The Joy of Movement Read online

  It turns out people like overcoming challenges together, and teamwork obstacles bring out a different side of participants. “When you see a person you don’t know who needs your hand, it’s pretty serious—‘I got you. I want to help you.’ On the receiving end, people are grateful. It’s meaningful,” Kombol told me. “I’ve spent hours watching people on these obstacles, watching how serious people get in that moment. It’s not panic, but it’s ‘I need to focus,’ a human focus. The more I’ve observed it, the more I watch it, the interaction between strangers—people crave it.”

  Kombol’s description made me think of the stories that get widely shared after a natural disaster—tales of ordinary citizens revealing themselves to be heroes by helping strangers, carrying people to safety, and returning to rescue those left behind. We are inspired by these examples, but many of us also wonder: Would that be me? In that situation, would I turn out to be an unexpected hero? When I mentioned to Kombol how significant it might be to witness your own willingness to grab a stranger’s hand and carry them over a wall, he agreed, but then pointed out that it’s equally important to the person being helped. We don’t just want to know we can be that person. We also want to believe that those people exist.

  Once a year in the small village of San Pedro Manrique, Spain, thousands gather at midnight to watch local villagers walk barefoot over coals burning at 1250 degrees Fahrenheit. People thrill to the display of courage. The fire-walkers are celebrated not only for their ability to withstand pain but also for the fact that they carry a loved one on their backs. Once the crossing is complete, the crowd cheers, and family and friends rush to embrace them both. Researchers who studied the San Pedro Manrique ritual have analyzed the emotions expressed by both the fire-walkers and those they carry. As the fire-walkers cross the coals, their faces show determination, even anguish. But the expressions of their loved ones are pure happiness. Part of what draws us to physical challenges like Tough Mudder is the opportunity to see ourselves as the valiant hero. But perhaps, less obvious, is the chance to be rescued. To let ourselves be lifted up and carried by others.

  Humans are not the only species to help one another. Bottlenose dolphins will swim underneath a sick dolphin and push its head above water to help it breathe. When a Seychelles warbler becomes entangled in a seed cluster, fellow birds pick the sticky seeds out of its wings until it is able to fly free. An ant attacked by termite soldiers, limbs torn off in the struggle, will be carried back to its nest by other ants in its colony. In the wild, such aid is always preceded by a call for help. Sick dolphins emit two short whistles. Stuck warblers trill an alarm call. Injured ants release distress pheromones. We humans—so used to hiding our weaknesses or minding our own business—sometimes need to practice this call and response: “I’m here, and I need help.” “I’m here, let me help you.” When such heroic helping occurs in nature, the individual being rescued tends to be one of high value to the group or to the one doing the helping. Whether you are an ant, a bird, or a dolphin, you get saved because you matter. Perhaps this, too, is one of the joys of events like Tough Mudder: the feeling of I matter. There’s the story we tell on social media, exuberant and boastful—“I ran through electrified wires!” And there’s the story we remember later, with gratitude. When I reached out a hand for help, someone grabbed it.

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  In the early 1800s, philosopher Thomas Brown argued that our muscles constitute an “organ of sense” through which we come to understand ourselves as individuals. Through movement and muscular contraction, we literally sense our “self” as someone who exists in and interacts with the world. Brown was anticipating the scientific discovery, nearly a century later, that every time you move your body, sensory receptors in your muscles, tendons, and joints send information to your brain about what is happening. This is why if you close your eyes and raise one arm, you can feel the shift in position and know where your arm is in space. You don’t have to watch what’s happening; you can sense yourself.

  The ability to perceive your body’s movements is called proprioception, from the Latin roots for “one’s own self” and “to grasp.” Proprioception, sometimes referred to as the “sixth sense,” helps us move through space with ease and skill. But it also plays a surprisingly important role in self-concept—how you think about who you are and how you imagine others see you. The regions of your brain that produce your sense of self-awareness (this is “me”) receive signals from your muscles and joints, as well as your heart, lungs, gut, and even the jiggling of crystals in your inner ear that track your relationship to gravity. All of these internal sensations contribute to your broader sense of “me-ness.” At some very basic level, you know who you are because your body tells you, This is your arm reaching, this is your leg kicking, this is your spine rotating, this is your heart beating. In neurological disorders where proprioceptive feedback is impaired, a person can look at their own arm waving and wonder if it is a stranger’s. As one person with impaired proprioception notes, “My limbs just feel lost . . . like someone else’s shadow.”

  The importance of proprioception in constructing your self-image goes far beyond knowing that your arm is your arm. When you participate in any physical activity—sports, dance, running, weight lifting—your moment-to-moment sense of self is shaped by the qualities of your movement. When you move with grace, your brain perceives the elongation of your limbs and the fluidity of your steps, and realizes, “I am graceful.” When you move with power, your brain encodes the explosive contraction of muscles, senses the speed of the action, and understands, “I am powerful.” When you move in a way that requires strength, your brain senses the resistance in your muscles and the force on your tendons, and concludes, “I am strong.” These sensations offer convincing data about who you are and what you are capable of. My twin sister once told me that her favorite part of a run is “the part when it’s horrible.” When I laughed, she explained, “It’s a primal feeling. I’m doing this thing that is really tough, and I’m still doing it. I’m tough.”

  Often we are drawn to physical activities that reveal a new side of ourselves. Pamela Jo Johnson never enjoyed exercise until she discovered kettlebells the year she turned fifty, in a class offered in the cafeteria of a local elementary school in Minneapolis. Johnson describes the kettlebell power swing as “the greatest pleasure I have ever known with movement.” Johnson likens setting her stance to foreplay. She roots her feet hip-width apart and grips the horn of the forty-four-pound kettlebell in both hands, arms hanging straight down. “The combination of the two-handed grip and the resistance of the weight makes me feel like I am taking on a giant,” she told me. She hinges at her hips and leans forward, keeping her chest open and shoulders back. Then she swings the bell backward through her legs and, with a loud exhalation, braces her core, pushes down through her legs, and propels the kettlebell forward and up. “It’s such a simple move, but it’s a total body movement that packs strength, balance, and grace. I feel powerful and euphoric.”

  About a month after I chatted with Johnson, she posted a photo on Facebook of a tree toppled by a thunderstorm and blocking two lanes of traffic. Johnson had been in a cab on her way to the airport, and the cars ahead of them were crossing the median and turning back. “My cabdriver and I decided we would work our way to the front and see if we could move it,” she wrote. Two other women and four men joined them to help move the tree. When I saw her Facebook post, I immediately pictured Johnson swinging a kettlebell. Every time Johnson swings that bell, sensations of power infiltrate her self-perception. And once you’ve sensed yourself as powerful, it changes the way you look at an obstacle in your way. Would Johnson have thought of herself as someone who could move a tree without the experience of kettlebell training? I sent her a message asking if she thought there was a connection. “When the tree presented itself, I felt invincible,” she wrote back. It was as if her nervous system took stock of the fallen tree
, recalled the euphoric feeling of swinging a forty-four-pound bell, and remembered that she is someone who can take on a giant.

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  If there is a voice in your head saying, “You’re too old, too awkward, too big, too broken, too weak,” physical sensations from movement can provide a compelling counterargument. Even deeply held beliefs about ourselves can be challenged by direct, physical experiences, as new sensations overtake old memories and stories. Strength trainer Laura Khoudari, who works with people who have a history of psychological trauma, observes, “I have seen women who have felt small for years, not just because of their stature, but because of their circumstances, lift more weight than they had ever considered possible, and then walk out of the gym a bit more empowered. . . . Picking up more than you thought you could, can very literally show you that you can handle more than you think you can.”

  Katie Norris, a Unitarian Universalist minister and CrossFit coach, found this kind of revelation through a movement called the partner carry. It’s an exercise in which you run with another person thrown over your shoulder or clinging to your back. (CrossFit is popular with firefighters, emergency responders, and the military, for whom this is an extremely relevant skill.) When Norris joined her local CrossFit in Cleveland, Ohio, “My assumption was my body just couldn’t do it, so I would never try it.” Whenever the partner carry showed up in a daily workout, she carried a sandbag instead. It wasn’t just the required strength that worried her; it was also the close physical contact with another person. “Part of it was the whole living up to whatever a woman is supposed to look like. I’ve never been that. I’m shorter, bigger, sweatier. I always felt ashamed of my body.”

  As Norris continued to train at CrossFit, she got stronger, developed new skills, and practiced going outside her comfort zone. Her husband and son also joined, often training with her at the gym. When her family moved to Richmond, California, they found another CrossFit box. But for seven years, she never attempted the partner carry. In her mind, it was off-limits, beyond the realm of what was possible. Then one summer, when class was held on the beach, the list of that day’s exercises included a fifty-meter partner carry. Her husband was there to partner with her, and Norris thought, It’s just sand, so if I drop him, it won’t be that bad. She told herself to listen to what was real in that moment, instead of listening to all the old stories in her head about what was wrong with her body and what she could or couldn’t do. As her husband climbed onto her back, she took a deep breath, braced the muscles of her core, and pitched forward. With her husband’s arms wrapped around her chest, her arms pulling him close, she carried him across the sandy beach. Her son, who was twelve at the time, took a picture, and in it, Norris looks determined, like the fire-walkers of San Pedro Manrique.

  When she reached the fifty-meter mark, she was amazed. “It’s weird, because I literally carried someone, but it felt instead like a weight was lifted off,” she told me. “All the bad stuff I had assumed would happen, the stuff I thought I couldn’t do, that was gone. There was a sense of relief. And I was just proud.” Norris has since done the partner carry with strangers, and she describes the experience as both empowering and humbling. “Because I’m a minister, I see things in a spiritual way. Somebody trusts you to carry them, which is an honor. I feel a profound sense of responsibility. It makes me a little bit nervous, but it also makes me feel strong.”

  The transformation Norris felt from this breakthrough is part of what led her to become a CrossFit coach. “For me, ministry is about helping people find their path in life by being fully who they are. There is a deep process in physical movement that is a finding of one’s self—mentally, emotionally, physically, and in relation to the universe.” Recently, Norris was coaching a woman in a deadlift, an exercise where you pick up and then lower a weighted barbell. It looks simple, but deadlifts can be intimidating. It’s not unusual for people to spend more time psyching themselves up for the movement than it takes to perform it. In an online forum dedicated to strength training, one weight lifter described how his heart will be perfectly calm as he stands in front of the barbell, but the moment he touches the bar, it races into full fight-or-flight mode. As Norris was coaching this woman in the deadlift, she noticed signs of fear on the woman’s face and in her posture. Norris had previously observed that the woman had a habit of putting her arms around her belly when she felt vulnerable, something you can’t do while lifting a barbell. So she talked the woman through the proper method of bracing her core, the same technique Norris had used to steady herself for her first partner carry. Then she encouraged the woman to think about that physical action as a way to support herself. “Think of it as putting your arms around yourself, but with your own muscles.” The metaphor of supporting herself worked, and as the woman lifted and lowered the heavy weight, new sensations of inner strength and self-care entered her muscle memory.

  I remember having a similar discovery when I was in my twenties, with a yoga backbend known as king pigeon pose. To enter the pose, you stand on your knees, press your palms together at your heart, and lean backward slowly, until just the crown of your head touches the floor behind you. For someone like me, who likes to know what’s happening at all times, the blind entry can be terrifying. Without the muscle control to slow your descent, you crash-land on your head. It’s the kind of physical risk I would typically avoid, but there was something about the entry to this pose that captivated me. It was like a trust fall, except the person I had to trust was myself. What would catch me was my own strength.

  It took me over a year of practice to be able to do the pose. For a long time, I asked a partner to stand in front of me and brace my hips as a kind of safety net. When I finally did the movement on my own, I felt like someone I didn’t quite recognize—a person who might head willingly and wholeheartedly into some unknown adventure. That was almost twenty years ago, but I can still remember the feeling of falling backward, opening my heart, and sensing my strength. My yoga practice has changed as my body has, and it’s been years since I last tried that backbend. I don’t know if I could still do the pose, but the memory, the sensation, and the lesson have never left me.

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  One of the first things you notice at DPI Adaptive Fitness in Fairfax, Virginia, is the Wall of Greatness. The wall, which stretches across the long side of the 1300-square-foot gym, has become a canvas for motivational phrases like “Believing is achieving,” “NOT dropping first,” and “3rd and 3, give it to me.” Anyone can work out at DPI, but the gym specializes in training people with physical challenges. Many have had a stroke, a spinal cord injury, or a limb amputation. The vibe of the gym is, to put it bluntly, badass. On any given day, you might see a young boy with cerebral palsy batter a boxing bag while two women in wheelchairs wage a battle rope competition and a man with a walker uses a harness to drag a tire across the floor. The sound of Pandora’s Pop and Hip Hop Power Workout playlist mixes with the trainers’ shouts of “Get it!” and “Keep going!” On a pillar in the middle of the room, someone has chalked the words I don’t sweat—I leak awesome!

  I asked thirty-eight-year-old owner and founder Devon Palermo, who with his buzz cut and athletic build looks like he could be leading boot camp, to tell me about the Wall of Greatness. “When we moved into the space, I wanted a way to highlight people’s accomplishments,” he said. “When new members join, we let them know, if you’re willing to work hard, we’ll set something very challenging, something you won’t be able to do in one or two sessions. If you destroy that goal, you can put up your name and a motivational quote to inspire others in the gym.”

  I was curious about the stories behind the quotes. Did Palermo remember what people had done to get their names on the wall? He smiled broadly. “I know everyone’s.” He pointed at “Keep it lit!”—earned by Miss Ruth, a stroke survivor in her midfifties. When Miss Ruth started working out at DPI afte
r physical therapy, she and her trainer set the goal of strengthening her legs to improve her balance and gait. To get on the Wall of Greatness, she had to complete five hundred reps on a squat machine. “In a row?” I asked. “Yes,” Palermo said. “Since then, she’s hit a thousand.”

  Research shows that high-intensity training can significantly improve outcomes following a traumatic injury or stroke, even years after the initial trauma. “You need to be safe, but you need to pushed,” Palermo explains. One athlete putting in the work at DPI is thirty-five-year-old Joanna Bonilla. On April 1, 2012, Bonilla woke up in severe back pain. She lives with the autoimmune disease lupus, so joint pain was not unusual. But that day, her back hurt so much she had trouble walking. Bonilla’s mother convinced her to go to urgent care, where the physician on duty gave her steroids and sent her to the hospital. When she entered the MRI machine that would reveal a lesion on her spine, she could still feel her legs. By the time the scan was complete, she was paralyzed from the waist down.

  Bonilla spent months in and out of hospitals and on bed rest, getting chemotherapy, plasma injections, and blood transfusions. Nothing helped, and the loss of mobility was devastating. “I couldn’t do anything,” she remembers. “My body had betrayed me. It had let me down right in the peak of my life. My legs gave up on me. That’s how I felt.” After twelve weeks of rehab and learning to use her wheelchair, her physical therapist introduced her to Palermo. “It was the best thing that ever happened to me,” she says. “In physical therapy, progress is ‘Oh, she lifted her toe.’ At the gym, it’s lifting a hundred and thirty pounds. It feels good to see results. I have control of that. He helped me not go to that dark place a lot of people go, depression.” Palermo encouraged Bonilla to set big goals, including being able to drive again. To do so, she needed to develop the upper body strength to transfer herself from her wheelchair to her car. “I didn’t think it was going to happen,” Bonilla recalls. “Devon said, ‘We’re going to make this happen in three months,’ and in three months, I was looking at cars.”