Can Ancient Humans help you Exercise More?

Integrating the movement motivations of our ancestors in order to transform fitness culture for the better

Months ago a friend reached out and sent me a link to The Nap Ministry. She was wondering if I had heard of Tricia Hersey’s work and mentioned that she felt some of the Nap Ministry threads aligned well with Meaningful Movement.

At the time I was about half way through reading Hersey’s book “Rest is Resistance: A Manifesto” and was very familiar with The Nap Ministry. To say this felt like a HUGE compliment is an understatement. Plainly put, Tricia’s work on using rest to disrupt the systemic abuses of capitalism, is a masterpiece. It helped me to deepen my own understanding of all of the ways that capitalist consciousness drives society and by default so much of my own behaviour- how it strips all of us of our humanness, our creativity and our sacred and holy nature.

Just like my friend, I was struck by the similar ways in which both Tricia and I speak about the gate keeping and distortion of modern day rest and movement by the oppressive structures of our time. Tricia’s enslaved ancestors underpin a culture of abuse in the name of productivity; slavery and capitalism being two threads that come together to form the same ugly knot. And while my own skin colour affords me a privilege I have not earned, I also see and understand how these racist underpinnings continue to inform the politics of our bodies and this nebulous feeling we all have that we should always and forever be doing more.

Fitness culture is an expression of all of this.

And while exercise might seem to be a fairly inconsequential piece of the bigger picture, I believe that by leaving our exercise motivations mostly unexamined, we continue to tow the line of systems that do not truly care about our health and wellbeing. When we find right intention for movement, informed by the deep desires of our body, we also find freedom.

The following quote, in particular, solidified a sense of kinship and solidarity in Tricia and I’s respective missions.

Meaningful Movement draws heavily on the power of it’s ancient origins and the healing properties of body-led movement as a spiritual practice. This is in direct and purposeful opposition to performative “health” and/or weight loss based motivations.

Movement , just like rest, is ancient and I stand in solidarity with Tricia in believing that what is ancient can also heal.

What was the movement of our early ancestors like?

Back before fitness was co-opted by fascist regimes (and subsequently by their enemies) as a symbol of military might and power, movement put meals of tubers, berries and fresh protein on the metaphorical tables of early human beings.

Before bulging biceps and washboard stomachs were touted by the Christian Muscularity movement of the 1800s as a path to spiritual ascension, movement based games and ceremonies were common forms of worship for many Indigenous communities.

Before movement was gendered and sold to the masses as a way for men to become “more manly” and attract romantic attention from women, who were told they needed to “keep their waistlines trim” in order to hang on to those men, movement was simply an integrated part of daily life for all.

Before health and fitness was a multi-billion dollar business requiring a set amount of time in your day, special equipment, quantifying tech gadgets, the correct shoes and a gym membership, most early physicians recommended moderate intensity walking as the best way to improve health. At least one major Spanish physician, Cristobal Mendez, also explicitly suggested that exercise feel joyful in order to be most beneficial.

Given that my work here at The Meaningful Movement Project is, at it’s heart, the work of exercise motivation, I believe the instinctual draw toward movement expressed by our ancestors is an overlooked key to wellbeing in modern times.

If we set aside for a moment the survival based activities of early humans, much of their other movement experiences were infused with meaning. Movement has sacred origins and is deeply celebratory in nature. Dancing and physical competition, in particular, offered community building and connection. It was part of expressing spiritual beliefs and offered a form of collective somatic healing (although they certainly would not have called it that at the time, I believe they understood this better than we do today).

Our ancestors danced in the name of joy and grief, ran in reverence to entities and energies bigger than themselves and moved to mark the changing of the season.

The motivation of meaning is a true one. Meaning is what saved me. The soft embrace I fell into after breaking away from exercise as a form of punishment and an expression of the hatred I had for my body. Meaning and being in tune with the needs of my body are what have enabled to me to create a decade long movement practice that has felt effortless and sustainable.

21st century survival doesn’t depend on movement and we now depend on health and weight loss as main sources of exercise motivation. The problem with this, besides the fact that “health” has proven to be unsuccessful as a long term exercise motivator, is that it is confusingly and often diabolically intertwined with capitalism and the thin ideal (a concept that is also based in white supremacy).

Movement has become laughably more complex than it needs to be mainly because it has been taken from us as a birthright in order to be sold back for profit.

“The way to heal ourselves is ancient.”

Whiteness and thinness as ideals

Not everything modern is bad but what if some of these early motivations simply feel more true to our souls?

I will tell you with almost 100% certainty that more tech is not going to get you to move more. Neither is more body shame nor more conversations based in the false metrics of modern health.

While some of these state-of-the-art fitness interventions can be helpful when mindfully employed, moving your body simply to be a cog in the wheel of grind culture, constantly striving to be smaller, leaner and a more “acceptable” version of yourself is to be stuck on a hamster wheel of discontent. This does not lend itself to health.

Long term sustainable exercise motivation comes from joy. It comes from a deeper connection to your body, from an ancient understanding of the benefits of movement that go far beyond the physical form. It comes from a connection to movement that originates in personal and ancestral meaning.

Movement as resistance. What might this look like in real life?

Movement minus the noise of capitalism and the thin ideal might look and feel like the following:

• Moving your body without motivation to be smaller.

• Choosing activities that bring you joy or pleasure or that connect you to something greater than yourself, invoking feelings of awe and wonder.

• Integrating movement into daily life as a part of socialising with friends (eg. regular hockey game, dance class), as yard or house work, as a mode of transportation or even as an act of worship.

• Knowing you can move your body in a multitude of different ways without special equipment, spaces or instruction. Knowing its not the type of program or equipment that creates health, but your ancient and instinctual desire to move.

• Taking a moment to feel into your movement needs as opposed to following a preset schedule and being ok about doing what your body is asking for.

• Removing some of the heavy structure and rules around exercise scheduling, attendance and duration in favour of listening to your body.

• Allowing the wise and ancient parts of you to lead as opposed to a mind that’s been inundated with socialised narratives that serve collective oppression.

• Understanding that our ancestors chose movement long before human bodies held any form of social status or were a target of weight stigma.

• Knowing that the body is a container for trauma and that movement has the ability to transform that trauma an also be an expression of it.

Movement is something I believe we can reclaim from the ashes of what we thought was healthy. It can be an act of reverence as opposed to a performance and an experience that sets the stage for more inclusion, less ableism and a truer understanding of the diverse nature of what it means to be a healthy human being.

When we see our bodies as ancient vessels of truth, as the part of us with the most knowledge and the most experience to lead, when we can connect and fully inhabit those bodies, that my friends, is a revolution in the making.

*note: please go read Rest is Resistance. I felt like this book literally reached inside me and rearranged my DNA and I cannot recommend it highly enough.