I miss floor time

"The process of aging" is a parable we've always heard from the adults - an inevitable life sentence that always seemed impossibly far away, too abstract to really consider or empathize with, and then suddenly, it's here. It's happening to me, and I find myself both curious and uncomfortable with that. It's exactly what the adults said it would be, and also not quite so terrible. There have been a lot of moments where I've noticed a new stiffness, or a part of my body that I could once easily reach but now seems further from me. I'm noticing it's a little harder to get comfortable, a little harder to get still or feel fully relaxed. Some part of me - usually my neck, shoulders, or lower back - is always at least a little tense.

I try not to get too in my head about it, but I wonder if all this noticing stems from the intentional practice of presence (which is, of course, a net-positive), or the simple fact that indeed, my body didn't used to feel like this. I really am getting older. I'm at that dreaded threshold where things just start to hurt and get harder. Can I slow myself over that ledge before I stumble over it? Better yet...can I go back?

There is a new kind of craving my body has been reaching for lately; all I've known of cravings before now was directly related to food, sleep or sex. Now it's also space. I crave space to move. I want a giant dance hall all to myself, or at least a yoga studio. I want a sprawling field to run wild and never reach the end of. I want a body of water I can swim deep down into - not freezing, but cool enough to wake my limbs up, to remind the rest of me that they're still there.

I want the floor of my childhood basement.

It was never as glamorous as these other spaces. It was scratchy beige carpet, stained, thinly covering concrete. Any time we got a bad rain storm, it would flood. And any time the TV was turned on, I would be laying on that floor without a pillow for my head, arms cradling my neck and eyes up to the screen while my legs sprawled up or out in any direction that felt comfortable. I would often rock myself, similar to the "happy baby" yoga pose, but wilder. I would do bridges. I would lay upside-down over the couch cushions. I would do somersaults or stand on my head when I got particularly fidgety.

I ate lunch on a plastic plate on that floor. I sat on a blanket next to my dad at night when I wasn't settled enough to go to bed. I spread my craft supplies and wrote handmade Valentines for my entire fifth grade class on that floor. I read over 100 pages of a Harry Potter book in one day, curled up next to the fireplace in the corner like a cat might be. I laid there, appendages stretched out, earbuds locked in and stared out the taped-up window listening to indie songs on my iPod. And when the last bad rain came while I still lived in that house, and we found out the underside of the carpet was rotting out, we stripped it and left it as bare concrete for probably close to a year. I still chose to lay on it over the couch.

I think the point is that I never had to think about mobility when I had room to do it. Ever since moving out of that house, I've been active in other ways. I've stayed more or less consistent in weightlifting. I do yoga in front of my altar when I have time (which isn't nearly as often as I'd like). I go on walks. I swim in the river. My job has me up on my feet for a good portion of the day. All of these are good habits to form as a now-aging-adult. Most health professionals would agree. But I still feel so sedentary.

Come to think of it, "stagnancy" is a feeling that has crept up in many areas of my life, and every time it's excruciating. I've felt it mentally the most, when I'm in a slump and struggling to figure out which direction to steer my course next. What I'm not used to is feeling physically stagnant. But I'd be willing to bet it's a bigger problem than in my individual body alone. I think it happens to all of us, and very few of us ever name it.

It starts in the home. As our ability to afford spacious places to live decreases, more and more people find themselves cramped up in an apartment or townhome with roommates, families, or at the very least, partners. The togetherness isn't the problem, of course, it's simply how much room we can claim for ourselves and how comfortable we feel in asking for it. In my own home, as mentioned, I try to roll out a yoga mat at least once a week and do some simple stretching and movement in front of my altar. But unlike the vast, open floor of my childhood, my current living room is only about a third of the size and still, by far, the largest room in the house. There is a couch and a chair and a coffee table which we added two years after moving in. It's very much needed - who wants a room for socializing without a space to set down drinks or cards or a book? - but ever since we put it there, the amount of movement that occurred in the room dropped to almost zero. The spot on the floor for my yoga mat only extends about a foot in each direction before you'd bump into something.

There's a few square feet at the edge of our bed for rolling around on the floor, which I tend to do when the room is clean. I can sprawl out on the couch in our office, which is ideal for napping and reading and watching TV, but certainly not much else. I can prop my legs up on the closet door in that room and lay the rest of my body down on the floor. Otherwise, we sit or stand. That's all there's room for.

And I've missed that spaciousness ever since we moved here - aside from the lack of direct sunlight, it's the only thing I don't like about this house. The simple conclusion is that there's just not much we can do about the square footage, or the spaces we can afford to live in. I don't resent that, but I do want to find a way to emulate that space for mobility before my body gets too tired to look for it.

I think there's something worth saying here about how we design our adult spaces entirely around stillness, and then wonder why our bodies feel forgotten. It goes further than normalizing cubicles and sitting at a desk for eight hours a day for work, because the vast majority of us make places to sit the focal points of our homes. That's for our comfort, sure, but when we've already sat or laid down for nearly every other moment of the day, we may need to build in spaces where we can sprawl a little.

This is the part of the problem that we can control: working within our means to allow ourselves some freedom in movement, especially if you feel as closed-in as I often do. If there's no place in the home for mobility practice, how can we get creative? How can we play? Can we use our furniture in a different way, or try an activity from a different angle? Can we temporarily move lighter objects to make room? If not, where can we go outside to find it?

This really isn't about fitness or health optimizing at all. I keep using the word "mobility," but I don't think of it in the sense of physical wellbeing or lack thereof. It comes from a deeper, more specific fear, I think. It's a low, groaning dread of losing access to my body entirely after neglecting it for a few years. The same body I used to inhabit fully without even thinking about it has become one that I think about regularly, but have trouble connecting with. It's not a matter of "exercising more," it's actively avoiding atrophy. It's reclaiming whatever this relationship is supposed to be.

For instance: I've been wanting to take dance lessons for years now. Surely a small part of the motivation is because I want to actually look and feel like a better dancer - I watch professionals on Instagram showcase their craft and I'm in awe. I want to be able to do that, to be as fit and fluid as they are. I want to look even 5% as graceful as they do when I dance with my friends. But a much larger part is knowing that it would give me an outlet with which to move my body. I watch them and think: "they must feel so good. They must never have any tension or stiffness. They're going to feel young forever if they keep this up." But as good as that deal sounds, I still haven't taken any steps to join them.

What's stopping me, I wonder? Is it embarrassment, worry, or the worst possibility: laziness? Is it the opposite - that I tell myself there's not enough time in my schedule? Is it the same thing that stops most of us from getting familiar with our bodies again?

I haven't settled in on a clear answer yet, but it's important enough to me to get it figured out soon. It will be another contemplation worth sitting with for longer than it took to write about it. And still, the longer I sit, the further my body will continue to get away from me. So I think it's time to meet her back on the floor, to really listen close and watch as every inch of skin stretches and moves over the bones and muscles underneath. Maybe I'll throw in a few somersaults. I just want to remember what it felt like.