Foraging for nutrition = Nutritious movement
I’ve been listening to Katy Bowmans incredible book ‘Move Your DNA’. Its all brilliant but I especially loved the part where she says (I’m paraphrasing) that in the past we would move our bodies to acquire food which was healthy and we’d be naturally fit for our environment. Now we often get food with ease, that’s often not so healthy, and have to exercise to work it off – usually in a way that is not in harmony with the needs of our body and disconnected from our ecosystem! Yes, humans and our systems are that crazy!
So it was with extra pleasure that I took myself and kiddos on a walk to forage the plums I spoke of in my last mandala post. Foraging involves a diverse range of natural movement that actually has purpose. It felt so good to be stretching up to reach tantalizing fruits rather than being on a yoga mat stretching into thin air just for the sake of stretching (and I’m not dissing yoga – it has it’s place but it has to come off the mat too). Another move was trying to reach one branch and sequentially pull down other branches to get to the fruits. Once this technique was exhausted we found a stick and while I jumped up and batted at the branches, the kids ‘fielded’ an caught the fruits or ran after them to ensure that we picked up the fresh fruits from the ground and not those that had already fallen and could possibly be wormy.
I also climbed through bushes, crouched down, increased my eye movement and observational skills in my eyes to search out potential fruit and probably many other movements that were purposeful and necessary. As well as foraging for nutritious food, foraging is also a great way to add #nutritiousmovement to our lives.