Hey ,

 Happy Wednesday!

First and foremost, I want to extend my heartfelt appreciation to everyone who took the time to share your thoughts in a review last week. Your feedback is invaluable to Satori Yoga, and the ten new reviews are like a treasure trove for my small business. I appreciate your support!

While we didn't quite hit the target of 25 reviews that I was hoping for, the ten reviews we received have already made a significant impact. This can only mean one thing - we will have to repeat this exercise in the fall to see if we can reach that coveted (by me!) number.

To Celebrate Earth Day, 

I'm writing today's post with a particular idea in mind. My goal is to help you connect the dots as we attempt to answer a fundamental question: Can we improve our health and the health of our planet simply by moving more?
 

The setting...

For those of you who don't know, I was born and raised in the Soviet Union. We lived in a city, but for as long as I can remember, my grandparents had a dacha—a little plot of land outside the city limits that supplied our family's fruit and vegetables. Grandma and Grandpa worked this land tirelessly.

Grandpa's job was to drive Grandma to the dacha, but it was my Grandma who was the queen of the garden.

My grandmother was an incredible woman. I am pretty sure all grandmothers are. Baba Nina worked tirelessly on our dacha, planting, growing, cultivating, and watering, making sure that every inch of it produced something edible. 

She grew award-winning peaches, two-pounder tomatoes, and grapes so sweet that you could see through them. The dacha was a necessity and a labour of love for her.

This small piece of land provided food for our family and sometimes even our neighbours during difficult times. In the late 1980s and 1990s, when I was studying at a university in Moscow, we survived on food stamps, rations, and humanitarian aid. My grandmother would send me packages of vegetables by train.

In 1994, my grandfather passed away. Despite being well into her retirement years, my grandmother continued to work on her garden by herself.

Now, imagine this:

Our dacha was on the outskirts of town, pretty far from our home. To get there, you'd have to walk to the bus stop for about 30 to 40 minutes, then take a bus for another 90 minutes or so, and finally, walk again from the bus stop to our dacha—quite the journey, as you can imagine, especially since you have to repeat the whole exercise in reverse on your way home.

Baba Nina made this journey almost daily, carrying heavy loads of seedlings to plant and fresh vegetables or fruits to bring back. She continued this routine until the spring of 2008 when she passed away at the age of 84. Although she died in June, all her seedlings were already planted. 

No muscle loss, no problem. 

In my grandma's generation, age-related muscle loss was unheard of. 

Is that surprising? 

Everything was done manually back then. We carried our veggies home on our shoulders and cleaned, chopped, and processed them by hand. 

, I'm sure you also had a grandma who could beat egg whites into the fluffiest peaks with just a fork or knead a huge dough with her bare hands. Can you imagine the arm strength required for that?

Outsource much?

We haven't just outsourced our manufacturing to China...

We are outsourcing more and more of our physical movements each day. 

Remote controls have eliminated the need to walk around your vehicle to lock the doors—the same goes for windows, which no longer require cranking. 

The few simple wrist movements needed to brew the tea leaves have been reduced to taking the tea bag out of its wrapper. How much time did we save here?

Dishwashers have eliminated the need to handle our dishes. Pre-washed and pre-chopped (and pre-packaged) veggies from the market might soon make our kitchen knives obsolete. 

Are these time-saving strategies a win or a loss? 

, where I am going with this?

We've outsourced most traditional home tasks and bought into the idea that ease and convenience will save us all. In this process, we've lost our muscle strength, movement freedom, and—even more significantly—our sense of efficacy. 

We have accepted a handful of garbage, plastic packaging, batteries, and God knows what else for speed and convenience. Not only that but to avoid the simplest movements, we have—without realizing it—required other humans somewhere else in the world to do the movements for us. 

I am not advocating that you give up all of your creature comforts—after all, I am not making a fire to boil my tea in the morning (unless I am backpacking, of course)—but I am inviting you to take a look at your movement world from a different vantage point: 

, are there any movements you want to reclaim as yours?

Hit a reply and let me know!