Diversifying Movement 

Since having landed in Costa Rica, I’ve felt the incredible vortex of healing energy and nature surrounding us. The country’s rich biodiversity and abundance of wild, natural landscape has left me feeling like a child in a playground. I’ve been able to take my movement practice to all sorts of environments, from beaches to waterfalls, rainforests to mountains, as well as some very unique movement studios.

Exercise Versus Movement

The words exercise and movement are often used interchangeably. However, they actually have quite different meanings. Exercise consists of the specific activities that we do for the purpose of getting more physically fit, such as going for a jog or lifting weights at the gym. Movement comprises of not only exercise, but also all other activities that we do on a daily basis, like picking up our children, cleaning our home, and cooking meals.

A simple walk could be exercise or just movement; the intention behind it is what differentiates it. If you pull out your music and set your watch for an hour to walk around a track for a workout, that’s exercise. If you walk to the grocery store to buy your food for the week, that’s movement.

Exercise is not new. Our ancient ancestors developed fitness regimens that are still around today. But for most of history, humans just moved a lot more as part of daily life. Fetching water, foraging and growing food, tending to the home, washing clothing, and building fires all required movement. With today’s convenience like cars to move around, labor-saving devices like washing machines and blenders, as well as elevators and flat terrain, many of us move very little, except when we exercise.

If you are like me and love exercise, that’s fine. Keep it up! Some exercise is still better than no exercise. If anything makes you feel good (not just short term), keep doing it. Although don’t forget that a single workout does not replace all-day movement. In fact, sometimes single bouts of exercise have a way of actually making people more sedentary for the rest of the day. Interestingly, it was shown that people were about 30 percent less active on days that they exercised, according to a study by the American College of Sports Medicine. In another study, marathoners were nicknamed “active couch potatoes” because they were highly sedentary when they weren’t running, sitting an average of eight to 10.75 hours per day.

We are starting to see how all-day movement and diversity of that movement is more ideal than a short burst of intense activity. The fewer activities we do, the more prone we are to stress injuries from repetitive exercise, and in all, a lack of movement throughout the day. Unnatural activities lock our joints into place (ex: weight lifting, cycling, skying, etc). This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do them. It just means that if we choose to do unatural movement, such as walking on a treadmill or riding a bike multiple times per week, we should diversify our movement by adding more natural movement (a.k.a primal movement, functional movement), or simply more variety period. Otherwise, there will be issues.

Think about challenging your body with different movements every day. Rather than focusing only on the half hour of the day we’re supposed to engage in moderate exercise, consider what you do for the other 15 and a half hours you’re awake. Biomechanist Katy Bowman explains that we’ve long thought that some daily exercise could stand in for the varied, all-day movement our ancestors got, just as many people thought supplements could essentially replace healthy food. However, both assumptions are wrong. “You don’t really need exercise to stay healthy, you need movement to stay healthy,” she says.”

Movement as Nourishment

Like food, water, sun and air, movement is an essential component of our proper development and wellbeing. It is something that we should be doing all of the time. Movement can be medicine for unbalanced bodies that don’t move enough. It holds the power to heal. But movement is beyond medicine; it is nourishment. Our body needs more than medicine to thrive, it needs nourishment on a daily basis. It’s like saying that a meal is medicine for starvation. It’s not medicine; it’s just food. We need to eat; it’s a biological necessity. It’s the same truth when it comes to movement. We can think of repetitive movement as a nutrient deficiency in our body; fat, protein and carbs is as bad as just thinking strength, cardio, and stretching. There is more to it!

Exploring New Movement

Through my own personal practice and what other instructors have offered here in Costa Rica, I’ve gotten my fare share of movement diversity and complexity in. I’ve explored freedom of movement in every direction from every position - standing, sitting, lying down, kneeling, squatting, and on all-fours. I’ve explored all sorts of variations of crawling, walking, running, climbing, swinging, throwing, pushing, pulling, jumping, balancing, wrestling, dancing and playing - a lot. I’ve been working (a.k.a playing) with children here in Pura Vida land.

Most of my mornings have started at 5 am, before sunrise, with diverse movement every day - often with a few-kilometre walk-jog-sprint that I do on hills, at the beach or on the uneven terrain of the rainforest, with some monkey friends following along (not my children, actual real monkeys!).

“One of the most special aspects of Costa Rica is the pure environment that surrounds you at every turn. It is considerably easier to focus on personal well-being when you are feeling nature’s vibrations and inhaling the tropical ocean or mountain air. When expose to the bio-logical perfection of nature one can remember that we are ruled by the same principles; it is suddenly not only about the fixing of our symptoms, but it’s about reconnecting with our biological wisdom. Sustainable wellness, if you will.”

– Evelina Bolognini, Holis Wellness Center

I often end up at a unique little pilates/yoga studio set in a beautiful location along the pacific coast, with breathtaking ocean views and tropical scenery. Here, endorphins and post-workout bliss are heightened with all the lush nature surrounding the area. I love classes that incorporate movement diversity and complexity, blending strength, mobility, agility of the whole body and each individual part. Creative variations, twists, pulls, and jump-through movements that get me moving around and off my mat in fun and unexpected ways!

I found just that. With this philosophy at heart, Evelina Bolognini founder and owner at Holis Wellness Center in Manuel Antonio, Costa Rica, masterfully blends various movement modalities and her own creations to provide a truly unique embodied experience of what it is to move in diverse and complex ways. Her intense and detailed practice aims to create core awareness, strength, coordination, flexibility and improved posture and grace. In her classes we focus on building a strong foundation for our structure so we can be more effective and at ease in any other activities such as running faster, swimming with ease and getting down to the floor with our kids.

Evelina’s 30+ years of experience in the research and practice of movement and holistic wellness therapies is evident through her profound understanding of the body. Her comprehensive personal movement philosophy synergistically blends techniques and methods such as kinesiology, pilates and gyrokinetics. Using various props such as stools, foam rollers and blocks, she got me moving my body is ways it had never moved - even as a natural movement coach! I touched on deep muscle groups that aren’t often targeted, releasing emotions through motions not normally practiced, and ultimately learnt some new movement variations to add to my own tool box for healing. At Evelina’s class, I felt as though I was truly cleaning out the cob webs - reaching in places and spaces not often explored.

Let’s live outside of the box and explore the new.

Photo credits: Holis Wellness Center