Have you ever had one of those moments when something your body used to do without a second thought suddenly feels much harder?
A good friend of mine had one of those moments at the Henley Regatta. She was sitting on the ground at a picnic and, when it was time to get up, she found herself unable to do it without help. She felt stuck, and embarrassed that she needed someone else to help her.
She was in her mid-50s and it came as a shock. She felt too young to be experiencing this and it made her worry.
Examples like hers are all too common, and having worked with a lot of people I like to help people think about what happens to movements before we decide we’ve lost them.
We often stop using a movement before we lose it
We don’t necessarily wake up one morning and discover that we can no longer get up from the floor. Often, the habit of using that movement has disappeared first.
Take getting up from the ground – we stop sitting on the ground because a chair is easier. We use our hands or find something to lean on to help us get up and we put things on shelves that are nearer our hands, which means we don’t need to get down to low shelves.
None of these choices are wrong, but when one option becomes our automatic choice, we can gradually stop using the others. And as we all know, time races past without us even noticing!
Then one day we find ourselves somewhere without a chair, or with a grandchild playing on the ground, and suddenly a movement that once felt completely ordinary feels like a problem.
And that’s when the mind can start filling in the gaps.
What if I can’t get back up? What if I always need something nearby? Perhaps I shouldn’t get down there anymore just in case.
Avoidance makes things harder
The less we use a movement, the less familiar it becomes. The less confident we feel about it, the more likely we are to find ways to avoid it.
So by the time a movement feels lost, the habit of using it may have actually been gone for quite a while.
You can try to just force yourself to start doing it again, but as it took a long time to adapt away from it, it also means it’s better to go through stages to get back there.
Sometimes we need to rebuild strength or mobility first and we may need to break down a movement to help build up to. And for many, support and being able to have reassurance is exactly what we need while we rebuild confidence.
The important thing is understanding what is actually limiting you, and having someone who can help you find a way forward.
The way back starts in your own daily life
That’s what happened with my friend.
As we worked together, we rebuilt her mobility, strength and confidence, while gradually bringing more low-level movement back into her everyday life.
She began choosing to get lower to reach things on the lower shelves, for example. Now this is never ‘another exercise’ to tick off a daily list, instead she understood that regularly using these movements gave her body more reason to keep them familiar.
She was surprised by how quickly she noticed things changing and then a friend remarked on how easily she went up the stairs in the London Underground and she felt great! That wasn’t what she’d been working towards, but it was a lovely reminder that when you give your body more possibilities to work with, the benefits don’t always show up where you expect them to.
There are opportunities everywhere
Once you start looking at everyday life this way, you begin to notice just how many opportunities there are to use your body differently.
Take something as ordinary as putting on your shoes. As I shared in yesterday’s Instagram post, I made a conscious choice after recovering from chronic pain to put on my lower-half clothing standing up more often.
Shoes are one moment, but let’s not forget the socks beforehand, and your underwear and trousers that all give us similar opportunities.
Our environment can make the easier option very tempting and of course, there’s nothing wrong with sitting down to put your shoes on, but if sitting is always the option we choose, we may gradually stop using the balance and movement involved in standing to do it. Each of those moments help us maintain or improve how capable we feel about our balance and give us a ‘practice moment’ daily, without ever having to add it into your already busy day.
The point isn’t that there is one right way to move. It’s that having more ways to move gives your body more to work with. And sometimes you don’t realise how many possibilities you’ve stopped using until someone helps you see them.
What you regain can be much bigger
For a previous Reclaim Everyday Ease participant, Kathy, one of the important shifts was becoming aware of how many movement choices she had stopped making without realising it:
“I was not aware of how many examples there were of my taking the lower level path -… always using the stair rail, not lifting above head very often, always using a knee and two hands to get up from (the) floor. Just paying attention changed everything!”
That awareness gave her something to work with. Through the course, she explored different ways of moving, built her strength and confidence, and started to make more use of movements that had become less familiar. The result wasn’t simply that she could get up and down from the floor more easily. She began to feel differently about what her body was capable of.
“I am proud (smug? lol) about my capacity to get up and down from the floor with no assist (mostly) and to be able to sit for good periods of time.”
And that shift in capability changed something much bigger than any one movement. At the end of the course, Kathy wrote:
“I may not have been the strongest athlete in my youth, but I am now, and can be, one of the most balanced, ready to move people I know. And one day soon, I may be one of the strongest!”
That’s the part I find so exciting. Getting back down to the floor is useful in itself, but when you look at all your everyday movements through a new lens, what you’re really building is a body with more options, more confidence and more possibility for the life you’re living now and want to keep living.
What have you stopped noticing?
This is why building capability isn’t simply about adding more exercise to your week.
It’s about learning to notice the movement already in your life, recognising where your options may have narrowed, and discovering what might become possible when you have the right guidance and support to explore them.
That’s what we’ll be exploring in my free workshop this Wednesday:
‘How to start building more capability through everyday movement’
Wednesday 16 September · 2:30pm BST/London Timezone (live and by replay)
It’s interactive and practical, with no workout involved.
If you’ve found yourself wondering whether your body is becoming less capable of something you used to take for granted, this is a great place to start exploring what might be possible.
