Chapter 11: Mindful - The Practice of Natural Movement

“That which we call thinking is the evolutionary internalization of movement.”

 

—Rodolfo Llinás

 

Too often we identify our “self” almost exclusively in terms of our intellect. How does the body figure into the sense of self? How do mind and body connect with one another? Through mindful movement. But what is mindful movement? It is both practicing an intention with attention and practicing attention with intention—the two are not separate.

When you read about principle 7, “Adaptable,” you learned that the reason for having a brain is to be able to physically navigate through complex environments. Trees and plants do not have a central nervous system because they’re rooted and don’t move. Locomotion, on the other hand, demands more than just the physical ability of displacement; it requires an ability to predict a future position in a different place, to determine the path that leads there, to anticipate the diverse and necessary steps to be made along the way, and finally to adapt every move to the terrain, the conditions, and the things that happen while traveling. This means that “purely physical” movement does not exist. You need more than muscles, joints, nerves, and fascia to move; you must have motive, or intention. Natural Movement is a physical manifestation of a drive and agenda of self-preservation, of a desire to prolong life as far as possible.

Only organisms that move have brains.”

—Rodolfo Llinás

 

The notion that movement or even physical exercise can be “purely” physical is absurd. Your muscles don’t have neurons. They don’t think. They don’t get “confused.” They don’t know their names. They don’t know how to count to ten. They have no intention of their own. Movement happens in your mind before it takes place in your body; it is an internal process before it is an external manifestation. The movements we see taking place externally are the result of the nervous system ordering the rest of the body to move. In short, movement comes from the inside out. It stems from awareness.

Rodolfo Llinás, an eminent neurophysiologist, even argues that contextually adaptable movement is at the origin of human thinking, and that self-awareness may have started with our body in motion. Although movement demands intention from the mind and awareness to have the body perform, it doesn’t mean that the process relies on thinking. Rational thinking is not fast enough to keep up with the speed of most movements. In fact, thinking—as in producing thought with words and structure—is not a requirement for movement at all. We cannot move without our consciousness ordering movement from our body, but it can be done without thinking, the same way we can meditate and remain conscious without thought.

Not only can we move without thought but movement is the most efficient when it’s performed without thought. Efficient awareness in movement is a wordless state of mind, a form of intelligence that is free from intellectual distraction or agitation.

Thoughtless movement is nonetheless mindful the same way thoughtless stillness can be mindful. We can even meditate while in physical motion as in physical stillness. Although the intention to move may be enough to generate effective movement, intention alone isn’t sufficient to guarantee efficient and adaptable movement. Intention is the original motive for movement, but attention (or mindfulness) is what primarily enables successful movement.

However, most people have been sold the notion that exercise is something exclusively physical. As people start their practice of Natural Movement, they realize that efficiency isn’t that natural. When they revert to what they are used to doing to solve most problems, which is thinking about the problem first, they also realize that it doesn’t help much.

As kids, we move a lot without thinking, but as grown-ups we think too much without moving. We have been taught to experience the world almost exclusively via our intellect. Not surprisingly, adults tend to overthink the moment they try to make improvements to basic movements they “think” they “know.” Developing an ability to become fully aware in movement without thinking is the antidote to overthinking movement as you learn techniques. This surrender of conscious thought is a form of active meditation that takes place through physical motion rather than physical stillness.

Mindfulness Is the Path to Efficiency

 

I made the case for efficiency in principle 10. I explained that a new movement that you do spontaneously is not necessarily efficient just because it came “naturally” to you; by the same token, habitual movement patterns that feel “natural” to you are not necessarily efficient. At a given moment, successfully achieving your goal might be sufficient, and you might not realize how ineptly you did it. A lot of people who are physically active still suffer from “unconscious incompetency.” Although these people need a certain degree of attention to perform their movements—remember, movement is never truly mindless—their minds might not be fully engaged with their bodies as they move.

By intentionally focusing on systematically increasing the efficiency of all your movements, you might begin to recognize some deficiencies and inefficiencies in your skills. You then become “consciously incompetent.” Instead of performing the same inefficient movements without a thought, you acknowledge that they need improvement and start working on making them efficient.

By first understanding what is wrong about your movement, it gives you a better sense not just of what is wrong and why, but hopefully hints about how you can start making it better. Then, by learning principles and techniques (either on your own or from someone else) and being mindful at physically applying the principles and techniques, your performance gets rapidly better. Ultimately you are able to reach a state of “conscious competency.”

However, the irony of good form and efficient technique is that sometimes it doesn’t feel right the first time you try it. If you have accustomed yourself to a poor movement, the modified, efficient pattern feels “unnatural” at first. In any case, at this stage, efficiency is not guaranteed and might disappear the moment you get distracted because you must consciously focus on your competency.

The last stage is when you become “unconsciously competent.” At this point, you no longer need to think of what you must do to be efficient. It might even seem that you are almost not paying attention that much because your movement awareness has shifted to a subconscious level, and your conscious mind is free from the task of ensuring efficiency.

The path to unconscious efficiency relies on mindfulness and can be summarized as follows:

• Unconscious/subconscious incompetence: Moving naturally but poorly without knowing it. Not noticing inefficiency.

• Conscious incompetence: Being aware of your poor movement ability. Noticing inefficiency.

• Conscious competence: Having learned movement efficiency but needing to think about it. Learning, thinking, and mindful practice are required to achieve efficiency.

• Unconscious/subconscious competence: Having movement competency that doesn’t require thinking. Thoughtless efficiency.

In the beginning, a jump is just a jump. With mindful practice, a jump is no longer just a jump because you realize that it is more complex than it looks and that it can be transformed into a much better movement. Eventually, a jump goes back to being just a jump, but it is nothing like the jump it was at first. Efficient movement has become second-nature thanks to mindfulness, but the mindfulness you have applied has helped you achieve movement competency in a wordless, thoughtless state of mind. Natural Movement demands a cognitive engagement that might require intellectual understanding at some stage but eventually becomes free of analysis. I call it mindful movement.

 

Mindful Practice Is a Feel

 

If the body is the “tool” necessary for movement, and technique is the tool necessary for movement efficiency, then mindfulness is the tool necessary to apply technique. Deliberate practice means mindful practice with the intention of ensuring both efficiency and continuous improvement. The central nervous system doesn’t need numbers to achieve movement. “Ten” or “one hundred” might be meaningful to your intellect, but it means nothing to your central nervous system.

The purpose of mindful practice is to strive for movement efficiency rather than brute exertion. The nervous system relies on sensations of pattern, position in space, relationship to the environment, balance, timing, level of intensity, and so forth. We could talk about “internal” and “external” awareness in the sense that we could differentiate between input that stems from the internal motion of the body (proprioception) and input that stems from the environment where motion takes place (exteroception).

Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”

—Carl Jung

 

Mindful practice requires that you pay attention to the two primary aspects of your physical performance when you move:

• Practical effectiveness, which is the tangible goal you strive to achieve through your movement. This is a more effective way to move than thinking of the diverse muscles that you need to use to achieve the movement as you move. I’m not saying that attention to the different phases of a movement sequence and to particular body parts isn’t part of mindful practice, only that it is not an intellectual exercise in kinesiology and anatomy analysis. As I previously stated, movement is too fast for the intellect to keep up with the pace.

• While your mind is attentive to the practical result, it is also attentive to your body’s feedback. The practical goals are never forgotten, but the process that leads to achieving them gets special attention. Effectiveness alone is not satisfactory; efficient effectiveness is what mindfulness ultimately strives to achieve. If such effectiveness translates in part to achieving a certain quantity—say, twenty repetitions in less than sixty seconds—that is awesome. However, in the absence of mindful and efficient movement, practice is effective but inefficient, and your growth and performance ultimately are impaired. The progress that you only observe or feel is not less important than the progress that can be measured. The same goes for the “data” that you collect from practice—the most important feedback is how movement feels. You may use measurable data to motivate yourself, but using sensations is equally effective. The sensory feedback from your body in motion (or kinesthetic sense) isn’t presented to your intellect in the form of numbers; it’s an overall feel in both your body and brain.

 

Paying attention to sensations—and to thoughts or emotions that arise before, during, and immediately after movement—is essential to managing efforts and actions. “Experience-dependent” learning is a process important to brain development and related to experiences that are unique to the individual. Simply put, we must physically experience movement to learn it. The more attentive we are to these experiences, the more we can benefit from them. Attentiveness occurs through mindful Natural Movement.

It is challenging to control something that you cannot perceive well. For instance, when your hands get numb in the cold, it’s hard to control your finger movement, and you have diminished dexterity as you try to use them the way you normally can. Well, moving mindlessly is equivalent to moving with a body that would be numb all over. Trusting your body sensations when you move and investing effort in better understanding and perceiving them is a healthy instinct. Feedback is only beneficial when we pay attention to it, yet it is not necessarily an intellectual pursuit. When you were a young child, each attempt you made to try to acquire or improve a new movement pattern was performed without thought. Each attempt led either to a positive or negative reinforcement (of how to move or not move) by your central nervous system (and still happened without thought).

Conscious thought can help guide your attention or objectives before movement—such as when you’re studying the information in this book—or it can help you analyze visual or kinesthetic feedback after movement, which will be the case as you start practicing. We can think about our movement just before or immediately after it; it just doesn’t help to think about it as we move.

Much is still unknown when it comes to how the human nervous system controls movement. Science helps us understand how diverse areas of the brain—such as the cerebellum, the basal ganglia, the brain stem, the frontal lobe, and, by extension, the spinal cord—contribute to enabling motor control. But none of this conceptual knowledge helps us move better because we can’t move intellectually.

Can the knowledge deriving from reason even begin to compare with knowledge perceptible by sense?”

—Louis Aragon

 

In fact, you need to let go of mental tensions and mental “noise” if you want to better perceive subtle body signals with the most clarity possible while you are in motion. Practicing mindful movement sharpens your perception of the body in motion. Indeed, you can even visualize movement, how each body part moves in sequence, how the movements are timed, and the physical sensations the movement produces—without thinking…and without moving at all. This is because the central nervous system creates somatotopic memory of the movement, which is like a three-dimensional representation of movement patterns, except that instead of just being a visual “hologram,” it also involves sensations. When you mindfully imagine yourself doing a movement, you can feel it in your body. To paraphrase Maya Angelou, you may forget the programs you once planned and the numbers you once achieved, but you will never forget how movements made you feel.

Efficient Mind

 

The concept of mindfulness has nothing to do with the idea of “mind over matter.” You can’t achieve efficient and adaptable movement and physical performance without being mindful; the key to establishing, improving, and optimizing such competency lies in consistent mindful practice. Once someone told me that they didn’t need Natural Movement practice because their “mindful” practice—yoga and meditation—would enable them to overcome any challenging real-world circumstances that demanded a physical response by enabling them to tap into their innate potential to multiply their strength. I’ve heard stories of people who’ve been able to pull from a previously unrecognized source of strength in times of need, but those tales are quite rare compared to the many stories of people who have found themselves completely unprepared and helpless when life put them in situations they had never anticipated.

The only way your mind can command your body is by obeying the rules that govern it. Mindfulness is not a magic trick, a silver bullet, or voodoo spell; it’s a straightforward, down-to-earth ability to optimally operate your body, and you can’t create that efficient “mind-body” connection without practice. While practice evidently implies physical activity, the mental work needed to learn to perform new movements (or more efficient familiar movements) is much more significant than people expect. Your brain is at work as you learn and improve technique, even when you practice the simplest movements.

Contrary to what most people believe, paying attention and being mentally alert and responsive is so energy-consuming that it has a metabolic cost! It doesn’t matter whether the movements are slow or fast, low or high in intensity, simple or complex; the more you need to focus to achieve efficient movement, the greater the brain activity. Greater brain activity consumes more energy.

So, to reduce metabolic cost—at any level of intensity—we need efficient metabolic conditioning and movement patterns, but to improve efficiency of movement patterns, we must be mindful. But being mindful increases metabolic cost. That sounds like a paradox, doesn’t it?

I have good news, though: The metabolic cost generated by greater brain activity decreases over time, not because you will no longer need to be mindful but because your central nervous system becomes able to expend significantly less effort into making movement efficient. With each movement performed mindfully with the intention to improve efficiency, which is the very goal of practice, the nervous system remodels itself—a process called neuroplasticity—to optimize motor control and muscular activity. In other words, through the practice of mindful movement you can improve the efficiency of brain activity and reduce its metabolic cost.

TRAINING THE MMA FIGHTER

 

When I trained elite MMA fighter Carlos Condit on improving his footwork, standing stability, and speed, I used many variations of stepping, balancing, and jumping. None of the movements were very complex, and I never asked him to perform them with great intensity. (My mission was to improve quality rather than to “condition” him.)

To Carlos’s surprise, he felt like taking a nap at the end of each session—a phenomenon that he had never experienced, even after some of his most grueling physical training sessions. Given his world-class athleticism and the relatively low intensity of the physical work we were doing together, there’s no way Carlos was physically drained. However, his nervous system was exhausted because each session required a high level of focus to pay attention to multiple aspects of movement at once, which required great mental activity for a relatively prolonged time (two or three hours per session). After several sessions, Carlos no longer felt drained at the end of the sessions because his nervous system had adapted to become more efficient at being so intensely mindful of his movement without interruption for two or three hours straight.

So, when you feel quite tired after a session of mindful movement practice, remember that even elite athletes can become tired when they take on new challenges that require them to engage their brains as well as their bodies.

 

Mind-Body-Context: Your Brain on Mindful Natural Movement

 

Natural Movement implies a level of awareness that goes beyond the “mind-body” connection to be efficient. It demands “mind-body-context” connection, starting with “mind-body-environment” connection.

Do you remember principle 7, “Adaptable”? Natural Movement is never disconnected from the real-world context where it takes place. Although meditation is a part of Natural Movement practice, when you’re in motion you cannot afford to close your eyes and isolate yourself from the world to connect to your inner world. This is a powerful insight: Natural Movement demands that you mindfully engage with the outer world, not retreat from it. Your senses must be sharp, your attention oriented to both internal and external input. Is this purely physical? Of course not; it’s extremely mindful because the world and variables around you are real, tangible, changing, and impossible to dismiss.

If you consider the mind and the body as separate entities, a notion known as Cartesian dualism that’s subject to intense debate, then you must connect the mind to the body, and the connected mind-body must connect with the real world you interact with through your movements. Which of the two connections requires the greatest level of awareness and mindfulness? It is often said that mind-body connection is about being in the moment—in other words, being in the “here and now”—which is indeed valuable. But it still leaves you with the possibility of becoming distracted and mentally transporting yourself to a different place and time. Adaptable movement most often does not grant you such “luxury” because the moment you get distracted is the moment movement fails. Your motion is impossible to dissociate from variables and demands external to yourself; consequently, you become naturally immersed in a mindful interaction with them. The “here and now” is the context.

Scientific studies have demonstrated that we feel better and happier when we exercise because endorphins—which have addictive properties like morphine—are generated, and they help us cope with physical discomfort during and after exercise. In some cases, endorphins also cause us to experience euphoria. Just twenty minutes of most any physical activity generates those benefits and boosts brain function, including neurogenesis (the regeneration of neurons).

If even machine-based exercise can produce benefits for your brain, what can Natural Movement—which involves mindful, adaptable, efficient movement—do for your brain? Wouldn’t it make sense to assume that when we use our brains for their original biological purpose of Natural Movement that we would have a greater potential to boost brain function than when we do mechanistic exercise?

Studies also show that rich natural environments, as well as enriched artificial environments, contribute to a healthier, more functional brain and happier life. (Read more about this in principle 8, “Environmental.”) This idea is implemented in zoos that are designed to replicate the wild environment where animals normally live because it helps tremendously in keeping them healthy by enabling them to physically behave the way they naturally do as much as possible. Such “enhanced environmental stimulation” is beneficial to brain function in many ways: It improves baseline chemical levels; neuron growth, size, and overall brain mass; and neural processing and connectivity between different parts of the brain, which contributes to better learning and memory. Obviously, such improvement of brain function benefits movement competency, but it also carries over to any area of life. Neuroscientists have known for a long time that brain health is linked to exercise, but they have recently started to understand that physical activity alone, such as running on a treadmill, may not be as beneficial to brain function as “cognitively engaging” with complex environments the way our ancestors used to.

NOTE

 

If you’d like to read more about the benefits of exercise on our brains, one source I recommend is “Brains Evolved to Need Exercise” by Alexis Blue, which you can find at https://uanews.arizona.edu/story/ua-research-brains-evolved-need-exercise.

 

However, plunking an animal or person in an environmentally stimulating place isn’t all it takes; an apathetic or depressed person might not wake up from their mental fog or receive any benefit at all. What makes a difference in the amount of benefit derived from a stimulating environment is cognitive engagement with environmentally rich areas. In a nutshell, you cannot benefit from external stimulation without also having deliberate, mindful participation. The body won’t connect to the environment if the mind doesn’t connect first. The external environment must be present, the mind must be present, and you must connect the two through the body in motion.

Working memory is how efficiently you can process information, and it’s been determined that working memory is even more important than IQ in determining an individual’s ability to do well. In a recent study on working memory, three groups were evaluated. The first group did no physical activity at all, the second group did yoga, and the third group did a set of two Natural Movement exercises—balancing across a beam and climbing a tree. Subjects’ working memories were tested before and after their activity. The first group demonstrated no difference in the two measurements. The yoga group also did not see any change, which means that form of movement did not provide any benefit. However, the Natural Movement group saw a significant boost in working memory after doing what seems to be a merely “physical” activity that seemingly did not require too much attention. Wrong. Efficiency at adapting movement to the environment demands high levels of attention, which boosts brain function. And what is attention if not mindfulness?

NOTE

 

You can find an article about the study about working memory and natural movement at www.medicaldaily.com/climbing-tree-can-improve-your-working-memory-capacity-50-345450.

 

However, not all mindful physical activity is equally beneficial to the brain. Mindfulness in the sense of “stillness” and internal “self-orientation” is not as beneficial as being dynamically mindful about something external to you that demands a cognitive interaction and an adaptable response from you both physically and mentally. Interacting adaptively with an external, complex context demands levels of awareness, alertness, and responsiveness that closing your eyes and stilling the mind can’t match.

Without alertness, responsiveness is impossible. Without responsiveness, alertness is useless. It is an engagement between you and the real world through bodily motion that necessitates the most primal and ancient form of intelligence. This simple idea produces a new form of mindfulness practice, which I call the “mind-body-context connection” (and I was talking about it for years before the study on working memory was published). This is not to say that the “mind-body” level of connection and mindfulness is not challenging, rewarding, and beneficial; it’s just that you can achieve higher cognitive engagement and greater mindfulness through the mind-body-context connection. Self-awareness in isolation is great, but self-awareness in relation to the real world is greater.

The importance of context is so important in Natural Movement that in the absence of contextual demands—such as when you’re in an empty indoor venue with no environmental variables other than a flat floor and walls—you might want to visualize the types of obstacles or situations that you normally practice with. You can jump over and crawl under imaginary obstacles or run away from imaginary dangers. In the absence of a real context, the simulation of it gives your movement the meaning it needs and always deserves. After all, if we can anticipate our next moves before they happen, we can certainly mentally simulate the context where those moves should ideally take place. The context may be imaginary, but your movements are nonetheless real. At this point I don’t need to reassert the importance of context in Natural Movement; just never lose sight of the original and fundamental reason for being able to move.

Mindfulness and Mindset

 

Mindset is the set of attitudes that we hold or the state of mind we may experience or intentionally adopt, and it’s closely related to mindfulness. State of mind, mental state or behavior, psychological drive, outlook, perspective, approach, psychology, philosophy, spirit: Whatever name you want to use, mindset is something that basically stems from and takes place in the mind and has a direct influence on physical practice. Remember, movement is never restricted to a compartmentalized physical action that’s dissociated from the mind, and we can’t deny the importance of that fact. Your mindset or state of mind can be either an advantage or obstacle to your movement practice and physical performance.

True strength, in its broadest meaning, must be seen as the result and synthesis of physical and moral strength. It resides not only in the muscles, the breath, the agility . . ., but above all in the energy that uses it, the will that directs it, or the feeling that guides it.”

—Georges Hébert

 

Becoming aware of your state of mind—and even underlying emotions or beliefs about yourself or your ability—as you practice is essential to determining whether difficulty in performing is caused by a psychological reason or a physical one. Because movement stems from an intention and Natural Movement should stem from a positive one, mindfulness is not just limited to the “here and now” or the very moment when you physically practice. Mindfulness has to do with envisioning the future and anticipating in the present moment how to shape that future. This nonphysical component of your practice can be very potent. How you move now determines how you will be able to move in the future, and how you intentionally think about or imagine your future movement in the present can also positively influence your future abilities and experience. Your mind is more likely to limit you or incapacitate you than your body is.

“Self-talk” is an aspect of psychological practice in which we either negatively assert who we think we are or positively assert who we choose to be. By extension, that self-talk affects how we perform, experience things, handle challenges, and so on. It can be either detrimental or favorable. You don’t have to wait for real events to occur to begin mentally conditioning yourself to be strong in the face of adversity. Composure, self-control, and even mettle—mental robustness and resiliency—are not just innate; they can be trained.

Some things that prevent us from achieving mindful practice include attention-deficit, distraction, lack of motivation (because the movements are too easy or too hard, because we don’t like particular movements, or because we don’t understand their value), mental agitation, a lack of self-confidence or self-esteem (especially when people are watching), and any kind of negative thought or emotions that are irrelevant to the practice.

They can because they think they can.”

—Virgil

 

Individuals with a low internal “locus of control” have learned to behave helplessly as if they have no control over the outcome of their circumstances, including their physical movement performance. It doesn’t matter how much encouragement you receive; if you don’t believe in yourself first, you will remain disempowered. Likewise, if you suffer from “neuroticism” (the tendency to experience negative emotions such as anger, anxiety, or depression or other expressions of emotional instability) being mindful and preventing your thoughts and emotions from interfering with your practice and performance is a challenge. Also, overthinking, or “paralysis by analysis,” might occur if you stick to the theoretical details of practice rather than empirical experience. Some people do this—consciously or unconsciously—to avoid practical challenges or hard work.

Fortunately, consistent practice of Natural Movement eventually reduces, and even dissolves, most of these psychological obstacles. Positive visualization and affirmation before, during, and after practice can prove very effective and useful. Meditation and stillness are also extremely beneficial. As a matter of fact, this type of mental practice should become a habit in your life regardless of your physical practice. When you show up to practice, you bring who you are, and who you are results a lot from your day-to-day mental habits and choices. If you can mindfully improve how you operate your mind every day, your practice will be positively affected the same way physical and mental self-improvements gained through Natural Movement practice carry over to any aspect of your life and boost your self-efficacy.

A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.”

—Winston Churchill

 

Not surprisingly, becoming able to intentionally adopt a certain mindset during practice supports greater performance. Different mindsets—willfulness, playfulness, a sense of collaboration, determination—fit different types of movement exercises or physical demands. For instance, before attempting a single jump that involves some risk and maybe some danger, mental determination must be composed, and you must be strong yet relaxed. A task that requires strength and speed in achieving the same efforts repetitively may demand a more aggressive state of mind (of course only for the duration of the task). The intention to physically achieve something can be motivated by the objective of being able to help others when they need physical assistance, in which case practical altruism is the goal and real-world movement capability is the means to an end.

In any case, such states of mind are used as tools, and they result from a choice and mental control; they don’t randomly take place. What separates highly skilled movement practitioners from beginners is the internal level of locus of control (or how well they can control their minds) while performing physically in a variety of situations. They also have a realistic, experience-based sense of self-efficacy. Regardless of the level of practice, the mind leads and the body executes—and you’re in charge of both. In the chain of command, you’re at the top. You send the orders. No improvement is possible without self-discipline, and there’s no self-discipline without authority on yourself.

The way we move, stand, and breathe carries much more weight than how convincingly we can discuss kinesiology, biomechanics, or exercise science. Body stances and poise are a great revealer and exposer of intention and mindset. We embody our attitudes through physical behavior. Natural Movement requires a philosophy of self-actualization and empowerment for the benefit of self and others. (This is an idea I explore in principle 12, “Cooperative.”) Naturally, negative thoughts and emotions toward yourself or others have no room in the practice of Natural Movement, and they will eventually go away. If you are having fun, if your experience is mentally positive, then your love for movement will grow more. Movement can be a more effective mood regulator than stillness.

People who see exercise as a chore always look at the clock. People who enjoy movement lose track of time. Having a positive, rewarding, and satisfying experience depends not only on the nature of the experience but also on your ability to make it so.

As I mentioned previously, mindfulness is not limited to the specific time when you practice. You also can anticipate and visualize the progress and achievements you want to make. This process of “goal setting” is an intention for the future—a potent way to remain motivated to practice in the moment. Visualization is mentally rehearsing your movements without physically performing them. You can imagine, sometimes very vividly, the sequence of positions the movements follow, the context where they take place, how they make us feel in our bodies and minds, and so on. In other words, my brain anticipates the feeling of the movement before I actually feel it in the rest of my body. I have visualized the movement in my mind before you see me moving. MovNat, the practice of Natural Movement, must be mentally approached the way martial artists approach their discipline: learning techniques and seeking greater efficiency through mindful practice.

Mindful, adaptable Natural Movement practice provides an immediate reward. Focus, adaptability, playfulness, and fighting spirit combined with physical motion create a potent and positive psychological experience. The instant gratification you get might not be that you acquire impressive movement skills and physical capacity in record time, but that you feel energized both physically and mentally every time you practice.

The practice of mental toughness is not a supplemental and optional aspect of Natural Movement practice, but an inherent component of it. Regardless of muscular strength and tough looks, when someone who is mentally weak is exposed to a certain level of difficulty, that person is quick at talking himself into giving up long before his body has reached its limits. It is often a surprise when unassuming individuals with no particular physical strength or skills can demonstrate impressive mental toughness. Those who have this mental quality can make faster progress than those who have natural athleticism but no willpower or self-discipline.

The “know thyself” principle isn’t limited to the mind; it must include knowledge of your physical capabilities. If you don’t know what your body is made of, you will never know what your mind is truly made of. Complex movements and sustained physical effort reveal the extent of your mental toughness, but context is also a factor. Mindful low-intensity movement practice cannot be the safe space where you shelter your lack of physical and mental strength. Occasionally training physically and mentally with difficult real-world Natural Movement context—which may include harsh weather or even food and sleep deprivation—forces you into a realistic space where your mental shortcomings are exposed in no time.

Shape Your Mind

 

People may not necessarily need scientific evidence to be motivated for movement practice; they only need to have a single movement experience that makes them feel amazing.

Muscle-isolation and machine-based fitness drills make most people want to mentally escape during the physical activity. Practical and adaptable Natural Movement practice, on the other hand, naturally compels your mind to engage together with your body and the outer world. A change of experience might lead to a change of perception, but a change of perception definitely leads to a change of experience.

Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.”

—Bruce Cameron

 

No single fitness drill can transform your body, but a single insight can transform your behavior, practice, and eventually your entire life. Paying attention makes anything feel like you are doing it for the first time; it keeps anything you do “fresh.”

The body and how it works are immensely complex, but that doesn’t mean your approach to movement should be overly sophisticated. You want to practice movement mindfully—not intellectually or analytically. When you mindfully “listen” to your body in motion, you become not only a great listener but also a better interpreter of your own mind.

In today’s hectic life where the individual is being fragmented and daily life compartmentalized, mindfulness has become a rare skill and a priceless experience. Mindfulness and movement skills are an invisible and weightless kind of “gear,” but they are more than a tool; they provide a whole operating system to achieve who we choose to be. Both the mind and body are trainable. The difference is that you can give the mind practice not just when the body is at rest but also when it is active.

Shaping your body is important, but shaping your mind is an even greater achievement. A strong body with an out-of-shape mind is no better than a strong mind with an out-of-shape body.