We usually think of movement as something we can see.

An arm moves.

A leg moves.

The body turns.

We step, squat, push, pull, reach and rotate.

But there is another kind of movement taking place beneath all of that.

Movement within movement.

I started thinking about this recently while considering something as simple as a long, hot shower. Heat increases circulation, relaxes tissue and may help facilitate the movement of fluid through the body.

But then I thought about Tai Chi.

And suddenly the shower seemed like the least interesting part of the equation.

The Body Changing Shape

During a Tai Chi warm-up and subsequent practice, the body is almost continuously changing shape.

We rise and sink.

Expand and contract.

Shift from one leg to another.

Turn.

Spiral.

Open.

Close.

Tissue is alternately loaded and unloaded. Muscles contract and relax. Joints move through changing angles. The diaphragm changes pressure inside the trunk with every breath.

And woven through all of it is fascia.

Fascia isn’t simply the wrapping around muscles that we once tended to think it was. It is an interconnected connective-tissue system extending throughout the body.

And running through that environment are blood vessels, nerves and components of the lymphatic system.

Unlike the cardiovascular system, the lymphatic system doesn’t have a heart sitting in the middle of it continuously pumping fluid around the body.

Movement matters.

Muscular contraction matters.

Breathing matters.

Changing tissue pressure matters.

And that’s where Tai Chi becomes particularly interesting.

What I Can’t See

When I practice Tai Chi, I’m not consciously thinking:

I’m moving lymph.

I’m thinking about structure.

Rhythm.

Timing.

Intent.

I’m thinking about where my weight is, where it’s going, how I’m connected to the ground and how one movement flows into the next.

But underneath the movement I can see is an enormous amount of movement I can’t see.

Interstitial fluid is shifting.

Blood flow is changing.

Muscles are contracting and releasing.

Fascial tissues are lengthening, shortening and changing tension.

The diaphragm is continually altering pressure between the abdomen and chest.

That distinction fascinates me.

It also helps explain why certain forms of movement can leave us feeling dramatically different afterward even though they weren’t particularly exhausting.

You don’t have to destroy tissue.

You don’t have to generate enormous amounts of force.

You don’t necessarily have to elevate your heart rate dramatically.

Sometimes you simply have to move well enough, long enough and completely enough to change the internal environment.

Force and Organization

This is one reason I’ve become increasingly interested in integrating internal arts with resistance training.

Resistance training gives us something extraordinarily valuable:

Force.

Tai Chi gives us something different:

Organization.

It asks the body to distribute that force, coordinate it and move it through an interconnected system.

And fascia may represent part of the physical bridge between those two worlds.

Muscle.

Connective tissue.

Breathing.

Pressure.

Circulation.

Lymphatic movement.

Proprioception.

Balance.

Coordination.

They’re not really separate systems when you’re standing there moving.

They’re one body.

Naming the Pieces

Maybe that’s one of the mistakes we’ve made in conventional training.

We’ve become very good at naming the pieces.

Muscular system.

Skeletal system.

Cardiovascular system.

Nervous system.

Lymphatic system.

Fascial system.

And those distinctions are enormously useful when we’re trying to understand physiology.

But the body itself doesn’t experience those divisions.

It just moves.

And when it moves well, movement occurs at multiple levels simultaneously.

Movement of the body.

Movement through the body.

And movement between systems.

That may be one of the deeper lessons of Tai Chi.

What appears from the outside to be slow, simple movement can actually represent an extraordinarily complex conversation taking place inside the body.

Movement within movement.

And perhaps that is part of what FlowMotion really means.

We Don’t Workout…We Train

Break the Paradigm.