Almost 5 years ago, I had a sports injury that triggered a series of chronic pain-inducing patterns of movement. As I jumped from doctor to doctor and alternative bodyworker to alternative bodyworker, questions started piling up in my mind about the human body and how we move.
I had been relatively sedentary through my later teens after a very active (or so I believed) childhood doing ballet, contemporary dance, and other activities. When this accident happened, I was 20 and had just gone back to practicing sports, and for a long time I couldn’t put together how something that was supposed to be good for me brought on this slow catastrophe of pain, frustration and confusion.
As nobody could pinpoint what was wrong with me, I started researching on my own: how are we supposed to move? why are so many people in pain? what were good exercises and postures to make sure we stayed in shape, and had enough mobility and strength to be healthy and pain-free during our lives? I looked into these questions, looked up my symptoms, tried to put the puzzle pieces together, and realized just how many non-congruent frameworks there are about the human body… everyone from surgeons to physical therapists (of different schools), osteopaths, pilates teachers, yoga teachers, pain researchers and restorative exercise specialists said something different, but each seemed to only tell a part of the story.
Every framework had something valuable to add about injuries or recovery or wellbeing, but none offered me a comprehensive explanation of the whole movement ecosystem of our lives… except for one which stood out to me: the “nutritious movement” paradigm by Katy Bowman, a biomechanist from the US. She seemed to answer my questions about the body, movement and pain, and the way she thought about it all just made sense to my Montessori mind.
Here’s a cool video with animations if you want to learn more.
The basic idea is that movement is sort of like a diet, in that you need certain macronutrients (cardiac activity, strength…) but you ALSO need micronutrients - in the shape of all the little movements that your body is able to do, in different ranges of motion and under different loads. She posits that even people in our society who do a lot of exercise are still sedentary, because their body is still deprived of so many essential nutrients, caused by an overall sedentary society and world. Importantly, our environment is constraining how much and in what ways we move - just think about how much time the average western person spends sitting on a chair or in a chair-like position (driving a car, a bike, resting on the couch, working at the office…)! We’re missing essential movements - like squatting, hanging, properly walking, and millions of smaller, easy-to-miss movements - that made up the movement diet of our ancestors, the diet our bodies evolved to expect and need. These movements are, in a sense, endangered, because we have constructed environments that don’t require them or even actively avoid them.
babies are born being able to hang their whole body weight! then it’s use it or lose it 💪
from mattgrebosky.com
As my perception has shifted and I’ve adopted this framework, I’ve started to notice sedentary design everywhere… You wait in a doctor’s office and the whole space is filled with chairs. Even when there is some chair-less space left, you still have to surpass the mental block of “what are people going to think if I squat or squat on the floor here?!”. While we’re not able to shape every environment we’re in, there are certain spaces that we do have control over… and with a bit of open-mindedness, imagination and a some tools, you too can create a sanctuary where movement diversity can flourish!
In rethinking your space to become more movement-friendly, you need to do the counterintuitive – look to expend more effort and not less. Don’t make yourself too comfortable (read: still), look instead to maximize movement. I see it in the same way as designing a Montessori “prepared space” for children: you’re intentionally making the environment provide the constraints and the incentives you believe are best for development, observing how people use that space, and adjusting as needed. The environment does a big part of the work in how it shapes our behavior!
Here are some things we’ve done in our own home, in part influenced by Katy Bowman’s suggestions - in her books, podcast and her “home tour” video (linked at the bottom) - and in part just from carefully observing our movement and lifestyle habits, where my Montessori-priming came in handy 😉, then making the appropriate changes to our physical space to challenge those patterns of (non) movement.
We’ve taken a “furniture-free” or “floor-living” approach: this means we have less conventional furniture, and what we do have is low to the ground or at standing height, to avoid that “sitting height” present everywhere else we go. We looked for flexible ways to use and move furniture around, so we can rethink our space whenever it seems necessary.
Really, there’s only a couple of “furniture” pieces in our open living room - kitchen space: a firm foam mattress on the floor and a beanbag, instead of a couch, a small, side table / shelf thing for setting down books or drinks, a second small unit that supports our TV (low to the ground) and keeps a couple of music instruments, gaming equipment and movement tools (straps, weights, elastic bands, myofascial ball, toe spacers…); a kitchen shelf and an island / workbench we made out of an IKEA sit-stand desk frame and an oak countertop which can double as a conventional-height dining table when we have older or injured guests, or someone wants to work at a sitting-level (we keep a stack of stools around for these moments).
in this particular season of life I was also using the kitchen island as a sit-stand-bounce desk
We also keep some moving pieces around: a yoga ball, a wooden balance board and floor cushions and meditation seats to bolster floor sitting. Starting to sit on the floor after years of sitting on chairs and couches might take a bit of practice and gradual adaptation. Here’s a good resource:
Dynamic at Home: Sitting Well - Nutritious Movement
"I made these changes for the same kind of reasons people get rid of the junk food in their house when they want to eat better. I move more and in different ways when the standard chair isn’t available. I want to sit down and lounge like everyone else, but my environment forces me to come up with an alternative.”
In the bathroom, we've got a squatty potty, to keep our bodies in a squatting position when using a western toilet. Another cool movement trick I’ve learned from someone on Katy’s podcast was to set the toilet roll on the top of the toilet - behind you - instead of using a toilet roll support, for “free” spinal twists every time you use the toilet. Even better: turn one way to grab the roll and the other way to put it back 🤔🧻
squatty potty ftw
pull-up bar