Your Relationship with Gravity Is Always Changing
Why learning to work with gravity can help you move with greater ease
Gravity has never taken a day off.
It has been quietly accompanying you since the day you were born.
Every time you roll over in bed, stand up from a chair, climb the stairs, carry groceries, hug a grandchild, or bend down to tie your shoes, gravity is part of the conversation.
It never gets stronger.
It never gets weaker.
It never changes.
We do.
Our bodies change throughout life.
We get older. We recover from injuries and surgeries. We spend years sitting at desks. We become less active. We gain or lose weight. We move through pregnancy, menopause, illness, and all the wonderful and sometimes challenging seasons of life.
As our bodies change, so does our relationship with gravity.
And that relationship has a surprising influence on how easy movement feels.
Gravity is one of our greatest teachers
Imagine waking up tomorrow and discovering gravity had changed overnight.
Walking would feel different.
Standing would feel different.
Picking up your coffee mug would feel different.
Even breathing would feel different.
It would be a disaster!!!
Thankfully, gravity is wonderfully predictable.
Because it never changes, our brains have something reliable to organize around.
Every movement we make is a conversation between our nervous system and gravity.
The question isn't whether gravity is there.
The question is how efficiently we're organizing ourselves within it.
Your skeleton was designed to support you
One of my favourite ways to think about the human body is to imagine a beautifully engineered building.
Hidden inside the walls is a strong framework that quietly supports everything around it.
Our skeleton works much the same way.
It provides the invisible supportive framework that allows us to stand, sit, walk, reach, and move through life.
Our muscles have a different job.
They create movement.
They help us adapt.
They allow us to explore the world.
They help us respond when life surprises us.
One of my favourite sayings is:
Your skeleton holds you up. Your muscles move you around.
When those jobs become confused, movement often starts to feel much harder than it needs to.
When muscles start doing the skeleton's job
Many of us begin asking our muscles to hold us up all day.
Perhaps you've noticed yourself:
holding your breath
lifting your shoulders
gripping with your toes
tightening your stomach
locking your knees
bracing your back
These are not signs that your body is failing.
They're signs that your nervous system is trying to help.
Often this happens after pain, injury, surgery, or simply because we've become less confident in our balance.
The nervous system begins to think,
"I'd better hold on just a little tighter."
The problem is that muscles become tired when they're constantly doing a job they weren't designed to do.
Instead of feeling supported, we begin to feel heavy.
Stiff.
Tense.
And moving through the day requires more effort than it should.
Why many people feel "lighter"
One of the comments I hear most often after a NeuroMovement® lesson is:
"I feel lighter."
That always makes me smile.
Their body hasn't suddenly become lighter.
Gravity certainly hasn't changed.
What has changed is the amount of unnecessary effort their nervous system is using.
When your brain discovers a more efficient way to organize yourself with gravity, many muscles are finally able to let go of jobs they never needed to be doing in the first place.
Less effort often feels surprisingly light.
What astronauts can teach us about gravity
One of the most fascinating things we've learned from astronauts is just how important gravity is to our bodies.
Without Earth's constant pull, astronauts lose bone density and muscle strength surprisingly quickly. That's why they spend hours exercising every day while they're in space. Their bodies need mechanical loading to help keep bones and muscles healthy.
Here on Earth, gravity is giving us that opportunity every single day.
It's not something to fight.
It's something to learn from.
Your brain is always learning
The beautiful thing about movement is that it isn't simply a matter of stronger muscles or better posture.
Every movement is organized by your brain.
Your brain is constantly receiving information from your feet, your eyes, your inner ear, your joints, and every part of your body that's in contact with the world around you.
With gentle, varied movement experiences, your nervous system can discover new possibilities.
It can learn to use your skeleton for support - to actually hold you up!
It can learn to reduce unnecessary holding.
It can expand your movement vocabulary.
And little by little, moving through the world can begin to feel easier again.
The goal
The goal isn't to become stronger than gravity.
The goal is to become better organized within it.
Gravity isn't your enemy.
In many ways, it's one of your greatest teachers.
It quietly offers the same reliable information every single day.
And with the remarkable ability of your brain to keep learning throughout life, you can continue discovering new ways to move with greater ease, confidence, and enjoyment.
Because living well in a changing body isn't about fighting change.
It's about learning to move gracefully with it.
An Invitation
Today, as you stand in line at the grocery store, brush your teeth, or wait for the kettle to boil, simply notice how you're standing.
Could your skeleton support you just a little more?
Could your muscles do just a little less?
Shift your weight around on your feet.
No forcing.
Just noticing what you’re doing so you can do what you want.
Sometimes the smallest observations open the door to the biggest changes.
If you’d like personalized help managing gravity and upgrading your brain-body system to move with more ease, please book a discovery call so I can answer your connections and together we can decide if working together is the next best step!