Can Pleasure Be Your Guide to Healthy Exercise? - Musings on Joyful Movement
I, like many, have spent years looking to prescriptive exercise to fix my body. Going from one exercise practitioner to the next, looking for the one thing that would give me a body that was both “healthier” and fit the thin ideal.
I would try the latest and greatest exercise plan. The plan was usually rigid and unrealistic with no care for joy, excitement, and pleasure. I dove in feet first and usually stopped haltingly. This type of militant regimen, with the only goal being to change your body, is unsustainable for nearly all of us. I felt deflated, drained, and weak.
After a time of trying so hard to exercise to “fix” my body, I gave up! Not on movement completely, but on prescriptive exercise. I stopped looking outside myself (be it an internet search or another practitioner or class or gym) to tell me exactly how I should move. I instead began trusting that wise part within me about how to proceed. I began moving my body for joy.
Asking myself, “If this exercise wouldn’t change my body one bit, how would I CHOOSE to move?”
I have a wonderful friend who came over to my house once a week or so and we did chair aerobics to 80’s dance music. My movements were very limited, but we didn’t focus on that. We focused on moving however I was able, just to move. Sometimes it was air boxing while on my chair to music with a strong beat, sometimes it was slow helicopter arms to flowy music. We did it regularly and it always involved smiling and laughter. It also led to those feelings I was longing for in my body: joy, excitement, and pleasure. I felt expanded and relaxed, yet powerful and energized.
Now which type of exercise do you think was more “healthy?”
Our diet culture society would tell us rigid, structured, overly challenging exercise plans are the only way to really improve our health. The new craze for Pilates that’s not really about Pilates, but is actually a weight loss trend. High intensity Interval training (boot camp) to get ripped. How about Peloton to become a “new you”? Ugh! It’s not about the exercise, it’s about the rigid “plan” and the motivation behind it (to change your body.) For most folks, diet culture sets the exercise bar too high!
Instead, Intuitive Eating (look here to learn more about the 10 principles which guide you back to your body and away from the scam of diet culture) recommends moving your body for the joy and the feel good effects of moving, not exercising to change our bodies in anyway.
Principle 9 of Intuitive Eating, Joyful Movement, states:
Forget militant exercise. Just get active and feel the difference. Shift your focus to how it feels to move your body, rather than the calorie-burning effect of exercise.
An article from the University of Colorado says, “Joyful movement is a way of approaching physical activity that emphasizes pleasure, choice, flexibility, celebration, and intuition.” Simple activities such as moving about the house, doing some light stretches or going for a walk with a neighbor improve your joint and muscle mobility and strength, improve circulation, and help prevent major diseases.
Your body wants to move a bit. Bodies do. I read a study about hospice patients, terminal within days to weeks. When provided with exercise equipment, they found their way down to the gym, almost every one of them, and moved as they were able. Not exercising for health or fitness, but exercising for the pure joy and pleasure of moving.
You can trust your body. Your body says “Yes!” with a message of joy.
So, ask your body: How would you like to move? What was your favorite way to play as a kid? Can you let go of what “counts” as exercise and DO WHAT’S JOYFUL? It may actually be the “healthiest” thing you can do for and with your body.