Movement as an act of service?

Hey FTWer!

{Reading time: 4 minutes, 50 seconds}

Why is it so important that we find time in our busy, chaotic workdays and lives for more movement, nutritious food, and better sleep?

I tend to cite these three reasons:

• An increasingly sedentary lifestyle (plus just getting older) means we’re losing bone density and muscle mass a tiny bit every week.
• Exercise and nutritious food give us the energy to keep being productive and successful in the work we love (whether that’s climbing the corporate ladder, running our own business, retiring strong, or raising awesome kids).
• Practicing great physical health habits improves mental health, too.

That last one is probably the one I bring up least, not because it's less important (it might be most important), but because I'm not certified in mental health-related fields. The best I can do is reference the countless studies and share anecdotal evidence from my clients' and my own experiences.

But I recently came across a benefit of “doing things that engage you” that is often absent from my movement and nutrition conversations, and it made me want to talk about it here.

Simply put, we need practices that engage our bodies and minds so we can feel both mentally and physically strong enough, renewed enough, to face all the insanity going on in the world around us (let's just call it what it is 🤷).

S0: What if doggedly pursuing our own wellness kind of like an act of resistance?

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It is normal and forgivable to feel completely overwhelmed and exhausted by all the existential, economic, and political chaos pouring into our feeds. When that overwhelm leads to freezing, to throwing up our hands in despair because we understandably can’t imagine what we could possibly to do fix any of it, well—I don’t want to say “That’s when they win,” because that’s a lot of pressure and verges on blaming the victim, but...

If we can take measures to keep ourselves mentally and physically fit, even through tiny 5-minute actions, we can help maintain our mental strength—a concept fleshed out by author and speaker Amy Morin—and give ourselves a bit more space to act. (Whatever "act" means for you, whether it’s activism, donating time or money, voting, writing a public post, or having honest, big conversations with friends.)

What I’m getting at is that caring about your physical wellbeing has ramifications beyond how you feel each day and how you’ll hold up as your body ages. Lifting heavy things, getting your heart rate up (in a cardio way, not a stressing-about-the-state-of-the-world way), turning off your phone an hour before bed, getting enough carbs and fibre…those ostensibly self-serving actions also

• Give you the energy to read the news or go to that information session;
• Enable you to notice where your community is falling short (food availability, fitness services, etc), and find a way to speak up about it, even just in a poll or survey;
• Make you strong enough to help a neighbour in need (literally or figuratively);
• And maybe even help alleviate the stress of your loved ones who are worrying about your health, so they have more mental fortitude to deal with all of the above, and their own wellbeing.

Knowing it’s good for your own life should be a convincing-enough reason to prioritize more healthy habits—I truly hope it is.

But if you still need another push to stick with it...

Do it for the people you love, and your community, and the sometimes-scary-but-still-redeemable future that's waiting in the wings.

Thanks for reading.

💪 ☁️ 💚
~ Shannon