How Do We Resist a Sitting Culture?

Question of November

I want to talk about being in a modern body. It’s strange to do so right now. I can’t untangle myself from the larger world stage… and I don’t want to. That weaving is important and humane. How can I talk about agility in a body (or my own body) when there are so many bodies in the path of violence right now? I’m not sure, other than to do it because—in the circular way of life—it’s all interconnected.

First, I want to name my life-long interest in all things “body” because I know it doesn’t tug on others in the same way. When my family took the airport escalator, I was the child running up and down the stairs instead. Simply to feel the lit-up-ness and panting breath within me. It’s the same reason I started doing 70 pushups a day when I was 12 years old. I craved the athleticism of climbing high in trees, swimming, cartwheels, darting. In Mexico City, my friend Tabitha and I would meet the boys at recess so we could beat them in all the running races. I used to have daydreams about the best angle for jumping fences. Fast forward and I am not outwardly that same person. For many reasons, but most notably because of a birth injury that changed (for now) how my hips and therefore entire body moves. I happen to live in a town where people who aren’t professional athletes exercise as if they are. That context both inspires me and defeats me.

Cartwheels last year; Balance board writing; Jumping into a pool to wrestle with my brothers

Why does any of this matter?

You already know it’s a challenging era for bodies. You know the why’s. I would rather not make a list or focus there. Instead, this month, I want to explore the solutions to the most silent and least sexy strike against the modern body. SITTING. People say it’s the new smoking. Many (most) people sit all day long with their eyes focused in and tight on a narrow point—the device. That predator gaze tips our nervous system into a sympathetic arousal (fight/flight) state and there we exist. Consider that. Consider the not yet fully formed teenagers. Posture has impact. Doesn’t it feel like a science fiction film? The masses quietly lulled away from their true vital life force.

I sit a lot myself.

I appreciate how my computer supports my work and connects me beyond my small world and, truth be told, I’m far more energized by non-computer time. Writing to you now, from my kitchen table, my body feels itchy: “Please get up and go out and see and dance and move and hug and find vistas.” I imagine that if I was a farmer in the field all day (a job I had in my 20’s), sitting down at a computer for an hour in the evening would feel like a treat. That, however, isn’t the reality anymore for many people and I want to be clear that I can understand how shifting from labor work to sitting work would be a massive relief for individuals and whole communities. Still, I feel achey considering the zoom out consequences. I once told my husband that I wanted someone to invent a way to write while dancing: instead of typing with fingers, the typing would be a full body experience (each letter a particular dance move) and the screen would be projected onto a big wall. Can you imagine?!!

What I do already: sometimes stand on a balance board while typing, use ultradian rhythms for work cycles, set a timer to get up and move around and look outside, sit on the ground when in conversation so that I can stretch, walk with friends instead of having tea or coffee, walk with my questions instead of ruminating in stillness, almost exclusively voice text instead of thumb text.

What do you do? I’d love to hear in the comments! Let us crowd-source on this one.

Question of The Month: How do we resist a sitting culture?

I’m just a better human if I’m moving. It isn't only me. Do you know anyone who doesn’t benefit from some everyday movement? I’ve been changing my language from “I’m going to sit with it” to “I’m going to walk with it.” Off I go now, in the middle of writing, because I feel volcanic rumblings, as if even these words are too many words. My dogs are ready.

My dog Lupe ready to explore (he perches like a bird on the stairs to get a vantage point); me finally outside on the ground, no snow!

I’m back. Just like we’ve been conditioned to not rest, I wonder if we are being conditioned to not move. Not in a conspiracy theorist kind of way, but simply that we are doing it to ourselves. Movement becomes an “extra” thing to do if we have time, or it’s a punishment to control our bodies and it’s therefore devoid of pleasure; so rarely, is movement #1 or even #4.

A sketch of my thoughts while walking:

• I feel so grateful for able legs that can move me.

• All I want to do is move, explore, play in this magnificent body.

• I will go to bat for myth/story but am almost wholly uninterested the intellect—bizarre and new-ish!

• Why do I act as if work is more important than walking my dogs? Because only one makes money? Because I’ve been programmed into that belief?

• Aren’t food and movement the most important? Without them, there is nothing.

• Can I write out loud while walking like an orator onto my phone instead of with my fingers onto a computer? A new brain pathway? A new way?

• I don’t deserve a movement break because not everyone on the planet gets one; so I need to suffer alongside them.

• Wait, … what?

• Do I have to earn my movement?

• I want off the thought loop that I don’t deserve this, don’t have time for it, or that it falls by the wayside of other more “valued” acts.

It’s universal and highly personal for me. It’s tender and exposing to write about it; I notice myself taking it down a few notches and circling the perimeter. My daughters routinely ask me why they have never seen me really run and I don’t have an answer I’m willing to give them. They know me as “mom who will talk about anything” but they will need to be older for this one so they don’t feel implicated.

Maybe this topic is so heated for me because I’ve experienced both absolute freedom and devastating restriction in my body. You can’t know what you’re missing unless you’ve had it. You can’t know what you truly have unless you’ve lost some part of it. I want to dance and not be braced. I want to scamper up a hill with ease.

I’m curious how it all lands for you? Maybe flat. Maybe this topic isn’t interesting to you. I get that. And, separate from me, this epidemic of sitting seems to be affecting mental health, physical health, and life-force exuberance or all people. If people aren’t moving, they become complacent, their thoughts are dull or narrowed or full of un-processed fight, and they can be depressed. Let’s go on a walk with that reality. If all the people have become that way, what then happens?

I know we are more than our bodies. I know that, for most spiritual practices, the body is secondary. But I’m a woman who feels the width of her hips as the width of the bowl of a valley. I also made bodies from my body and then brought them earth-side—to date the most psychedelic experience of my life. I feel my bellybutton attached to the actual earth-body. I can’t undo being in a body. I would never want to. Without a body, not much else can happen.

How can I make movement one of the most important things?

In part, it’s logistical. I’m going to be experimenting with tracking my hours sitting this month. Not to castigate myself but to get some data. I will also be playing very intentionally with short-form out loud writing. Can I write and walk at the same time? It’s a different act; it fires different parts of the brain; and I’M CURIOUS! I will also be on the lookout for those toxic thought patterns around what is and what isn’t important. I will hug them and the promptly usher them backstage to their rightful place.

A dear friend recently asked me: What is draining you and what is fueling you?

I want to offer that question to you.

In my messy and with love,