Nourishing our elasticity & sensing spring-loaded ease.

Welcome to Part 8 of our series on Cultivating Organic Fitness!

Hello, my friend! I’m so excited for this focus… This week, we’ll be nourishing our elasticity & sensing spring-loaded ease.

Ok, so that’s a mouthful. :) 

Basically, we’re gonna tap into our springy-ness.

Why? We’re incredibly fluid, spacious, dynamic, responsive, adaptable, mobile beings! Beneath our skin lives something so beautiful and intelligent: a vast, living web of interconnected muscles, bones, ligaments, tendons, and fascia. Not separate parts; an interwoven system—responsive, communicative, alive. Our tissues are somehow both fluid and yet have a spring-like integrity. When we move, our muscles, fascia, and tendons work together like an interconnected spring network, storing elastic energy under load, and then releasing that energy on the rebound.

Our bodies are not rigid, mechanical, or robotic. They are animalistic, lively, and responsive. Similar to a cat as it stretches, crouches, leaps, or pounces, or a monkey that spryly swings from branch, our bodies are actually astonishingly springy. Just as a springy trampoline absorbs force and gently gives energy back, healthy joints, hydrated tissues, and a resilient fascial system do the same. Their elasticity provides us a spring-loaded ease. 

Buuuuuut… sometimes our body feels a little more Tin Man than Tigger.

If that’s where you are lately, friend—I’ve got you.

Unfortunately,  our springs can become inhibited for all sorts of reasons. We can experience pain, injury, grief, or trauma that leaves us locked up. We can stiffen. We can tense and brace with stress or fear. We can “grow up.” We can “settle down” and “be good.” We can experience ridicule that leaves us feeling scared to allow our body to move. Overtime we can find ourselves more and more inhibited, stiff, bound, and… sedentary.

The great news? Aya is about unlearning those inhibitions and freeing our body back up to move organically and intuitively again.

And our tissues are always listening. It’s never too late to reconnect with our elastic nature and wake our springs back up. That, my friend, is what we’re going to play with this week.

So how do we nourish & maintain this lively responsiveness?

Movement, baby. Also: focus and intention.

Just as every class, we’ll step, flow, shake, bounce, reach, dip, kick, spin, sway, stretch... This week, we’ll move with the added intention to tap into our elasticity and feel more responsive… resilient… and spring-y.

There are 3 main ways we’ll play with this:

1) We’ll invite our body to relax & flow.

Rather than bracing, holding, stiffening, and tensing as we step, squat, leap, or land… we’ll practice softening and relaxing, trusting our body will catch us. We’ll start very small… Kinesiology tells us that every step we take is really a falling forward. We’ll practice noticing and sensing how our fluid body also gently catches and rebounds us with every step.

2) We’ll activate our “full-suspension” mode.

Our son is verrrrry into riding over big jumps with his mountain bike — he lovvvvves to fly. Over the past few years, he’s taught me about some different styles of bikes. There are “rigid” bikes, which have no shocks at all —they are very stiff. There are “hard tail” bikes. It has shocks on the front, but none on the back. Then, there’s Rowan’s favorite kind of bike: “full-suspension.” This style has shocks on both the front and back, making it very springy and impact-absorbing, which allows the ride to be much smoother for the rider. This week, we’ll explore what it’s like to imagine and activate our own “full-suspension” mode as we dance. Picture shocks at the arches of your feet…. at your ankle joints… at your knees… at your hips…. Does that change how you experience your body? How smooth your ride is?

3) We’ll awaken our lively joints.

Sometime it can help to simply wake sleepy body parts back up. As we step, we’ll tune into our feet and sense the liveliness of our wiggly toes, our many tendons and ligaments, the springy nature of our arches. We’ll activate our lively ankle joints, and sense how much movement is available. Then we’ll invite that same kind of aliveness as we continue into our knees, hips, etc. Oh man, isn’t your body amazing? Doesn’t thinking about it make you want to get up and wiggle?

We’ll explore questions like:

• Do I ever inhibit my springy, vibrant nature? Do I give myself permission to bounce? To have a pep in my step?

• What happens if I invite more spring-loaded ease into my body? 

• What do I notice if I picture my joints as springy coils? Or stretchy and elastic like a rubber band? By imagining my body differently, do I sense anything change? 

• What happens when I allow myself to be more supple and animal-like? Does anything change?

• What happens when I allow myself to be more playful and childlike? Does anything change?

As always, I can’t wait to dive in and see what we discover together. See you soon!

With love,

💛 Dani