From the monthly archives:
Can you walk very slowly forward and backward. So slowly that it takes 10 seconds to complete one step?
When you walk very slowly forward and backward your muscles are constantly changing as are the pressures through your joints.
This moving requires greater balancing skills than standing still on one leg.
Try it
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“Our brains are always ready to form new patterns and solutions, if only we approach life
with a willingness to welcome new variations” – Anat Baniel (Move into Life)
When is the last time you tried to do something in more than one way?
Think about your habitual daily activities.
Do you always take the same route to work or when you go to the shops?
When you take something down from a shelf is it always with the same hand?
Do you press down on the coffee grinder in the same way each time or use the same hand
to scoop a teaspoon of sugar or jam?
How often do you consciously try to find new ways of doing simple daily routines?
If you are like most people, the answer is not very often.
If everything we do and feel, looks and seems the same, our brains will have nothing to
work with, and we will have no choice but to repeat ourselves….
…..and repeat ourselves….. and repeat ourselves.
One of the first signs that our brains are rigidly using the same existing patterns over
and over again is boredom and the longer we live our lives automatically like this the
more resistant we become to any change.
The patterns that once organized our movements so well begin to degrade and
after a while “it’s like nobody is home”
Introducing variation into your life allows the brain to perceive differences,
giving it new information.
Our brains crave new information – a lot of it.
Personally I feel alive when I am experiencing something new and I am lucky in that
my teaching allows me to ‘play’ with variation which in turn gives me a real ‘buzz’.
You should also see some of the ‘mad’ variations I experiment with on the trapeze.
We can see all around us evidence of how life challenges can lead to shrinking,
becoming less flexible, losing strength, memory and creativity.
If we leave it unattended deterioration happens to we humans, just as it happens
with everything else around us. Weeds take over the garden,
cars cease to run as they used to, rust appears.
But this does not have to be.
Throughout our lives our brains constantly seek to evolve. And variation is an
essential part of that process.
It doesn’t mean learning everything from scratch, it just means introducing small
changes to what you are already doing in your daily activity.
It means playing and experimenting and then playing some more.
Have fun with your life.
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