Some Thoughts on Movement

“It’s not that everything is good or bad, but that everything is dangerous. If everything is dangerous then we always have something to do” (Michel Foucault). I often come back to these wise words when I catch myself examining a concept using this binary between good and evil. There is much talk these days of humans returning to their primal/paleo/ancestral roots, primal being good and its opposite - modern, contemporary being bad.  But let’s take a closer look at where these various discourses are taking us, particularly when it comes to food. Too often the paleo/primal interpretative framework is being used  as an excuse to eat meat with reckless indifference to animal health and well being.  This is a dangerous road to travel.  Couple the paleo discourse with the new pseudo-feminist mantra “strong is the new skinny”. This again, is well intentioned but dangerous. What do we have now in the CrossFit world that is being mistaken as liberation - a focus on pure strength and size that is gained at the costs of ecological violence and animal cruelty. Of course, this is not only happening in the CrossFit world. In the movement world to, the world where I spend a great deal of time, there is a trend towards selfishness and pure anthropocentrism (seeing the world only from the perspective of humans).  A sense of gratitude is missing in both worlds.

What is more interesting about the current popularity of the primal is unearthing the dreams, longings and desires that are attached to these words or discourses.  Why are we so drawn to the primal?  Walter Benjamin got it right when he studied the discarded remnants of capitalism as a way into the collective psyche of nations. How will we interpret this turn to the primal 100 years from now?

My point is that everything is discursive/ideological and to suggest otherwise is disingenuous.  We like to think of movement as very primal precisely because it begins with the body.  We need to be extra cautious because of this and recognize that movement practices are constructed. We all enter the world of movement from various ideological and discursive frameworks.  I witness this ideological/discursive interpretative framework all the time.  The yoga folks and dancers poo poo on CrossFit because of their own ideological baggage - they view it as dumb strength, void of beauty. The CrossFitters scoff at dance because it is a feminized discipline and likewise are drawn to CrossFit because of the culture that has been created (high performance, suffering as elevation, functional, the capitalist desire to devour, even preparing for an enemy).

My point is not to argue that one is superior to the other but rather to recognize that the desire to move in particular ways is intimately tied to aesthetics.  There is nothing wrong with this, but what is dangerous is assuming that one comes to a practice from a neutral position.  Zizek, speaking from a psychoanalytic perspective, warns us that this neutral position from which we think we speak is quite terrifying. He has a word for it, he calls it the REAL. It is a place void of language and meaning.  He has a great metaphor that he uses to explain the real versus reality. Imagine you are in a vehicle with the windows closed. Inside is reality, the place of language, culture, and ideology. All the stuff we use to make sense of our experiences.  Then, you begin to roll down the window and the REAL descends like a formless fog of nothingness. Kind of scary. 

So embrace your discursive and ideological frameworks but recognize that they have a history, and only then will you be able to discard of them.  If acrobats, dancers and yogis would pick up a barbell once and awhile, or get on a pair of rings and gain some real upper body strength(throw out their ideological baggage) they would be better movers. If CrossFitters could throw away their timers and focus on more complex movement patterns they too would be better movers.  And I mean really focus on actual sophisticated movement practices - the kind that take time and patience to learn.

The best part of the movement camp is not that it is simply drawing on different disciplines. No, the best part is that these disciplines are actually talking to each other and affecting each other’s movement practices. Is there still an ideological and discursive framework in place? Absolutely. 

Flux folks are living the movement camp everyday and I applaud you for it.  So many of you are comfortable moving outside of your comfort zones. Congratulations! You put in the hard work and now you get to play with movement.   And what could be better than the freedom and confidence to play across the disciplines?