A few weeks ago I came across a great email, reminding me of material I had looked at some time ago, but I didn’t quite appreciate the full value of it. I don’t know if this happens to anyone else, but it certainly did to me.
This material was put together by Tim Anderson and Mike McNiff. It deals with rebuilding our bodies to “Becoming Bullet Proof”.
It is based around some of our very early developmental moves like crawling, rolling, rocking and using our head to initiate movement, basically resetting our bodies to be ready for what is to come(whatever that may be).
So I am finally ready to explore this concept a bit more. In true fashion I dived in head first. I am on the floor, nodding my head, rocking (looking and feeling quite silly) and crawling around like a baby. My knees had to toughen up and once again I got used to looking at the world from a baby’s perspective. -Old material, didn’t appreciate the full value of it- I needed to get older to become younger again.
The interesting thing that happened was that I didn’t wake up stiff or sore any more (I’m sure lots of you can relate to ‘un-crumpling’ yourselves when you hop out of bed in the morning), and I still haven’t no matter what I did the day before. When I went for my regular maintenance visit to the chiropractor she commented with surprise that I was noticeably better. My comment was that I had been doing these reset exercises. The answer was: “Wow”.
I started to use these exercises with my clients, and as a result they move easier, flexibility is better without spending lots of time on stretching, and strength comes back much quicker between doing sets of weights.
As babies we had to first earn to be on our knees and later upright, so all the moving and wiggling babies do is to develop enough strength and coordination to eventually do what we do now. To take that a step back we look at young children- they don’t have a concept of a better right and worse left side, of not being able to squat, roll around on the ground or hang. They can do it because they do it. We forgot, lifestyle got in the way and slowly we lost what we had – our right to move well.
I just fell in love with the concept that our health (our bodies) doesn’t have to change only in one direction-that is downhill, but that we have the power to rebuild ourselves into a better version.