Do you ever feel stuck? Our innate need for Movement

The context for these videos

Each post in this short series is from Alec’s weekly livestream to the Facebook group Finding the Balance with Anxiety Freedom Cards. Each week I focus upon one of our innate resources or needs as depicted in the Anxiety Freedom Cards. And the reason I’m doing this is to show you how you too can live a life free from anxiety and stress.

Please let me know what you think by scrolling to the bottom and commenting below!

Below is a direct transcript from the video shown above.

Well, good afternoon and welcome to another Tuesdays two o’clock topic. It’s Alec here from in8 with a bit of a discussion about another of our innate needs. And this week we’re going to be talking about our innate need for movement. And this is one of the Anxiety Freedom Cards illustrating one aspect of movement. Oh, and what I really like about this topic is that there are so many different ways of interpreting just the simple idea of movement that can be useful when we’re talking about improving emotional and mental health. And so whatever you think movement means right now. I’d be interested to see if I can expand the definition a little bit to cover more different various aspects of what movement can mean, especially in a therapeutic setting.

I’m going to start with a couple of quotes. I don’t know if you know the name Moshe Feldenkrais. He was that Ukrainian, Iranian, or sorry, Israeli, I think engineer to start with who founded a therapeutic technique that’s known as the Feldenkrais method. And here’s his quote that I found was “movement is life, without movement, life is unthinkable.” And his theory is really that thought, feeling and perception and movement are closely interrelated and they all influence each other. And so if we want to be healthy in thoughts, feeling and perception, we need to be healthy in movement as well. And when I read about him, when I first became aware of him, which was way back in the nineties, when I was the MD of a chiropractic school, I was fascinated to read that he specialised in making very small, tiny, slow movements, because actually it’s sometimes harder to do things fluidly and slowly than it is to be actively physical. And I thought that was interesting.

Another quotation from Einstein: “Nothing happens until something moves.” I don’t know if it’s really Einstein, but I found it on Google so it must be true.

Carol Welch, who is not a name I know: “Movement is a medicine for creating change in a person’s physical, emotional and mental states.” which I think sort of says it all.

And my own thoughts as an engineer and thinking about the whole topic of movement, you know, people talk about energy healing or the fact that everything is energy and people sometimes talking about raising their vibration and whether you subscribe to that way of looking at things or not the idea that everything is made of energy and energy is always in a state of vibration. If you think about it, vibration is nothing more than simply repetitive movement.

So I think that we can take this topic of movement and talk about it in a really wide range of different contexts. I’ve got a comment coming in from Facebook here. I’m pretty sure this is CG. Hi hope you’re well, yes, I am well, thanks. Moved my car today. After a month of being static, brakes freed and battery recharged. I’ve had to jump start Bindi’s car a couple of times in the last week, CG, I think it’s just, hasn’t had enough use and that the battery has got old and tired. I took it for an MOT yesterday and asked them if the battery was okay. They said, give it a full charge and if it’s not okay, then, then we’ll have to replace it. But I’m glad to hear that your car is working and that you’re now able to move further afield. So that’s all good. And thank you for commenting.

And that reminds me, if you’re watching this either live or if you’re watching it on, and we have a few other people watching it live, I can see, or if you’re watching it on replay, please put a comment in below and anything related to movement, I will be asking people to name different forms of movement. So an obvious one is walking, but what, what are the kinds of movement, physical movement?

Let’s just stick with the body for a minute, that you feel are either important to your life or that have helped other people. Let’s start with the physical and obviously put comments in and let me know what you think. And I think what I’ve realised over the time I’ve been doing these streamyard broadcasts is that there is some delay between my live broadcast and the time that you receive it. And so I have noticed that comments come in typically somewhere between 10, 15 seconds to maybe even half a minute later than when I’m speaking. And I didn’t realise that when I started. So I’ll leave some time for you to mention the different kinds of movement that you are aware of.

But let me, I’ve made a list here of things that I sometimes suggest to clients or explore with clients because often they bring what movement means to them, into my sessions. And I explore that, to make that more, more vital in their life, if I feel that they are in need of movement, or if they feel that they’re in need of movement.

So obviously walking, running, and jogging are all forms of, you know, what’s the word, moving our bodies, moving our bodies perambulation or something. I can’t think what the word is, but also swimming. I, I’m not a keen swimmer. I can’t swim, but some people find that swimming is an incredibly healthy way of being. And of course, when we’re doing things like running or jogging or swimming that are pretty active, it gets our lungs working. With swimming you could think about the breathing pattern. You have to breathe in quickly. And I would imagine that you breathe out more slowly while you’re doing whatever stroke you’re doing. And of course we know that that’s a very healthy way to breathe. We know that that’s, that’s similar style of breathing to when you’re singing. Cycling. Some people get their need for movement met by going to the gym. Dancing is such an important aspect of movement and whether your, the kind of person who stands in spot and waves their arms around, or whether you follow Strictly Come Dancing, you can hear from the testimonials of the people and get involved in that programme, that it’s a life-changing experience for them sometimes. If they’re not been a dancer before, and they go through that process of intense training and learning to coordinate their bodies and learning to push themselves beyond their comfort zone and beyond their limits, that dancing is an incredibly healthy way to approach life.

Gardening. I’ve got playing with cats, playing piano and clarinet. And I absolutely, I, I certainly relate CG to your suggestion of musical instruments that involve coordination and, and physical movement, I think are vital to my emotional and mental health. I know that there is research done that shows that even things like knitting, things that keep your fingers agile, keep your brain active, and that movement can take so many different forms and can be helpful in so many different ways, but playing musical instruments, even if it’s not big physical movements that require you to sweat, there’s something intrinsically healthy about pushing ourselves in that way. What else have we got? Yoga, Pilates. You know, there are, there are movement based disciplines that people get involved in. That can be very good. My daughter, who does like to run, she also does quite detailed stretching exercises. Stretching wasn’t a thing when I was a kid, I never heard of it until later in life. So I’ve never really done stretching, but she finds that just the act of stretching, incredibly helpful for her mental state. Gardening. You know, if you haven’t been out in the garden and you go out and work in the garden for a couple of hours, every muscle in my body aches, if I’ve done that. I’m not a great gardener. I have experienced that, but that’s certainly because we’re moving our physical bodies.

Obvious sports, things like football, tennis, squash, golf, team sports and games, netball, you know, all of these things involve coordinated movement. And there are also hobbies, hobbies such as skiing, snowing, snowing, snowboarding, and my personal favorite, which you may have heard me talk about, which is skateboarding.

And we’ve got a comment come in here from “Weightlifting when moving furniture around, which I do often as, as I like change.” Excellent. I love that. Yes. Moving furniture around that can be a challenge can’t it? Yes, thank you for those comments. Thank you for your contributions. I appreciate that. Even something like a trip into town to go shopping, if we’ve been, I mean, I don’t know how lockdown’s affecting you. I’ve, I’ve found it really quite a struggle. I get up days and down days, but there are times when I kind of wonder what the heck I’m doing and what life is about. And I wouldn’t say that I was particularly sociable person before lockdown, but I am missing human interaction. I’m missing movement. I’m missing a change of scenery. And there’s a part of me that longing for a holiday, just to sit by the sea or to, to pass some time without that kind of reminder that I could be getting on with some work or I could be doing something useful. So I also like to stop moving at times as well.

And they say that sweating is one of the best ways to detox our bodies. How often do you work up a sweat? You know, I’m 64, now I have to say, it’s not that often. I do walk fast when I go on my walks through the woods, I was there two days ago. It’s the wettest I’ve ever seen it at the moment. And walking in mud takes a particular kind of effort and energy. And it’s not my favorite thing, but I still love being in the woods so much. And it’s still magical. So yes. What do you do to get physical and what other ideas, what other ways of it? What have I missed out?

Keep the comments coming because it’s very interesting for me to see what, what you think of when you’re, when I say the word movement. I’m going to tell a short story about a weird animal that you may be aware of called the sea squirt. It looks like this, and this is a picture I just obtained off the web of a little cluster of sea squirts.

Now, the funny thing about sea squirts is that they have a very interesting life cycle. They’re pretty primitive animals in a way. And I understand that they start life as a kind of a little tadpole thing, and they have a basic nervous system. They have a basic brain and spinal cord, and they’re able to move and swim freely in the water. And I think they’re conceived. I think the sperm and eggs in the water and the little tadpoles grow out of that. And they swim around for the first part of their life. But pretty soon after they are born or after they come into life, they seek out a rock and you can see that the sea squirts in this picture are attached to some coral or a piece of rock.

And what they do once they attach is that they never move again. And because they’re never going to move again, they don’t need the brain and the spinal cord because the reason that all animals that have brains have brains is in order to move. And if you’re not going to move again, and you’re going to sit on your rock for the rest of your life, then you don’t need a brain. So what it does is it actually digests a large part of its nervous system, the brain and the spinal cord. I think it’s left with a cluster of neurons. So there is something left, but it actually gets rid of the brain because it isn’t going to be needing it anymore. Cause it’s not going to be moving anymore.

And I think when you apply that way of looking at things to human beings, you can see that actually the huge difference between us and plants is that we move about, we’re free agents. You know, we can move across the surface of the planet where whereas plants are embedded in the soil and we need a brain in order to prioritise our energy expenditure when we want to move about. And so the more we are, the more mobile we become, the more powerful we need our brain to be in order to, to navigate the challenges of, that are inherent in moving about, on the surface of the planet. So if your brain isn’t working, then it’s a good idea to think about, well, what do you need to do to get moving again?

When we, we also have, one of the functions of the brain, which is part of the polyvagal theory and part of the way of looking at the human body and the human response mechanisms through the lens of polyvagal theory is that we need to be able to suppress our instinct to move. So you know, that the, our natural state, if you like when our vagus nerve is inactive, is to be in a state of, of activity. It’s normal to be busy. And when we are being sociable and relaxed, we actually suppress the urge to be busy. So the ventral nerve, the vagus nerve, rather, is like a brake. It puts the brakes on our natural tendency to be active.

And I’ve spoken to a paramedic once who told me that if there’s damage to the vagus nerve, then the heart will automatically go to its default rate, which is far higher than what’s considered to be a healthy rate. It’s almost like our default mode is fight and flight. And if you think about early man, and you know, a leaf rustles in a bush and we think, Oh, it could be a rabbit. Should I leap up and discover it? And yeah, that’s good if we’re hungry, but there are times when we have to suppress that instinct. And part of our brains function is to figure out what’s appropriate in any situation. And to often suppress our natural urges. You know, we don’t take action every time we have a sexual thought, hopefully, unless we’re a psychopath or something, we don’t take action on every instinct that comes into our mind. We have to suppress certain things and the ventral, the vagus nerve. I don’t know why I keep saying ventral, is because of the ventral vagal state, which is our natural human, sociable, relaxed, at home, state. When we’re in that state, we’re actually putting the brakes on our natural inclination to be active, to be moving, to be taking action, predicting the future and being busy. And so our brain is closely. The function of our brain is closely related to our need to move.

But I think we can take this idea of movement a step further as well. When people come to us seeking our help. You know, if we have a client who rings us up and they, they think we might be helping them with, they think we might be able to help them with their issue, whatever that is. One way of looking at that is to say, in some ways they are feeling stuck. Now they may not use that language and they may not resonate immediately with my suggestion that they’re stuck. But if there’s something, some challenge that you can’t get over, some problem in your life, some anxiety issue, some relationship problem, some, something that you know you want to get happening in your life that you seem unable to make, to manifest. Then in a sense, you’re stuck.

And so I also think that movement is relevant when we talk about the whole therapeutic process. And I’d like you to just think for a moment about the difference between being static, being stuck and moving even tiny amount or very, very slowly. The difference between those two states is far bigger than the difference between moving slowly and moving quickly. And that’s why I often use the metaphor when I’m talking to a client, especially in the, in the early days in the first or second session with them, that if I can help them figure out which direction to move, help them to work out what their priorities are and what matters to them. And we do that by looking at needs, usually. Then it’s up to them and how much energy they have and how much resilience and resources they can tap into whether they crawl forward at a slow rate, like the turtle, or whether they run arms out stretched into a new, a new future. The point is, if you’re, if you move from being stuck to being able to move at all, then you’re making massive progress.

So I often like to think of, of whatever issue a client presents with, as framing it within this sort of lack of movement frame, if that makes sense. So somebody who is clearly stuck because they’re depressed, let’s say. Their life is on hold. They’re anxious, they’re frozen. They are withdrawn. They are usually in a very low mood, but experience a high degree of anxiety internally. I know this because I went through depression some 20 years ago, and I had a client who I’ve mentioned before, who used to call it, duvet diving. He would spend every day buried beneath his duvet cause he couldn’t face the world and he just could not face his inability to take action. Everything was too hard. Even getting out of bed was too hard. Getting washed was too hard. Brushing his teeth was too hard, going out and working, forget it. That’s way beyond what he was able to do when I first met him.

And in situations where we feel stuck, then any movement is a freeing. And it doesn’t matter whether we set the goal. If we set the goal high, then that’s great if we could meet it. But nine times out of 10 that’s far too ambitious, a goal that’s effective is one small step in the right direction. And any movement is a world of difference from being stuck. That’s what I’m trying to say. I’ve used a lot of words to try and communicate that idea.

Sometimes we just need, I remember showing this card to a client once and asking them what it meant to them, and being a little bit surprised when they said… They looked at it for a little while, and I gave them space and time to think and reflect about I don’t, I don’t put pressure on people. And then they said something, I thought “that’s wrong!” She said, Oh, I suppose it’s about having a change of scenery. And my instinct was to say, “No, that’s not right. It’s about getting your lungs and your heart moving. It’s about physical exercise!” No, it doesn’t have to be about that at all. For her, it was about having a change of scenery.

And for me in lockdown, having a change of scenery can be the difference between a good day and a bad day. Yesterday. I had to take the car in for an MOT and on the way back, we decided to stop and get a takeaway coffee. We don’t ever get takeaway coffees. That’s the, I don’t know why. I grew up in another era, I guess. But the cafe was open, but not to sit down so you could get a takeaway coffee and we brought it home and we had coffees at home. And just while we were waiting for the coffee, Bindi started talking to someone in the queue, or somebody waiting outside the shop. And I started talking to the woman who was serving me in the shop and just talking to another human being it’s like, and I’ve hardly spoken to anybody except Bindi or people on zoom calls, which is good, but it’s a different kind of interaction. I haven’t spoken to anyone face to face since before Christmas and just getting out and having that change of scenery was a really healthy thing for me to do.

So what works for you? What, what, what matters to you in terms of changes of scenery, aspect of movement, if you like. Simply getting out from within the four walls that we’re stuck within is, is a good thing. Driving into the country. Bindi and I drove up to the top of the white horse hill in Westbury a couple of weeks ago, maybe a week ago. And it was misty when we got to the top, so there was no view. But even that was helpful because it was a change of scenery.

Sitting in a park, a visiting to a, a visit to a cafe, having a holiday, we have, we’re blessed to have a posh shed in our garden, which used to be our office, but we redecorated it last year during the first lock down and made it into a, kind of a chill out space. It has a wood-burning stove in it, which is so lovely. I used to live on narrow boats, so I’m very comfortable with wood burning stoves. And we get a load of wood from a local farmer every year and we don’t burn it a lot, but every now and then on the Friday night, we’ll install ourselves in the garden room and it feels like we’re on holiday. Cause all you can see from the windows is trees and greenery. It’s, I’m a 50 foot away from the house and looks in the other direction. So it feels like it can be a completely different world. That works for me to give me a fresh perspective. And sometimes movement is nothing more than the need to have a fresh perspective.

So any other comments, any other thoughts from you? What have I missed out in terms of movement and how it can be useful in a therapeutic session? Do put a comment in and let me know whether you’re watching this live or on replay. I’ve, I’ve got CG’s comments on weight-lifting and moving furniture around. There’s nothing else, that’s. There’s somebody else watching I can see, but they can’t see their name at the moment. I’m just going to refresh my Facebook page to see if I can see who’s with us today. So it’s Caroline. Caroline, welcome. So nice you could join us again today. Good afternoon to you too.

So I think it’s probably, Oh, the last thing I was going to say about that was just the relationship between the way that we hold ourselves physically and our mental state. Whether you like him or love him or hate him. Jordan Peterson had that book that was quite popular last year. 12. I can’t remember the title of it. I haven’t read it, but I know that one of his key points is that research from lobsters shows that putting your shoulders back and standing up straight and having a good posture actually changes our, our feelings of, I should have researched this first a bit better, but it makes us feel different than, you know, if you adopt a power stance, if you’re about to give a public talk or something, the way you stand affects your mental state, if you huddle down like this and curl up in a ball as if you would get, you know, going back to the foetal position that’s engenders, a feeling of withdrawal of, of closed down of the dorsal vagal state, really. And if you stand up with your shoulders back in a confident pose with the legs slightly apart then that engenders a feeling of power, a feeling of dominance, even in some extreme examples. So the relationship between what we do physically and how we think mentally is often underrated. And I guess that’s part of my main message today.

Anyway, I looked for a story as some of you who join me regularly will know that I usually share a story that can be used in a therapeutic setting. I’ve just had a thought, really. And that is, if anybody wants these stories as PDFs, I could always, I could always post the PDF with the stories are in a folder that Bindi and I collect, we collect stories for use in therapeutic settings. And so every week I go through that folder and, and see if I can find something that’s relevant to the topic in order to share it with you. And I usually either read it or tell it if it’s a story I know really well. This isn’t a story I know particularly well, although I really ought to be able to improvise it cause it’s quite simple, but it isn’t really relevant to the topic of movement, I have to say. But it’s a good story all the same.

As ever, or not ever, as quite often, it’s by in Idries Shah, it’s his take on an ancient story actually. And it’s called “The old woman and the eagle.”

So are you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin.

Once upon a time when cups were plates and when knives and forks grew in the ground, there was an old woman who had never, ever seen an eagle. Now one day an eagle was flying high in the sky and it decided to stop for a rest. It swooped down and landed. And where do you think the eagle landed? Right at the front door of the old woman’s house.

So the old woman took a long, hard look at the eagle and said, “Oh my, what a funny pigeon you are!” She figured it was a pigeon, you see, because although she’d never seen an eagle, she had seen lots of pigeons.

“I’m not a pigeon at all!” said the eagle drawing himself up to his full height.

“Nonsense,” said the old woman, “I’ve lived for more years than you’ve got feathers in your wings and I know a pigeon when I see one.”

“So if you’re so sure that I’m a pigeon,” said the eagle, “why do you say I’m a funny pigeon?”

“Well, just look at your beak,” said the old woman, “it’s all bent. pigeons have nice straight beaks. And look at those claws of yours. pigeons don’t have long claws like that. And look at the feathers on the top of your head, they’re all messed up and they need to be brushed down. Pigeons, have nice, smooth feathers on their heads.”

And before the eagle could reply, she got hold of him and carried him into the house. She took her clippers and she trimmed his claws until they were quite short. She pulled on his beak until it was quite straight. And she brushed down the lovely tuft of feathers on top of his head until it was quite flat.

“Now you look more like a pigeon,” said the old woman. “That’s so much better.”

But the eagle didn’t feel any better. In fact, the eagle felt quite sad. As soon as the old woman let him go. He flew up to the top of the tree. As he was sitting there, wondering what to do, another eagle came along and alighted on the bow beside him.

“Well, well,” said the new bird. “Aren’t you a funny looking eagle?”

“Well, at least you know I’m an eagle!” said the first eagle. “Thank goodness for that!”

“What happened to you?” asked the new eagle.

“Well,” said the first eagle, “an old woman thought I was a pigeon, and since pigeons don’t have long claws, she trimmed my claws. And since pigeons don’t have hooked beaks, she straightened my beak. And since pigeons don’t have tufts, tufts of feathers on their heads, she brushed my tuft down.”

“She must be a very foolish old woman indeed,” said the new eagle. And with that, he took a brush from under his wing and he brushed the first eagle’s feathers back into a tuft. And with his claws, he bent the eagle’s beak back down until it was nicely rounded once again.

“There now,” he said. “You look like an eagle again. Don’t worry about your claws. They’ll soon grow back.”

“Thank you, my friend,” said the first Eagle.

“Think nothing of it.” said his new friend. “But remember this,” he continued, “there are a lot of silly people in the world who think that pigeons are eagles or that eagles are pigeons, or that all sorts of things are other things. And when they’re silly like that, they do very foolish things. We must be sure to keep away from that silly old woman and people like her. And with that, the eagles flew back to their own country and returned to their own nests. And they never went near that silly old woman again.”

I hope you liked the story today. That was “The old woman and the eagle” by Idris Shah. Not strictly related to movement, but an important story all the same because it’s, it describes some elements of the human condition, I suspect.

So it’s just about half past two, which is when I normally draw things to a close. I’ll just have one final check on the Facebook group.

And Oh, there’s one thing to tell you, which is. Excuse me, I’m multitasking here. It’s not one of my strongest skills. Okay. Can’t see any other comments there. I’ve got some icons from, from CG. I’ll share those with the group because they’re always very pretty. So we have the old woman, we have the Eagle, we have the house, we have the scissors, we have the eagle flying away, and we have some applause. Thank you very much. Thank you. And CG, I’m getting better at using those things, those tools, I’m still a novice though, really at heart. Yes.

The other news is that next Tuesday I’ll be talking more about movement, especially if I can integrate some comments made from people watching this video, We’ll be working through the movement worksheet. So as ever, we do a topic over two weeks. The first week, I invite you to watch the video and I talk about it in general terms. On the second week, next Tuesday, we’ll be working through the worksheet. So if you want to get hold of the movement worksheet, be sure to drop by the, “Finding the Balance with Anxiety Freedom Cards” Facebook group, sometime after Tuesday next week. And you’ll be able to download the worksheet. If you’re in the in8 membership, then you’ve got access to all the worksheets already. And I’m hoping that you know where to find them. If you don’t please drop me a comment and I’ll, I’ll let you know where to find them.

And then next Wednesday is, come around as a bit of a surprise, I’m sorry to say. I feel like I took my eye off the ball a little. Next Wednesday is the last Wednesday of the month. And the plan that we have this this month was for Bindi and I to have a sort of an open, to host an open discussion, with anyone who wants to join us on the, the, on the zoom call, which is at seven o’clock tomorrow night. So that’s Wednesday the 24th of February. And we’ll have an open discussion about “how do you get your needs met through your work”, whatever your work is. And we’re hoping it will just be a free format, loose, open discussion, where we can go off on tangents if we want to, or we can stick to the topic. And we can just share ideas about different ways of getting our needs met through our work. Which ones are relevant, which needs are relevant and which ones are maybe not so relevant. And I, I expect there’ll be different opinions and different ideas. And so I’m looking forward to that. And that’s at seven o’clock tomorrow night. If you’re in the in8 membership, be sure to join us. Wednesday night, question mark. Yes, Wednesday night. And because this is the first time I’ve done this live stream to the, this Facebook group. Cause I used to do it to the members group only. I have to think about, yeah, you are welcome to the, to the, to the call.

If you’re watching this live and you’re not in the in8 membership. So I need to post the link here as well as in the email that goes out to the members. And so that question has prompted me to think of that. And if that’s Caroline, you are welcome to join us. Okay. So that’s about it. Thank you very much for showing up. Thank you for watching. Thank you for commenting. Do, let me know if you have any thoughts about movement or any aspects, or any perspectives that I’ve missed out. And I’ve learned a lot from my clients. Sometimes I think I know this stuff, but actually I learn more by sharing ideas and getting feedback and bouncing back from other people. And if you’ve got a different way of looking at our need for movement, please share it. And there’ll be other people who would like to hear your views as well.

So thank you for joining me. I look forward to meeting you again, either tomorrow night at seven o’clock on the zoom call. I will drop a link below this video this afternoon. So you know how to find that. And if not, I’ll see you next Tuesday for another Tuesdays Two o’clock Topic, where we’ll be continuing the discussion on movement. Thanks so much.

Whatever else you’re doing, don’t forget to keep breathing.

Please let me know what you think by commenting below!
Thanks, Alec