Exercise: The Body as a Vehicle for Liberation

multiracial woman wearing flowy blue outfit, moving as if dancing in a field as sun sets behind her

In the world of mental health, the body can often be regulated to an afterthought. We may imagine the body simply as a vehicle to transport the brain. 

Exercise, like education, can be a loaded word. Folks moving through the world in a body- especially in a marginalized body-  can experience so much judgement and morality attached to body size, shape, and ability- it’s difficult for any of us to escape. 

As we can’t escape the body we’ve been given, we can find ways to engage with more ease and compassion.  

To keep the integrity of the SEEDS acronym I’m using the word exercise, though I invite you to consider substituting the word movement. 

Movement in the body that has carried us through all of our lives up into this moment, and will continue to do so until our death. 

This seed is not only about exercise, and not only about movement. It’s about embodiment. It’s about how our family, our cultures, our experiences, and our stories shape our body and how we move through the world. If the ways you’ve been moving don’t support care and nourishment, this is an invitation to change that. 

Using expressive arts therapy:

1. Create a movement playlist

2. Explore songs that you love, that you may have forgotten about from a joyful, embodied time in your life, and explore songs that you may have never heard before (playlist suggestions at the end of this post)

2. Make time to move

3. Give yourself anywhere from an hour to a month and beyond and play your playlist

4. Even a small amount of movement can be healing, and even better if you make it a regular part of your day

3. As you move, notice the sensations in your body, emotions, and stories that come up

4. Choose one at a time (sensation, emotions, stories) and move through whatever comes up, allowing it to shape how you move

4. Explore- what movements feel like home? And what movements feel like an invitation into a new way of moving?

5. When a sensation, emotion, or story comes up that is pleasing to you, explore it again, see where you experience ‘home’ in the movement

6. Allow yourself to move in a way that you haven’t before, or in a way that feels ‘new’

5. Take some time to draw an image after you move based on of what feels like home and what feels like a new way of moving

A reminder- we all move through the world in a body.  We experience love, joy, trauma, awe, and grief in our bodies, not just in our minds.  As we imagine what healing and liberation can look like, let’s look first to this vehicle which cradles, supports, and carries us through the world from our first breath to our last.