From what I see, many people are struggling with parenting, how to raise kids and enjoy the process. I believe asking questions is one of the most powerful things we can do. Did people generations ago really have such a grasp on parenting that this generation doesn't have? Or maybe, just maybe, we're trying to raise whales in a fish tank, and it's just not working. Maybe it's not the whales or the whale trainers 'fault' but the tank. What if we could transition out of the tank and all these little issues that seem unrelated start to heal.
One of my favorite authors right now is Katy Bowman. All of her books and blogs and podcasts are amazing. She's a biomechanist who studies humans movement. She's very smart and I'll write quite a bit about what I've learned from her and her work. In her book "Move Your DNA" she discusses orca whales in captivity. Most of us have seen the dorsal fin being flopped over in whats that are in captivity, specifically male whales. Remember Free Willy? Do you know why this is ( the fin flopping over, not your remembering Free Willy)? The dorsal fin is not made up of muscle but a cartilage. And what traditionally holds it up are the forces of swimming deep in the ocean for long distances in one direction. Transfer this whale into a shallow tank where they swim in circles over and over and the forces on what normally holds up the fin have changed drastically. Take minute and do something for me please? Stand up and walk in a circle for 30 seconds and take note of how you feel. Or take a drink of water in your mouth, hang upside down and then swallow. Forces are real and make a huge impact on the world around us, even is we can't see them. Part of the reason the whale wasn't built with a muscle to hold up his dorsal fin was because it would be a waste of energy to have a muscle working all the time to do a job that the natural forces around the whale doing what a whale would naturally do, would accomplish.
I love this example. It's very clear. Forces have huge impact on our bodies. And often, because of their amazing design, we expect that we can live how we want and we're upset when we experience some form of 'fallen fin' syndrome in the form of back pain or joint pain, or excess energy or fallen arches or inconsistency and on and on. Or we go into treating the fallen fin, what type of pill or exercises can I take or do to make this fin stand back up. What if our body's are dysfunctional, but simply lacking the forces to hold us together. What if they are responding just right for the environment they are in? What if, as amazing as our body are at compensating, there are limits to how functional we can be in different environments? Another way to refer to these things could be casts. When someone breaks their arm and it's in the cast for 6 weeks or so, how does it feel when it comes off? It's weak. In just that short amount of time, the muscles have changed dramatically.
One example is that in the US we are seeing the age of who is getting hip replacements dropping dramatically, getting younger and younger. And the number of hip replacements is huge. "Over the 10 years of the study, the number of procedures more than doubled, from 138,700 in 2000 to 310,800 in 2010. The number grew by 92 percent, to 80,000, among those age 75 and older. It jumped by 205 percent in those aged 45 to 54, to 51,900."
This is just one statistic, we live in a society where it seems everyone needs a joint replacement or hernia surgery or deals with a chronic physical aliment and pain and discomfort. Are our bodies really that frail or are we seeing the impact of lack of forces we need to be held together and not 'flop over'?
And so I have started reading and researching how all these things effect me and my children' bodies. Things like shoes and chairs and how the cultural sedentary lifestyle we are living in is allowing us to fall apart because we lack the natural forces we need to keep us functional.
What specifically are our fish tank? Or our cages? Chairs, shoes, screens, diet to name just a few. I want to explore our options. Obviously we can't throw all the things out move into the woods, forage our own food and do all the movement to survive and yet not live our lives in our cultures and families that we are plugged into. But we also don't have to turn off our minds and believe the lie that we don't have any options, that they are all too expensive or hard or inconvenient or simply unattainable. In order to not have the consequences that our sedentary cultural lifestyle we live in produces, we have to start to take steps to break free. And the first step is always being ok with asking questions and looking for answers and not allowing the feeling of being overwhelmed to stop any momentum. It's not doing nothing because we can't do the 'perfect' thing. It's deciding there is no perfect way to do anything, but there's always a next step. My personal goal is to not be in the same place year from now as I am right now. And the only way to do this is to simply focus on the next step. I see so many moms become paralyzed by this idea of being perfect or being a failure or not being like so and so. This breaks my heart because it stops us from becoming the best us we can be. It prevents growth and change and as humans that's what we're made for, growth and change. So, the questions I ask are for that purpose, growth. I don't ask questions to begin a comparison competition or to try and achieve any level of perfection. Believe me, that will never happen for me in this lifetime. I simply desire to know my next step and to take it and to never give up doing that.
And so, identifying our 'fish tanks', 'casts' or 'cages' and beginning to make changes can seem overwhelming, but it's obvious to me, that our and our kid's fins are flopping, in so many different areas. So, what if we could instead of being overwhelmed and doing nothing, we could start to take steps toward getting out of the cage. Like the example of what types of eggs to buy, there's not just two options, traditional store bought eggs or having your own chickens. Learning that their are other options outside of 'living in a tank' is essential to functionality is all areas. Onward, friends.
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