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Howdy folks, I was just out running sprints barefoot in the green grass of a park in downtown Phoenix. The sunset was painting oranges and pinks over the city skyline as I ran as fast as I could, again and again, with a feeling like flying across the grass. It felt so good — toes gripping the grassy ground, legs firing fast and loose, wind whooshing in my ears, a medley of feel-good chemicals thumping through my bloodstream, tightness and little kinks in my back from a day of sitting at work working out — that I thought I’d write about it tonight. I don’t mean to focus specifically on sprinting though, but to more generally point to something I notice society painfully missing. Something that, extrapolating from its profoundly positive effect on my personal experience, I believe almost everyone, including me, does not adequately do: move their body. The problem stems from technological progress outpacing our cultural ability to align ourselves with what is good. Over the past few hundred years, we have developed so much technology, so fast. Without time to consider the implications, we rid ourselves of almost every reason our ancestors always had to move. This is a problem because moving is totally vital to feeling good and functioning well in body and in mind. Gas and motors, electricity and plumbing, couches and chairs, television and computers, phones and apps, and one-click ordering with same-day delivery on millions of items through everyone’s favorite shopping site are just a handful of factors that ever-increasingly incentivize us to sit and stare and live a mental life. We are troubled today by phrases like “obesity epidemic” and “sitting is the new smoking” not because we are the laziest people to ever live, but because our environment simply prompts us to move less than any environment ever before. I was super lucky. I grew up with a park directly across the street from my parent’s house and I played in the park every day. Moving my body was my main means of having fun, self-expression, and as I came to see myself as “athletic” at a very young age, laid the foundation of my childhood ego. As friends sometimes remind me still today, whenever I pop my shirt off revealing sexy six-pack abs, it still is :P But what those insightful friends miss is that I move much less to impress anyone and much more as physical, mental, and spiritual medicine. Movement is the best medicine, not because movement is the best medicine, but because we move so little today that we’re poisoning ourselves, and no medicine is beats avoiding the cause in the first place. As modern humans, living in societies that handle everything physical for us, I don’t think the answer to moving more is self-discipline. Self-discipline starts things off, but isn’t enough to sustain us. But you know what does sustain us: love baby. If we move not to “get exercise,” but because we love to move, we will be drawn towards moving our body each day and it all works. That’s why I romantically wax about my barefoot sprints in the grass at sunset. Because dammit I love them! Self-discipline won’t keep us out there day after day, month after month, year after year. But love, and cultivating a deep and satisfying relationship to our bodies and the art of moving them can and will. To live long and prosper in the technological age, the question to creatively answer is “how do I fall in love with moving my body?” May we all find out. With love & stoke, Ethan
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