As we age, a lifetime of injuries and poor movement habits can limit our capabilities, coordination, and mobility. The best way to break through these restrictive boundaries is to explore and discover new ways to move and babies offer a great example of how to do that.

Babies have to learn new ways to move every day, all day. Rolling, reaching, putting a foot in the mouth, twisting, turning, scooting — these are all ways that babies learn to observe their world, to eat, and to move.

All humans learn to walk, to sing, to dance by first learning new ways to move. Think of any skill you ever acquired in your entire lifetime, and you can appreciate the fact that you acquired that skill by altering and redesigning your habits.

So to change our inefficient and possibly painful movement habits, we need to expand our repertoire of movements like a child. The first step in this process is first sensing with precision how we move and how our whole body is involved in any movement. Rather than exercise, we need to think of sensercise — moving to increase our sensory capacity.

Often it’s very difficult for many people to sense parts of their body that don’t seem obviously connected to a movement they are performing. For example, if you lift a weight in a standing position, traditional ways of thinking would focus attention on the bicep muscles of the arm, which need to contract to lift something. However, in the real world of gravity, if you lift something in front of yourself using just your biceps — even a bottle of water — you would fall forwards as the weight shifts your center of gravity in front of yourself.

In order to become more efficient, effective, and stronger, you need to sense the other parts of your body that are involved in the act of lifting. Sense how the calf muscles push the front of the foot into the ground a small amount to help counterbalance the weight in front of us. Sense how the back and belly work to take the weight from your hands and arms through your shoulders and down your spine.

We need to sense how any movement requires an integration of all body parts — not just the obvious major muscle group that’s acting the hardest.

This kind of attention is how we improve our ability to sense and change difficult movement habits and painful postures. The awareness of how different parts of our body contribute to accomplishing an action can unleash the power of an integrated body and lessen strain on any one set of muscles.

Greater awareness can mean the difference between strain, excess tension, and even the feeling of weakness and smooth, confident, coordinated movement.

How do we move to gain awareness? If our mind is captured by the effort of achieving a goal or we count how many repetitions we’re performing, that’s where our attention is trapped. Instead, learning to move in order to feel how we move can restore our integrated, whole body movement we once had as children and is the secret to gaining greater awareness.

With greater awareness, we can begin to explore movement like a baby in non-linear ways with twists and turns, breaking free of the linear movements exercise equipment can limit us to.

This lesson is an example of the sort of exploratory movement I’m talking about; it asks you to learn how to trust yourself to be in touch with your body and brain through your sense of movement.

Before you start this lesson, read through it and look to the photos for guidance. This mental rehearsal will help you unleash your physical imagination.

GO SLOWLY — Take your time, you’ll learn more!
INSIST ON COMFORT — If it hurts, it’s not helping you. Never try to override pain if you feel it.
USE YOUR IMAGINATION — Allow the movement to become very clear and lucid in your mind, like a scene from a movie.
REST FREQUENTLY — These movements, while gentle and pleasurable, may cause slight strain because you are using parts of muscles you may not have used in a long time, or you may be using them in ways that are not familiar.
CHOOSE A COMFORTABLE SPACE — Make sure that you have space around you to move and that your clothes are loose enough to not restrain your movement.

Releasing the Hips into Pleasure

Intention: To find a comfortable and pleasurable way of releasing excess work in the stiff muscles of your inner legs and hips.

Starting Position: Lie on your back with your arms down at your sides and your legs long.

1. Feel the pressure under your heels and notice whether you feel more pressure from the floor touching your left heel compared to your right. Is the pressure on the outside of the heel more apparent on one side than the other? Also observe the pressure under your calf muscles. Does that pressure help tell you which of your two legs is pointed more to the ceiling and which is pointed more to the outside? Make sure your legs are relaxed. Don’t try to hold them in any particular way.

2. Very gently turn your right leg farther to the right and let your knee softly bend so that the outside edge of your right foot begins to slide on the floor up toward you. Then, slide the edge of your foot back down the same track it went up. Repeat the movement several times, very slowly, searching for the path of least resistance and effort as you slide the outside edge of your foot up and down on the floor.

Change Your Age Tip: As you slide your foot up and down, make sure your knee hangs open completely so that there’s no work happening in the inner muscles of your thigh. The more unnecessary muscular work you perform, the more difficult, heavy, and resistant the movement of the leg becomes. Every so often let your leg rest, with your knee bent and your foot pulled up, to make sure you are letting go of your inner thigh muscles.

After exploring the movement of sliding the edge of your right foot up and down the floor, rest and observe what has changed in the way your leg rests on the floor. Is your leg softer? Is it pointing in a different direction than earlier? Does your hip feel softer? You might even find that your lower back has released to the floor on the right side.

3. Perform the same exploration of this soft and lazy movement on the left side. Is it easier or harder than on the right? Notice whether your eyes or even your head want to move to the left when you move your left leg up and down. Rest. Feel the expansion in your pelvis and the release of excess work in your legs. Pause with your legs long and arms down at your sides.

4. Turn both of your legs open, with the knees hanging apart, and slide the outside edges of both of your feet up toward yourself at the same time. As you go up and down this way, slowly and gently, feel what your back and your pelvis are doing to assist the movement.

As the edges of your feet slide up, keep some distance between them.

5. Rest with your arms on the floor above your head and your elbows slightly bent out to the sides. Once again, slide the outside edges of both feet up toward yourself and leave them there with your knees hanging open. Now let your head easily roll from side to side while breathing deeply.

Rest in this position, with the knees suspended and the arms open, and feel the comfort of being like a baby sleeping on the floor. Let your ribs move freely as you breathe. If letting your knees hang open feels uncomfortable, place a pillow under the side of each knee to give yourself more support.

-Frank Wildman, PhD