Your body has been outsourced

What follows is the most mind-altering first chapter I've read in a long time, frombiomechanist Katy Bowmans latest book Movement Matters: Essays on movement science, movement ecology, and the nature of movement.

These items an electronic car unlocker and a tea bag are convenient. But what Ive realized is, when we say or think convenience, its not as much about saving time as it is about reducing movement. We can grasp sedentary behaviour as it related to exercise because its easy to see the difference between exercising one hour a day and not exercising one hour a day. My work, in the past, has been about challenging people to also be able to see the difference between exercising one hour a day and not exercising the other twenty-three. More subtle stilland what Im asking you to do nowis to see how the choice to move is presented to you every moment of the day, but how most often we select the most sedentary choice without even realizing it.

Our daily life is composed of a lot of seemingly innocuous ways weve outsourced our bodys work. One of the reasons Ive begun focusing just as much on non-exercisey movements as I do on exercise-type movements is that I feel that the ten thousand outsourcing a day during the 23/24ths of your time hold the most potential for radical change. Be on the lookout for these things. To avoid the movements necessary to walk around to all the car doors, or just to avoid turning your wrist, or to avoid gathering your tea strainer and dumping the leaves and cleaning the strainer (in your dishwasher?), you have accepted a handful of garbage, plastic (future landfill), and a battery. To avoid the simplest movements, you have without realizing it required other humans somewhere else in the world to labor endlessly, destroy ecosystems, and wage war for your convenience.

Sedentarism is very much linked to consumerism, materialism, colonialism, and the destruction of the planet. If youre not moving, someone else is moving for you, either directly, or indirectly by making STUFF to make not moving easier on you. You were born into a sedentary culture, so 99.9 percent of your sedentary behaviours are flying under your radar. Start paying attention. What do you see?