What exactly is Meaningful Movement?
It's an invitation to approach exercise with your whole self
Officially I typically describe Meaningful Movement as; a trauma informed decolonization of the body designed to help you get free from toxic fitness culture so you can move your body from a place of deep, personal meaning and magic.
It’s much better summed up however by the following quote from Italian yoga teacher, Vanda Scarvelli;
“Movement is the song of the body”
Immersed in the orchestral music scene in Florence from birth, Vanda pivoted from a long career as a concert pianist to teach and eventually write about yoga and the body. While it may seem to some that the threads of these two careers are not intertwined, the above quote tells a different story.
Vanda clearly saw movement as an expression of something sacred within us just as music is. Not an activity to be checked off a list or a means to an end to move the scale, but the vital and necessary voice of our body. The moment I read those words, I knew they expressed perfectly the theme of Meaningful Movement.
Follow the song of your body and there is no need for cajoling or shame, no need for attendance challenges or measuring your every move. Follow the song of your body and you will discover your star-infused humanity and the very truest version of your personal well being.
So what if movement truly IS the song of your body? Let’s take it into the practical realm for a moment and see if you can envision how it would look and feel to express movement in this way. Would you still perform the type exercise you have been performing? Would you exercise more or less? Still attend that bootcamp 3 times a week? Shame yourself when you miss a workout or gain weight?
"What song is your body longing to sing and what is the purest and most authentic expression of that song?"
Meaningful Movement is an antidote to false fitness narratives. It invites you to reflect on the ways that harm has been inflicted upon you in the name of health, and bring into the light the decades of body shame that permeate the culture.
Meaningful Movement asks that you fully inhabit your body through movement instead of using it as a path to control or abandonment. It helps you unearth a power and a divinity in movement that transcends the mundane and frankly wildly incomplete, health and weight loss conversations. It helps you understand at the level of your DNA that there are more important objectives for movement than shrinking yourself. And that movement serves you best and motivates you more when it is approached as a sacred act as opposed to another check mark on the to-do list.
Most of the incredible movement rewards go far beyond the physical.
Meaningful Movement also pushes back on inequity, inviting us to remember that movement is free and accessible to all and that the commodification of movement has unnecessarily complicated our birthright. It is not a requirement that movement be overly structured, paid for or measurable-all of that is an illusion.
This work imagines what movement can be without capitalist constraint, asking the most ancient part of you what activates your animal soul.
Meaningful Movement rejects militant exercise structures, discipline and stifling fitness class attendance in favour of your body taking the lead. It wants you to hear and trust what your body is asking for, be it stillness or sweat, solitude or socializing, sound or silence. It wants you to know that an ancient desire to move continues to live within you.
And I just LOVE this: “It wants you to hear and trust what your body is asking for, be it stillness or sweat, solitude or socializing, sound or silence.”🩷
I read Vanda Scaravelli’s book “Awakening the spine” many times earlier in my life and then found the only school where I could train as a yoga teacher following Vanda Scaravelli’s teachings (at Esther Myers yoga studio in Toronto) 😊🙏🏻 and it was a revelation! Thank you for sharing this Lori!