Attempting Movement, Part 3: Learning to Let the Body Be

A three-part series on how becoming friends with my body unlocked a lasting love for movement.

This is part three of a three-part series chronicling my attempt at movement. To start at part one, click here.

Almost a year into running, I decided to try completing a 30-day daily movement streak. Once again, I was inspired by a friend who had just finished her own 30 days of running every day. I was almost three weeks into the effort when I contracted COVID for the first time. The disease hit me so hard, sapped so much of my strength, that it took several weeks before I could climb the stairs to our apartment without getting winded. It wasn’t until months later that I was able to run again. That reset wiped me so thoroughly that it took me until this spring, two and a half years later, to muster up the courage to try 30 days of running again.

All of this came on the heels of a new movement obsession: rock climbing. I never thought climbing would be something I’d like, much less be able to do. A birthday outing with a nephew who requested a visit to the climbing gym proved me wrong. All it took was a few climbs to hook me. I found that I loved both the challenge of puzzling out a route as well as the risk required to climb it. The longer I kept at it, the stronger I got. The stronger I got, the more my bravery and confidence increased. Unexpectedly, climbing made me even better at listening to my body’s feedback during movement—a practice that went from optional in my running to critical in my climbing. The stakes were raised whenever I climbed; an incorrect judgment almost certainly meant a fall, and a fall while bouldering, at my age and low experience level, flirted with the promise of injury.

While I was learning the basics of climbing, I felt the desire growing to try a daily running streak again. When I first tried for a 30-day streak in 2022, I was going for the accomplishment, the accolade, alone. This time, the desire to complete a running streak stemmed from my newfound confidence uncovered during climbing that my body was capable of types and durations of movement I didn’t previously think possible. I was genuinely curious to see what else my body could do. I wondered if I could run every day. And if so, could I maintain that for 30 days?

For some, the task reads like an easy one. But for me, a runner who doesn’t have a natural bend toward the sport, running for 30 days straight was a challenge just large enough to feel intimidating. So I decided to try again. And just like when I started running back in 2021 during my year of yoga, I kept the rules simple and basic. Before I started the streak, I was running 2-4 miles several times a week, but I knew I couldn’t maintain that distance every day. I decided instead to set minimums and let the body dictate when it wanted to go for longer runs. My baseline for the 30-day running streak was to run for a minimum of 10 minutes or one mile every day, whichever came first.

Thirty days came and went. I celebrated and then decided to try for another 30 days.

Today, I hit 75 days of running every day, and running is suddenly no longer just something I like but something I crave and need. The repetition of this movement day after day has turned it into a practice that grounds me. Daily, it pulls me from all the overthinking and recenters me into a quiet, sometimes even peaceful, calm. My running streak has not only further evolved how I view movement but also how I relate to the body within that movement.

All my unsuccessful attempts at becoming a runner as a teenager and young adult stemmed from a distaste, even hatred, of the body. When I tried running again a few years ago, I ran from a love for the body. Yoga and then running had shown me how to give a voice back to my body. They taught me how to respect it and how to view it as deserving of care and tenderness. Now today, as the capability of my body expands with an increasing running streak, harder climbs at the gym, and goals of new movement exploration, I’ve felt the pull toward a third place—a place beyond both love and hate, somewhere neutral, somewhere that no judgement, perhaps not even perception exists.

Here’s what I’m learning—my body simply wants to be. You could say that I’ve arrived somewhere that flows alongside body neutrality. But unlike the way body neutrality sometimes defines itself as the middle ground between love and hate or an option for those who can’t quite get to body positivity, I think of it as opting out of the love/hate conversation entirely.

The body is my friend and true friendship exists outside any judgment, be it positive or negative. In the place of constant consideration, review, and appraisal, the body requires only gratitude. Year after year, it has held me into being. All this time, it has carried me throughout daily life, taken my fluctuating postures toward it in stride, and still generously afforded me a home within it. For all this and more, it deserves my constant deep gratitude. And it is from this posture of judgment-free thankfulness that I have finally returned to myself, embodied and safe. From this posture, movement has gone from a to-do, a punishment, a must and a should into a delightful co-creation with body.

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How to Be with the Body

First we learned to hate the body
so we had to learn to love it.
Pendulum swing,
it makes sense but
perhaps the body was meant for neither.
Perhaps it is not a matter of loving or hating.
For the body just is, the way a tree just is.
We ask nothing of it
regarding its color or shape or height.
We simply say: Look, a tree! How wonderful—
here is a place safe enough to call home.