In her late 40s, Juliette noticed something changing.
She was peri-menopausal and, almost out of nowhere, she started waking up with stiffness and aches in her legs, feet, ankles and hips.
“I never used to feel like that,” she said in an email. “It suddenly appeared – I felt like the tin man!”
Her days, like so many, involved a lot of sitting. She drove to work, sat a lot during the day and then, by the time she got home, felt too tired to do much.
She knew she needed to change something, but she didn’t have much time, and wasn’t sure where to start. So, like so many of us do, she put it to one side. But the next morning, there it was again. And the morning after that.
“Like groundhog day, the aches and stiffness was there to remind me the next morning.”
And a question began to form.
“Is this really what getting older was like?”
She knew she wanted something different
Juliette already understood that looking after her body mattered. She wanted to maintain her joint mobility and strength as she got older, and maintaining her independence in the future was important to her.
But she didn’t want to become a gym-goer.
What she was looking for was something that could fit into the life she already had, so she searched for what that could look like.
She came across something that gave her a different picture of what ageing could look like – one that gave her hope. She saw how people in the Blue Zones move, where movement is a natural part of everyday life, with regular physical activity woven throughout the day.
“I wanted that for me.”
She realised she wanted a different relationship with movement so that she’d be able to keep moving through life.
Then came the light-bulb moment
By chance, Juliette found my account on Instagram.
“And bingo – a light bulb moment – I’d found my way in.” She followed me for a while and did a mini course, then decided this was the approach she needed, and joined my signature programme, Reclaim Everyday Ease.
The course wasn’t about following a suggested list of exercises, it was more about starting to notice what was already there.
One of the things that surprised her was how much she favoured her left side, and how that affected her right. She became more aware of load, alignment and position, and of how small changes could alter what was being asked of her body.
But perhaps the biggest shift was the way she began to see movement itself.
“Variety, variety and variety!”
She started noticing the habitual, linear movement patterns that she and the people around her repeated.
And then something rather lovely happened, which as she shared it over the weeks, made me smile from ear to ear. She started to truly see the world around her differently.
“I’m definitely looking at the world around me differently and looking at ways in which I can move differently to practice what I’ve learned.”
The same life, but experienced differently
The reason I share Juliette’s story is because she didn’t feel she needed to redesign her life. She still did the tasks she was going to do, but she had simply discovered more ways of doing them, and in turn that made her want to move more.
As she put it:
“I really like your approach because it focuses on everyday activities and environments, so we can do what we were going to do, just in a different way. Same, but different.”
And over time, she felt that her movement repertoire had expanded.
She described feeling “more awake and alive”, as though her body had remembered that it could “move and stretch and twist in ways that I just haven’t been doing in my adult 9-5 life”.
And, most importantly, she said: “It’s fun!”
Perhaps the biggest change was what she thought was possible
When I asked Juliette how she now saw her body’s capabilities, her answer was simple:
“My body is so much more capable than I think.”
That’s a very different place to be, from wondering whether stiffness, aches and reduced movement are simply an inevitable part of getting older.
“I now know how my body needs and likes to move… Now that I’ve extended my movement repertoire, I don’t want it to stop fitting in. I want to consciously lead a movement based life.”
And in fact when I sent Juliette this blog to ask for her permission to publish it, this is what she said, “I really like the blog – it made me smile to read my story, and to see how far I’ve actually come in such a relatively short time. Thankfully, the ‘groundhog tin man’ morning experience is long gone!” which as I replied to her, made me smile even more. Juliette was in the January cohort this year.
This is why I created Reclaim Everyday Ease
Juliette’s story is one of the reasons I believe so strongly that movement doesn’t have to become another thing on your list of things to do.
Sometimes the opportunity is already there – we just need to see it differently.
That’s what Reclaim Everyday Ease is designed to help you do: build a broader movement repertoire by bringing more variety into the life you’re already living.
The September cohort is now open for enrolment, starting Monday 28th September. Join now – the early bird price of £397 finishes 18th September.
And if you’d like to experience the approach before deciding whether REE is for you, I’ll also be running a free, interactive movement workshop on Wednesday 16 September at 2:30pm (London timezone/BST), ‘How to start building more capability through everyday movement’
Register here for the FREE Workshop
