The Importance of Movement

I need to move, she said. We need to move our bodies.

She was right. We were coming off long days of meetings, engaged conversations, research, and writing. Then I was asking for one more, creative, engaged brainstorm session about one of the projects we were collaborating to create greatness. When I am in a groove, I have a tendency to keep pushing until failure. And failure looks like poor communication, missing words, poor choices of words, misunderstandings and occasional frustration. Does this sound familiar?

I have ignored the invitation to move my body before, and I am sure I will again. This time, while I acknowledged the need, I still pressed for the brainstorm. I set a clear intention for us and I set a time limit: 15 minutes. And then we went running.

An easy run. Zone 2. Conversational pace. It could have been a walk. It could have been jumping jacks and a few minutes of yoga poses. It could have been anything as long as we were moving our bodies, elevating our heart rates and changing the scene. This type of movement helps our higher minds (neocortex) come into alignment with our lower minds (brain stem and limbic nervous system) so that we can experience some alignment in our work.

At a(om), we know that we all live embodied realities and so our work is embodied work. We may meet with clients virtually, but we are all humans experiencing life in our variously abled and shaped bodies. Our intention is to invite your whole person into the work, so don’t be surprised if we invite you to pause a conversation so we can go take a walk together.