Hi I’m Sammy,

Your Good Farm in-house nutritionist. Here to bring you essential information on nutrition, diet and permaculture gardening - in a bite size, easy to understand, science-backed way.

Before we get into it, I'd love to introduce you to something I've been working on with The Good Farm Shop. It's The Good Farm Good Guide (first edition). This isn't just a magazine, it's a year-round reference for building a healthier home from the ground up and designed to sit on your kitchen counter and get used all year long.

Now...onto the blog!

The Freedom to Move

If you walked into my bathroom at home and looked at the mirror, you would see a note Blu-Tacked to the corner:

Freedom to move.

For two months, from December 7 until February 9, I was on unofficial bed rest. I say unofficial because bed rest is not generally recommended these days, partly because of the physical and emotional toll it can carry. But after a challenging pregnancy, all I wanted was for our second daughter to be born as close to full term as possible. I was pretty driven to have as little physical impact as I could.

Every movement was calculated and restricted. I had to stop myself from reacting physically in the natural way I normally would, whether that was to pick up my daughter, carry something, walk somewhere or rush to help, and because I couldn’t move much, movement was almost all I thought about.

I noticed movement in every possible form and craved it like a thirsty person craves water: my neighbours’ children jumping on the trampoline, my daughter performing a dance, hospital staff freely jogging up and down the stairs instead of taking the lift, someone running along the road. Ordinary movement suddenly looked like complete, delicious freedom.

As I move further away from those two months, and from the postpartum recovery that followed, I stuck the words on my mirror to remind me not to take that freedom for granted.

For most of human history, movement was predominantly incidental. It was part of life. People walked to get somewhere, carried things, worked with their hands, squatted, climbed, dug, gathered, hunted for animals, moved across landscapes to greener pastures. Nobody reached the end of the day and thought, I haven’t moved my body today. I should go to the gym. Movement was built into almost everything we did.

Today, many of us have to consciously move. We have to put it in our calendars, drive somewhere to do it or remind ourselves to stand up from our desks.

I remember reading Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods, in which he describes moving to a small American town and being struck by the absurdity of someone driving a very short distance to the gym, struggling to find a park and then walking on a treadmill. Why not walk to the gym and spend five fewer minutes on the machine?

I also remember reading French Women Don’t Get Fat by Mireille Guiliano in my early twenties. Whatever you think of the title, there are some great themes throughout her books. One simple idea has always stayed with me: take the stairs. Look for movement in ordinary life rather than treating it as something that happens only while wearing activewear.

There are physical, mental, emotional and even spiritual aspects to movement. It supports our muscles, bones, circulation and metabolism, but it also changes how we feel and think.

Research increasingly suggests that a single intense hour at the gym does not necessarily undo an otherwise sedentary day. Structured exercise is important, but so is moving regularly throughout the day. Even short bursts of movement help activate our muscles, support circulation and regulate blood sugar, while breaking up the long periods of sitting that have become so common in modern life.

Then there is the often-quoted target of 10,000 steps a day. It turns out that 10,000 is not a magical threshold. The figure began as a marketing idea for a Japanese pedometer rather than as a medical prescription. Research shows that health benefits begin well below 10,000 steps and generally increase as we move more.

One of the systems that particularly benefits from all this everyday movement is our lymphatic system. Unlike the circulatory system, it does not have one strong central pump like the heart. Its vessels have their own gentle contractions, while breathing, muscle contractions and changes in body position also help lymph move through the body. Walking, stretching, bouncing, dancing and shaking all support this process.

You know that person you sometimes see at the beach at sunrise, swaying with their arms reaching up towards the sky, swinging them loosely like a rag doll or gently tapping their body? Don’t judge them or think, That guy is a bit strange. The legend is loving his lymphatic system, and perhaps we should all show ours a little more love too.

If we pivot a little, there is dancing.

Gabrielle Roth created 5Rhythms, a free-form movement practice built around five rhythms: Flowing, Staccato, Chaos, Lyrical and Stillness. Her work explores dance as a way of moving through emotion, reconnecting with the body and giving expression to feelings that can be difficult to put into words.

Across cultures and throughout history, people have danced during celebration, grief, ceremony, courtship and transition. Movement and rhythm have long been part of how humans process life together.

In Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy, Barbara Ehrenreich explores the long history of communal dance and celebration, and what may have been lost as Western societies moved further away from them. She describes how music, rhythm and dance once brought people together as active participants, creating a sense of connection, belonging and collective joy.

Ehrenreich also draws a connection between the suppression of these traditions and the rise of melancholy and depression in the early modern period. She does not suggest that the loss of communal dance was the only cause but argues that removing these regular opportunities for shared movement, emotional release and connection may have come at a cost to our mental wellbeing.

We see something similar in the animal world. After escaping a threat, animals will sometimes tremble or shake, a natural response that may help the body settle after an intense surge of stress. Perhaps we, too, sometimes need to move through what we are feeling rather than trying to always think our way out of it.

I think about this when I remember one of the most difficult periods of my own life. When my mum was in the depths of her cancer treatment, I moved back home to help. Once a day, I would close the doors to the loungeroom, blast drum and bass, or whatever music fit the mood, usually something of a similar calibre, and spend 30 to 45 minutes throwing, shaking, dancing and moving my body in a completely unstructured way. At times, there was an almost violent energy to it, driven by how much rage I needed to release. I would have been horrified if anyone had seen me, and I feel a little vulnerable even writing about it here, but I reckon it played an enormous part in how I coped.

Around the same time, I listened to an episode of The TED Interview with writer Elizabeth Gilbert. The second half of the conversation is incredibly moving, and I have listened to it several times since. Speaking about the death of her partner, Rayya, Gilbert describes grief as a full-body experience, not something we can reason our way through with the mind. When it arrives, she says, it can rock you, bring you to your knees and move through your entire body. Resisting it does not make it disappear. It only makes the experience harder.

That conversation stayed with me. We are full-body creatures. Our bodies are not simply vessels carrying our minds around. Grief, rage, fear, love and joy are not only thoughts. They can appear as a tight chest, clenched jaw, shaking hands, heavy limbs or an almost unbearable need to move. Sometimes we need to walk, shake, dance, cry or curl up on the floor and allow the feeling to move through us. Perhaps being willing to feel the difficult emotions is also part of what allows us to experience love and joy more fully.

As I write this article, I’m tapping the words into the Notes app on my phone while walking rhythmically around the garden, trying to keep my six-month-old asleep against my chest. The words come more easily than they would if I were standing still. It makes me think of Sarah Wilson, who often talks about walking moving at the same pace as discerning thought. It makes sense to me. There is something about the rhythm of putting one foot in front of the other that lets thoughts settle into place. Walking gives the mind enough stimulation to move, but enough space to hear itself.

So, if you feel as though you are in a particularly stagnant period of life, whether physically, spiritually or emotionally, this is a little nudge from me to you to move in one way or another. It doesn’t have to be much. At the moment, I feel like a hero if I manage 15 minutes of resistance training three times a week. It may not sound like much, but it makes a huge difference to how I feel.

So, nudge, nudge. Have a solo dance party at home. Walk to the post office instead of driving. Don’t just watch your children jump on the trampoline or play tip at the park. Join in with them. Rejoice in having to bound up or down the stairs yet again because you forgot your keys. I made five trips up and down the stairs this morning. I caught my frustration, smiled and felt grateful for the extra steps I had managed to sneak into my day.

Life is precious. Health is precious. And the freedom to move is an incredible gift.

Good food and movement go hand in hand, each supporting the other. Explore our nourishing meals here.

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 Further Exploring

These are some of the books, conversations and resources that have shaped my thinking.

A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson is a funny account of walking the Appalachian Trail, with some wonderfully sharp observations about how movement has disappeared from everyday life.

French Women Don’t Get Fat by Mireille Guiliano offers a lovely reminder to find pleasure, moderation and movement in ordinary life, whatever you might think of the title.

Sweat Your Prayers by Gabrielle Roth explores the 5Rhythms movement practice and the relationship between dance, emotion, creativity and spiritual life.

Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy by Barbara Ehrenreich is a fascinating history of communal dance, celebration and our human need to experience joy together.

This One Wild and Precious Life by Sarah Wilson is part walking journey, part spiritual reflection and part call to reconnect with ourselves, one another and the natural world.

The TED Interview with Elizabeth Gilbert on love, death and grief is an incredibly moving conversation about grief as a full-body experience and the willingness to let it move through us.

In Praise of Walking by neuroscientist Shane O’Mara explores the relationship between walking, brain health, creativity, mood and social connection.

Lymph Love Club is another wonderful resource. Leah Levitan shares approachable education and practical ideas around lymphatic health, breathing and everyday movement.

References

World Health Organization. Guidelines on Physical Activity and Sedentary Behaviour. These guidelines emphasise that all movement counts and recommend reducing and regularly interrupting sedentary time. WHO guidelines

Australian Government Department of Health. 24-Hour Movement Guidelines for All Australians. These recommend several hours of light activity each day, moderate to vigorous movement on most days and regularly breaking up prolonged sitting. Australian guidelines

Paluch AE, et al. Daily Steps and All-Cause Mortality: A Meta-analysis of 15 International Cohorts. The Lancet Public Health. 2022. This research found health benefits at step counts below 10,000 a day. Read the study

Loh R, et al. Effects of Interrupting Prolonged Sitting with Physical Activity Breaks on Blood Glucose, Insulin and Triacylglycerol Measures. Sports Medicine. 2020. Read the review

Moore JE Jr and Bertram CD. Lymphatic System Flows. Annual Review of Fluid Mechanics. 2018. This is an overview of how lymph is moved by the contractions of lymphatic vessels, skeletal muscles, breathing and other forces. Read the review