How Coordination Improves Moving

Watching a 5 year old play on monkey bars is fascinating. They have so much energy. They’re fearless, lively, and coordinated. Which is what you should be. At any and all ages.

When did you decide that those skills were unnecessary for a productive adult life? Unless you plan to sit in a chair and use only your brain, you might want to rethink having a fearless, lively, and coordinated life. Those attributes will give you choices in life, and choice is always good.

Choice equals freedom. You can do whatever you desire; you dictate your life. When you don’t have much choice, you lack freedom. There is only a certain amount of things you can do. As you get older, it seems that those choices narrow. But that’s also a choice you make. Make another choice, based on expansion, not compression. Choose everyday to be fearless, lively, and coordinated.

Confront your fears; challenge them if they are important. Leave them be, if they are not. Know the difference. I could learn to drive in snow if I wanted to. I don’t want to. I’ll go somewhere else equally interesting. Or I’ll go when snow is absent. I’m ok with that choice. I challenge myself to do some form of exercise every day because my fear of  disability, dementia, or disease insures that I keep moving.

Choose to be lively. Lively doesn’t mean so dang perky that you drive all your roommates to vote you off the apartment lease. Be reasonable. Be grateful for waking up healthy. Some people don’t.

Practice coordination. It leads to elegant, easy movement. Coordination increases range of motion. When driving and parallel parking, you have to turn your head to look back, unless you have one of those jazzy cars that you watch a screen. For many people, looking behind them hurts their neck, nor can they turn their head very far. Poor range of motion. Coordination can help you with that. It stimulates the cerebellum (small brain), which stimulates better movement.

Any coordination skills will help you move easier: skipping, jumping jacks, clapping your hands and stomping your feet, dribbling a ball from hand to hand, playing piano, hula hooping, doing anything with your non-dominate hand or foot, or juggling can help you to move easier. Make up something. If it sounds like play, it’s because play incorporates coordination. So there you go; get out and play more. Staying static only works for rocks. People were meant to move.

That’s Aging Intelligently.