MEANINGFUL MOVEMENT

Meaningful movement is movement with a purpose. Therefore, defining your purpose becomes essential. For most people their work becomes their purpose for the sole fact that they spend the majority of their waking hours in their work environment.

What do you spend the majority of your life doing? And, is that a good representation of what your purpose is in life?

"My Soul is Not Contained Within my Body. My Body is Contained Within the Limitlessness of my Soul". -Jim Carey

The 10 Characteristics of all Life

1. Movement - internal or gross.

2. Responsiveness - reaction to internal or external change.

3. Growth- an increase in size without a change in shape.

4. Reproduction- creation of new organisms or new cells.

5. Respiration - use of oxygen and removal of carbon dioxide.

6. Digestion- breakdown of foods into simpler forms.

7. Absorption - movement of substances through membranes and into fluids.

8. Circulation - movement of substances within body fluids.

9. Assimilation- changing nutrients into chemically different forms.

10. Excretion - removal of metabolic wastes.

These ten characteristics constitute metabolism.

The 5 Requirements of any Organism

1. Water - required for metabolic reactions, transportation of substances, and temperature regulation. The average human should be consuming roughly 64 oz of water per day (depending on size and metabolism)

2. Food - needed nutrients to supply energy and raw materials for building new living matter.

3. Oxygen - used in releasing energy from nutrients.

4. Heat - byproduct of metabolism; its presence governs the rate at which reactions occur

5. Pressure - force required to facilitate movement of air and fluids.

Life depends on the availability of these 5 organism requirements, not just quantity, but quality!

You are a product of your actions, and your actions are facilitated by your understanding of movement. How did you learn to move?

DEVELOPMENTAL MILESTONES

Fundamental Level = Supine, Prone, Rolling, Quadruped, & Crawling

Transitional Level = Sitting, Kneeling, Squatting

Functional Level = Vertical Stance & Gait

One should have adequate neuromuscular control of all of the movements and postures in each level before advancing to the next. Sub-optimal neuromuscular control of any of the aforementioned leads to dysfunction and puts one at risk for traumatic injury and disability.

Learning to Move

Breathing - Breathing and respiration are essential to living, it allows for the intake of oxygen and removal of carbon dioxide from our bodies. Oxygen is required for energy production, brain function, and everything in our body. Poor oxygen intake will lead to dysfunction.

Gripping - Gripping is necessary for manipulating your environment, including what you eat. Food produces the building blocks for our bodies to grow and develop.

Eye Movement - Eye movement allows for seeing and learning the environment that we will inhabit and function in, this contributes to the development of motor learning, motor patterns, and motor habits for daily function.

Head/Cervical Movement - Head/ cervical movement is the beginning of rolling so that we can start to get on our hands and knees and actually move more than just on our backs.

Limb Movement - Limb movements allow us to complete a full roll and progress towards crawling.

Rolling - Allows us to add variety to our postures, like sidelying and prone (being on your stomach). This will promote variable stresses on muscles, joints, and ligaments in order to improve neuromuscular control.

Crawling - crawling is the onset of exploring. Exploring allows us to learn, grow, and develop in variable environments.

Transitional Movement - this is your bodies search for efficiency depending on your current environment and bodily demand. How well are you able to get down on the floor? Kneel? Sit? Stand?

Upright Movement - this is the most efficient posture for humans. Two-legged ambulation allows for two handed freedom and manipulation of objects.