Silver Back Muzik

Its everywhere - in the news, movies, music, at work, at home, at school, in politics, sex, each other - FEAR. Discussion of lively subjects like politics, religion and sex are off-limits because we have so much fear of one another's opinion. What is the source of our fear and how does it start?

The source of fear starts when we disconnect from what it feels like to move. The process of disconnecting our brain from movement starts at an early age, around the time we start school. Once our awareness is diverted away from what it feels like to move we substitute it with mechanics to force our body to move in ways that we think it should according to 'biomechanical notions' of optimal movement. The absurdity of this is apparent when we consider how hard it is to program a robot to do the simplest activity like lift a glass of water to drink!

Unfortunately without the awareness of what it feels like to move we become less balanced and more prone to clumsiness and injury - this is when we become fearful. Over time the fears expand to permeate every area of our lives thus creating a culture of fear. Ironically the less we feel how to move the more we crave sensational experiences through drugs or the chemicals our body produces when we trigger the fight or flight response. We are addicted to the rush of extreme sports, scary entertainment, drugs, alcohol and even pain just so that we feel something, except we don't feel when to stop. Not feeling when to stop is fearful too because we might go too far and end up gravely injured, dead, or mad.

Our fear becomes a self perpetuating cycle of extremism that permeates every area of our lives and culture. It creates such an imbalance that we fail to comprehend how self destructive we are individually and collectively as a culture, society and more globally as a species. We have become an aberration, pillaging and using finite resources at a rate that is rapidly bringing us to the edge of collapse - unfortunately taking out many other species with us. When we are living on this planet with no awareness of what it feels like to be in it, part of a complex web of nature, we are in danger of becoming part of the mass extinctions we have observed from the past, except it won't be some calamitous event of nature that causes it, it will be our own lack of awareness that will do it.

Many of you are aware that things need to change but feel helpless to stop the inexorable self destructive cycle we are in. Don't be helpless, you can do something, start now, in this moment - start becoming aware of what it feels like to move. Then introduce the practices to your friends, family, workplace and more. Reducing and eliminating fear at the source starts with each of us internally and then extrapolates out to all of our external interactions. Schools are a great place to introduce into the curriculum awareness of learning through movement as the optimal learning tool. Teachers will experience the gratification of children learning faster and easier with less behaviour problems because they are not fearful. Children can teach their parents by example how to become more functional through movement.

The irony is that it is not hard to become aware again and dramatically change the game, individually and collectively. Your brain is wired to learn and function from how it feels to move, that is our evolutionary history. All that is needed is a willingness to start the process of becoming aware of what it feels like to move.

Change is rapid, powerful and life transforming and ultimately it is either rediscover your natural way of being or perish. Maybe you won't personally perish depending on your age but your children and grandchildren will. Industrialization and mechanization are not the culprits in our demise, they are just the tools that we abused and tried to make into our ultimate saviour while turning away from our source of being, which is in nature.