I teach movement six days a week.
I’ve spent years helping people get stronger, move better, regain balance, get back on the floor, and return to things they thought they’d lost.
I’ve watched people walk into RiversZen with canes and eventually leave without them.
I’ve watched shoulders move again.
I’ve watched people get back into their gardens, climb stairs, ride horses, travel, and simply feel comfortable inside their own bodies again.
So you don’t have to convince me that movement matters.
I believe movement can change your life.
I also know it isn’t enough.
That’s probably an odd thing for a movement teacher to say.
After all, this is what I do for a living.
But I learned that lesson the hard way.
At 53, I weighed nearly 270 pounds.
I had type 2 diabetes.
My body hurt.
I was facing surgeries on both feet, my knee, lower back, shoulder, and possibly my hip.
I was moving toward a future I didn’t want very quickly.
Movement became part of turning that around.
A huge part.
But so did something much less exciting.
I changed what I ate.
Not perfectly.
Not because I discovered some magical diet nobody else knew about.
I simply started paying attention to what I was putting into my body every day.
Eventually I lost 98 pounds.
My type 2 diabetes went into remission.
The surgeries I had been facing never happened.
And nineteen years later, I’m still here teaching movement six days a week.
For a long time, I wanted to turn that experience into a formula.
Maybe you’ve done this too.
We want to know which thing mattered most.
Was it the food?
The movement?
The weight loss?
The sleep?
The reduced stress?
Give me the percentages.
Tell me the secret.
Just tell me what to do.
I understand the appeal.
Life would be wonderfully convenient if health worked that way.
Do this one thing and everything else falls into place.
Unfortunately, bodies seem to have missed that memo.
The longer I’ve done this, the less interested I’ve become in finding the one thing.
Food matters enormously.
So does movement.
So does sleep.
So does stress.
So do the people you spend your life with.
So does getting outside.
So does having something that gets you out of bed in the morning.
And here’s the frustrating part.
They don’t live in separate little boxes.
Sleep poorly and you may not feel like moving.
Stop moving and your strength begins to disappear.
Eat in a way that leaves you feeling lousy and movement gets harder.
Live under constant stress and sleep can suffer.
Lose your sense of purpose and taking care of any of it can start feeling less important.
It’s a life.
That’s what I think we sometimes miss when we’re searching for the next health answer.
We turn health into a collection of individual problems to solve.
Need to lose weight?
Here’s a diet.
Back hurts?
Here’s an exercise.
Can’t sleep?
Here’s a supplement.
Low energy?
Here’s another supplement.
And before long you’ve got twelve different solutions sitting on the kitchen counter and you’re still wondering why you don’t feel very good.
Maybe you don’t need another solution.
Maybe it’s worth looking at the whole picture.
How are you eating?
How are you sleeping?
Are you moving your body?
Are you getting stronger or slowly becoming weaker?
Do you ever get outside?
Do you have people you enjoy being around?
Do you have something you’re looking forward to?
Not as a scorecard.
Good grief, we don’t need another way to fail at health. 😂
As a way to notice.
Where could your life use a little attention?
That’s a much different question than:
What’s the best diet?
Or:
What’s the best exercise?
Or:
What supplement should I take?
Sometimes one area really does need more attention than the others.
Nineteen years ago, food needed a lot more attention in my life.
At another point, learning how to move without hurting was enormous.
At 72, maintaining strength, mobility, balance, and the ability to keep doing the things Peggy and I love matters tremendously to me.
Next year?
We’ll see.
That’s the thing about taking care of a human being.
The assignment keeps changing.
I still teach movement six days a week.
I still believe 30 or 45 minutes of the right movement a few times a week can dramatically change what your later years look like.
But I’m never going to tell you movement is everything.
Neither is food.
Neither is sleep.
Neither is fasting, yoga, strength training, supplements, cold plunges, or whatever we’re all supposed to be doing before breakfast this week. 😂
You don’t need to find the one thing.
Start by noticing the life you’re already living.
Then ask yourself a simple question:
What part of it could use a little more care right now?
Start there.
You can worry about the percentages later.
Or better yet...
Don’t.