Summer 2022 - Movement and Fire —Training for Life

With summer coming to an end, I’ve been reflecting on the season and how my husband and I took time to embrace our social health, spending mindful moments connecting with nature, relationships and absorbing the summer heat through outdoor activities. We spent lots of time in the warm sun with water, forests and friends. We grounded ourselves with the earth, flowed like ocean waves, rhythmically moved with change, like air, and nurtured our inner fires like the heat of the summer. Through all this connection to the natural elements, we also nurtured our Four Elements of health: physical, mental, emotional and social.

Summer represents the one-year anniversary of hiking the Lions to heal the passing of my mom and honour her life (noted in my Fall 2021 Journal). We also just returned from a purposeful trip to the Oregon Coast to honour my father-in-law, who passed away this spring. I’ve created space and time to heal, rest and embrace the opportunity to be still, to nurture a calm within myself and reflect on how grateful I am to have the life I have, where I choose to move through change and challenge, and commit daily to live by honouring those Four Elements of health.

Healing and growth come from meditative movement that is mindful, connective, and felt from the inside out. It also comes from fueling the body with healthy choices while giving ourselves permission to rest and recover. It’s a rhythm and flow with a beat—that’s what this summer was about.

All of which leads to the subjects of my Summer Journal: Heat (or Fire), Air, Water and Earth. I will discuss how these elements can help you move better, feel better, and as a result, improve your health and lives.

Training for Life

This approach is about training you for life, to help you keep doing the activities you love. It’s about movement, and how to prepare, connect and strengthen your mind and body, safely and effectively.

Whether you want to run, walk, work in your garden, climb mountains, play with your children or grandchildren—whatever is important for you— my intention is to motivate and inspire you to apply the elements of Earth, Water, Air and Fire to movement in a way that supports your life’s passions.

Keep Moving!

Movement is the key to living well. Those who remain active into their 80s, 90s and even 100s, tell us we must keep moving to remain vital.  We evolved as moving creatures, over millions of years, hunting and gathering for hours to simply stay alive. We must honour that natural legacy for good health.

So, how do we train our bodies to not only keep moving, but to move without pain and injury? We require more awareness, focus, rhythm, flow and ease.

Start with Fire

It begins by creating heat, or building a fire. Think about how you build a campfire. You don’t just throw down a big log, light a match and expect it to burn. You must start small, from the ground up. You kindle a spark and add the right mix of fuel and air, building the flame slowly.

Let’s apply this concept to your movement, training and life.

Add the Fuel and Air – A Meditative Process

You begin with the proper fuel, meaning healthy food in moderate, manageable portions and with appropriate hydration. When it’s time to move and exercise, start by practicing deep breathing to provide a controlled flow of air, to feel your breath, to ground yourself to the earth and connect to your mind. Your body knows this and takes it as a signal to ramp up as you become one with your mind and your body. This is a meditative process.

Now it’s time to stoke the fire, SLOWLY. Gradually, with some rhythm and beat.

It has taken me more than 20 years to learn this lesson. As a young athlete, I did not understand the difference between a healthy inner fire and a destructive, raging fire that burned me out physically, mentally and emotionally. This disconnect led to frustration, injuries and illness.

Vessels of Our Souls

It’s a practice of connection to self, honouring our minds and respecting our bodies, understanding that our bodies are not machines, but the vessels of our souls. This understanding has allowed me to nurture my inner athlete as opposed to abusing it. I create a regular, consistent fire, and through mindful movement, I can ensure that the inner fire never burns out of control.

It's important to remember that injuries and burnout impact not only your physical health. They can limit your social activities, which also impact your emotional and mental health.

Grounding to Earth

Begin your movement practice by increasing your awareness around your breath and how the air is moving through your lungs and body, focusing on balancing your mobility and stability, ideally specific to the exercise routine you have planned. Continue this deep, deliberate breathing. When you lie on the floor to breathe, move, connect, or mobilize, you reinforce grounding your mind and body with the earth and the connection to yourself and your spirit.

Then, begin your activity, slowly and deliberately. As you gain momentum, you stoke the fire. You establish a flow, a rhythm, and a beat from the inside out, from a visceral level through your blood vessels, brain and spine. Your breath acts like a bellows, helping you ramp up and burn the fuel efficiently.

Blood and the Water of Life

Your heart responds by pumping more blood through your muscles and lubricating your joints and spine. Your movement should begin to feel like flowing water—easy, smooth, fluid and consistent. This is, quite literally, the water of life. (Please refer to my Winter 2021 Journal)

The Orchestra of Movement

You continue to move, and the fire builds. You feel it. Your lungs, heart, diaphragm and brain are performing like an orchestra, now. If you’ve ever attended a symphony performance, you’ve heard the musicians warm up extensively before they perform. They begin, slowly, quietly, and they play in sync, with the conductor acting like the body’s brain.

Helping your Brain

The brain benefits from exercise as much as any other part of the body, making it a better conductor for the body. The increased blood flow, the fresh oxygen, the work of coordinating your limbs, exercising your tissues and fueling your organs as you negotiate the space around you; it all strengthens your mind and feeds the brain, keeping you sharp, helping stave off dementia, depression, anxiety, Alzheimer’s and other neurological disorders as you age.

The Gradual Cooldown

When it’s time to wind down and cool down (like putting water on a fire), you do so gradually. Walk and/or stretch, breathe or mobilize to finish your activity by unwinding. Ideally, cool down on the ground to bring you back to your earth connection. That could easily be removing your shoes to feel the ground with your bare feet.

This is to allow the rhythm of your breath to slow, the flow of your circulation to calm, and the heat of the fire that was built up within you to settle.

Unwinding and cooling down are just as important as proper warmup. Think about what happens when you add cold water to hot glass. The glass often breaks. Your body is the same. We’ve probably all experienced what happens when we stop exercising abruptly and sit or just carry on with our day. Our limbs become stiff and tight and sometimes inflamed. We move with difficulty. We store lactic acid, which creates soreness and delays recovery. A proper cool down is just as important to preparing and warming up for movement. Cold baths or showers after exercise are hugely beneficial. (Please refer to my Spring Journal 2022)

Movement for Life

As we age, it’s important to honour and nurture our mind and body to continue to move and be active. Through proper preparation, mind-body connections, breath regulation, movement and recovery, through your deliberate connection with Fire, Air, Water and Earth, you can expand what you do at any age, enriching your life, your relationships and most importantly, your relationship and connection with yourself: your mind, your body, your spirit and soul.