The Magic Power of Movement

by Anna-Helena Rudolph

I love it. I love to move my physical body and experience it moving, feeling the pain in my muscles when they are used, sensing my heartbeat and how my breath goes faster and deeper when my body is challenged.

NOW I DO. A couple of days ago all of this was just a faint memory of my childhood or even just a dream about sensing aliveness in my body except for long hikes in nature and swimming.

In the past nearly all challenging movements — especially intense body weight exercises — were accompanied by a myriad of thoughts like 'It's too exhausting', 'I cannot do it', 'I don't want to do it' and there had been a deep invisible inertia hanging over me like a dense dark rock. If I had a phase of doing sports for some time it would often cease quickly and I would return to resistance mode. It seemed I would need the strength of 100 elephants to break this. And I felt the sadness and longing of my body to be fully used for a long time.

This inner scream got more intense recently. Especially when I saw my sisters here in the Bridge-House exercising every morning. And they wouldn't just 'just do exercise'...they would do intense 'HIIT' workouts that left them totally sweaty and with muscle aches the days after. I was intimidated by this intensity and yet sensed my body's yearning. Every morning I would wake up with this war in my head between the authoritarian voice of 'I have to do sports', my Gremlin’s voice of 'I can't be bothered, I don't want to', and a tiny growing voice of my body craving movement. With the result of not going in the end....until one day seemingly out of the blue I just got up, put on my shorts and went to the training space.

Our Bridge House Magic Spaceholders for body movement - Lisa Maria G. and Jacqueline O. - celebrated my arrival and their total empowerment showered me. It was a hard workout and my physical body loved the sweetness of it...like a horse that had been locked away and finally gets to run free in the wilderness.

After the exercise we were sitting on the mats and this huge sadness about finally having made it washed through me. I could not believe that I did not hear these devastating-anti-voices in my head during the exercise. All I remembered was that all my cells celebrated the movement and that my body's thirst was finally being met. It was as if some invisible force had lifted the inertia.

Was it my anger? Was it the love of my two workout queen sisters? Was it the Bridge-House space? Was it the energy of the island? Was it my yes to Vera's proposal to me to have an Emotional Healing Process about body shame? Was it the constellation of the stars on a planet that day?…or was it finally the tipping point?

Maybe it was all of this. Maybe even more. Everything just divinely and perfectly placed so that it could happen. What a gift.

For me this was a legendary moment. It was as if I had crawled out of this dark inner prison of not exercising and shaming my body which was basically a big no to life and god, and a perfect place to hide in the corner and wither away.

My sisters held space for me to celebrate that my physical body finally reclaimed its voice and that aliveness could rush again through my veins. Since that day no morning without exercise has passed. There might be some faint melancholic voices whispering resistant phrases in the mornings, but the voice of my body wanting to move is now louder day by day and makes me jump out of bed!

What do I get from moving my body? A whole day full of aliveness. Stagnancy lifts and I can taste the sweetness of being alive in all my cells. An hour workout a day to gain all of this sounds like a deal that is too good to be true.

Yes, it is magic, indeed. Thank you to the exercise witches. I wish for others too, that they may reclaim their aliveness through moving their physical body.

Keep going.