This month on the blog, personal trainer and Om Train Instructor, Sean O’Hara explores movement and how he draws inspiration from human evolution to inform his teaching at the Center.
The primary focus of my classes at Om Namo Center is to respect our bodies. In order to respect the body, it is important understand how the human body evolved and what it is designed to do – to stand upright and walk.
We evolved to stand upright and walk to efficiently maximize locomotion while minimizing energy expenditure. During our evolutionary history, this was a major adaptive advantage. Bipedalism freed our hands and allowed us the manual freedom to begin manipulating the world with tools. With several other adaptations, this allowed our species, Homo Sapiens, to come to preeminence as biological organisms.
Due to modern cultural evolution, we no longer employ our bodies as they were designed. Our means of survival no longer include hunting and foraging for food. We use mental processes to participate and contribute. This has left our physical selves without the movement nutrition it was evolved to have. Our bodies are mismatched for our environment. They are dis-integrated.
It is through a movement practice that we can thoughtfully, with guidance, re-integrate. We evolved to overcome gravity in a specific way and through a specific process. This process can be observed in infant and child movement development.
Initially, the infant is stuck to the ground, with little capacity to manipulate its body in space. Through continuous efforts, the infant becomes capable of flexing, extending, rolling, rotating, side-lying, pressing, kneeling, sitting, pulling, crawling, half kneeling, standing, and finally walking and running. These are foundational positions and patterns – the first principles of human movement. Developing capacity in these positions is how we spend our time in my classes.
I have come to care about these things because of my own experience with physicality. I was an athlete, an individual who derived esteem and prestige from expressing my physicality. Two and half years ago, I injured my shoulder. This led to a cascade of musculoskeletal pain throughout my body. It persists today.
The physical pain, the limitations, stirred up my emotions and psyche. I questioned who I was, and I still question who I am. I am learning about identity, its strength and its weakness.
I have come to understand that you cannot separate the mind, body, and spirit. They are intimately entangled with one another. You cannot tell where one starts and the other begins. I believe that they are differentiated to allow for us to attempt to understand, but in doing so, we make them impossible to grasp – the sand slips between our hands.
This does not mean that we should stop trying to understand, nor does it mean should we stop trying to experience. It is important to honor the thinking mind and the feeling body. This is the essence of a movement practice.
Learn more about personal training with Sean O’Hara.
