discuss how mental illnesses affect/are affected by our movement practices, or how we juggle movement practices with mobility impairment or chronic pain, and what all of that means for ideas of "fitness" or “health”, and how we do these things in bodies which aren't "ideal" or don't fit conventional standards for "sportiness". I want to talk about gender, obviously. And what it means when we have sports injuries, do activities involving risk, or other things which are not considered "healthy" in pursuit of our movement practices. And whether ballet pointe shoes are or aren't like climbing shoes, and how one learns to fall in all the different activities that involve falling, and all the possible cross-activity forms of geekery, as concrete or theoretical as we can manage.

ALL THE THINGS.

Just to add to that: the comm is open to anyone who’s interested, whether you currently have a movement practice(s) of some kind or not. If you don’t, or you don’t ever want to, but are still interested in reading about them — you are as just as welcome.

Also, given how loaded and complicated the topic of bodies can be, I’d like to pre-emptively ask people to watch out for (and avoid) ableism and fat-shaming in particular, and also to refrain from giving unsolicited advice. If weight or food/nutrition feature in a post, please put it behind a cut.

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embodiment, physicality, movement, bodies and minds

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