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Health

How’s your mobility?

Even Plato said, “Life should be lived as play.” Play movements are healthy and easy, but not as easy as not doing anything. It’s a choice to keep moving, in simple and varied ways to stay younger longer.

inverted archerMost people don’t have the mobility they had as children.

Our movement patterns become less varied as we get older. Think about how much time we sit. All that sitting displaces the time we might be jumping or rolling around.

Who knows what’s the optimal way to age well? I think getting old has a lot to do with our decreasing level of mobility, along with an inevitable slowing down in our cellular activities.

We’re designed to be mobile. We should be able to walk, run fast, crawl around, throw stuff, jump and land easily, and even fight if needed.

Today, you’re the youngest you’ll ever be, and you just might be letting yourself go, piece by piece creating a bottleneck in your performance of  normal movement patterns.

Our bodies are efficient, they quickly adapt to frequently encountered positions or movement patterns. You can measure the impact of your body’s efficiency by seeing what you can’t do anymore. Fully squatting down and rising back up with your feet flat on the floor, or feeling comfortable sprinting down the block to return a friend’s cellphone who’s driving off without it are things a kid wouldn’t think twice about being able to do.

Even Plato said, “Life should be lived as play.” Play movements are healthy and easy, but not as easy as not doing anything. It’s a choice to keep moving, in simple and varied ways to stay younger longer.