Are you outsourcing your movement?

Can I ask you a question?

When was the last time you ordered take-out? Opted for pre-cut veggies? Ordered online what you could have bought at the store?

I did all of these things yesterday, so I’m not judging.

But for all the benefits of these conveniences, we pay a price.

According to Katy Bowman, biomechanist and author of Movement Matters, humans have almost entirely “outsourced necessary movement” over the past 10,000 years.

She draws a stark distinction between our migratory, hunter-gathering predecessors and our current technology-based culture where “A moment on our phone can secure food, delivered right to the door…Heck, we can even find a mate online…”

Katy Bowman published Movement Matters in 2016, well before the pandemic had many of us relying on conveniences like InstaCart, Zoom, and Amazon for survival, and limited mobility populations necessarily rely on these services every day.

But for many of us, “outsourcing movement” is a matter of habit rather than necessity, and access to these tools of convenience means that we regularly use only a limited range of movement.

And we feel it!

So after outsourcing all of our movement, we start a workout routine, scheduling designated times to move (funny, right?). But we seldom exercise enough to truly balance the deficit.

So, maybe we don’t need more exercise. We just need more movement.

Take the stairs. Hang laundry on the line. Make our own coffee (and keep mugs on the highest shelf). Use a manual can opener (use a manual lawn mower!)

There are so many ways to reclaim our range of movement; we just need to shift our mindset. When we integrate whole-body movement into our lives, we feel our fullest range of vitality and aliveness, no longer a bird with clipped wings.