Take a Walk on the Wild Side with Animal Style Exercises
We can Condition Our Mind and Body by Moving Like Other Animals
It may look peculiar seeing an adult crawling on the ground or hopping back and forth, but these forms of locomotion have significant benefits on our body and mind.
Human beings are quite unique in our mobility. We start out crawling on all fours like other land mammals, but after our crawling stage we walk upright. Once we’re up on two feet, many of us remain that way exclusively. But a bipedal gait can only take us so far with regards to achieving and activating our body’s full range of mobility, balance and strength. We clearly have the ability to switch between walking upright and crawling on all fours, but for one reason or another, we consider the latter to be no longer useful to our adult lives. That is unfortunate, because by not utilizing all four of our appendages to move about, we lose some rather necessary elements of coordination, as well as spatial memory and cognition (Edwards, 2016).
Exploring the animal kingdom provides us with ample examples of how to maximize our bodily flow for a more dynamic and fuller range of motion. In addition to strengthening our whole body, embodying the movement of another animal can be a very sacred and empathetic experience. It speaks to the saying “walk a mile in someone else's shoes,” which means that before judging someone, you must understand their experiences, challenges and emotional and cognitive processes. In this case I’m amending that phrase to “walk a mile with another species’ hooves/paws/webbed feet.” When we emulate the locomotion of another animal, we are essentially valuing their lived experiences by forming a tangible understanding of how they navigate through space.
You might think that crawling, hopping and lunging about is child’s play and primitive, but it is much harder and more sophisticated work than it looks. This is especially true when trying it as an adult. You’ll need to build up really good core stabilization to succeed. But the challenge is worth the reward.
Not only do animalistic movements support our physical well-being, they are also great exercises for our minds. Conditioning ourselves to use all four of our limbs for functional mobility is an endeavor that utilizes cognitive flexibility. This means being able to “switch between thinking about two different concepts or to think about multiple concepts simultaneously” (Magnusson and Brimm, 2014). In the animal kingdom, “cognitive flexibility generally refers to the ability to switch a behavioral response according to the context of a situation” (Scott, 1962). In other words, we are engaging in critical thinking and employing dynamic responses to situations, stimuli and the environment around us when we move like other animals.
Below is a visual essay of various animal inspired movements. If you feel the animal instinct to do these exercises, give yourself ample space, and try to explore going in different directions, such as going in reverse and from side to side.
References, Notes, Suggested Reading:
Edwards, Darryl. “The Benefits of Quadrupedal Movement,” Primal Play, 19 April 2016. https://www.primalplay.com/blog/the-benefits-of-quadrupedal-movement
Magnusson, Kathy R., & Brim, Brenna L. (2014). “The Aging Brain,” Reference Module in Biomedical Sciences. Elsevier. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-801238-3.00158-6
Scott, William A. “Cognitive Complexity and Cognitive Flexibility.” Sociometry 25, no. 4 (1962): 405–14. https://doi.org/10.2307/2785779.