This blog is more of questions, but I feel extremely valid questions to begin to ask to take us to the next level. I was recently reading a blog on a person I enjoyed reading, American philosopher Ken Wilber, and the blog exposed some weaknesses in Ken's writings, as well as some contradictory information from his earlier books. A man so respected for his intellect, was being challenged for his consistency of opinion and views, as well as being challenged on his model of spiritual evolution as being unscientific, and potentially not worthy of academic consideration. As their is duality in all of existence, this led me to contemplate the potential existence of the duality of exercise.
Exercise is a big topic so I thought I would pose a few new questions. Yes, it appears that genetically we are similar to that of our ancestors. And yes, through this knowledge it appears logical that we require the same needs of movement as our ancestors. But, the but comes for me here, still no one lived in those times. Yes, there are still tribes currently in a premodern model of living, and observing them may give us insights into the past, but it still does not bring us IN the past. Unless we are living in that moment, we really do not know for 100% certainty that all of our ancestors did get as much movement and exercise as archeological research may show. It seems plausible that we were extremely fit, but what if only some were really fit. Some were moderately fit. Some were so-so fit. And some were not fit at all. What if 10% of the tribe did 90% of the work. What if there were the true hunter gatherers that moved an immense amount throughout the day, and there were others that sat around baking all day. What if there were those swinging from the tree, and others laying on a hammock or just cleaning up while waiting for the kill to be brought to them to clean and cook? What if, by evolutionary standards, you are bigger in stature because you moved the logs in your tribe, and others are thinner and leaner because you walked for miles. What if you are more muscular because you built homes in the tribe, while you are more insulated with body fat because you spent more time out in the snow while others would have frozen because of the lack of insulation? What if you knew what your true role in our society was, therefore explaining your body type, therefore allowing greater self acceptance of who you are? What if our knowledge of the true role you play in your community was the most important part and not trying to fit every woman and man into the same category needs of exercise? What if a mom raising kids, lugging them around, squatting, baking, cooking and cleaning, lifting them out of cars etc. is ENOUGH? And what if a mother can be happy and content with that? What if you had higher body fat % because you spend more time in the water swimming, fishing, and gathering seaweed or plants for food? Is it possible that we are not supposed to all look, move, lift, sit, and lunge the same way? And is it possible that we actually don't all need to do those things?? There are obviously different body types, that move differently, move energy differently, move breath differently, are more stable, are more unstable, have higher body fat %, have lower body fat %, and to place everyone with the same universal exercise needs seems a tad bit ignorant. Does everyone need stretching? Could you naturally be more rigid because you kept the tribe very organized or maybe you were the fighter of the tribe? What if stretching for someone gave them no advantage and actually made them more unstable for what their true role in society was? Does everyone need intense strengthening? What if attempting to get stronger than you need to be was stressful to the system? What if peace of mind of who you were kept bone density strong and it had little to do with the amount of resistance training you do? What if the worry and concern you place on yourself for not being fit and in shape is actually what causes stress hormones and an internal decay of the body. What if we lived in a world where you were so in tune with your body-mind, that exercise was only a concept and that we moved and breathed and danced and meditated and exercised and stretched as our bodies told us. What if a push up was absolutely useless to some. What if doing a correct squat really didn't matter? What if those that needed to do lots of squats did it well, but those that didn't need to do it, did a squat poorly? Who cares? Did all the people who lived to 100 years old with a high quality of life, have their squat evaluated regularly? Are we just becoming too damn rigid? Do you really have to stretch 3x/wk? Did our ancestors even know what a week was? What are YOUR needs? What is YOUR role? What is YOUR style? What are YOU all about? What will create YOUR well-being? What if we created a world where you know who YOU are and what YOU need? What a world.
