The Body Remembers How to Move

Somewhere along the way, movement became a chore with a number attached. Steps to hit, calories to burn, a workout to get through. We turned one of the body's deepest pleasures into an item on a list, and then wondered why we kept avoiding the list.

But underneath the word 'exercise' — beneath the apps and the targets and the faint moral weight of it all — is a body that has wanted to move since long before you could name the wanting. A child does not exercise. A child runs because running is joy made visible, stops when it is done, and never once checks a screen to see if it counted.

The work of a movement practice, oddly, is often subtraction. Less effort, not more. Less ambition about the shape you are making, more attention to the sensation of making it. You are not trying to achieve a posture; you are trying to feel your way back into a relationship with your own body that the years of striving quietly severed.

Underneath the word 'exercise' is a body that has wanted to move since before you could name it.