Moving with pleasure and play, being a student of life, and enjoying the process: a conversation with Joy Quillinan
A delightful chat about the pursuit of longevity through the lens of JOY (literally)
Welcome to March! Since moving to the West Coast, it might just be one of my favourite months of the year. It signals spring, longer days, the beginning of receiving vitamin D from the sun, the sight of little sprinklings of blooms that feel so novel and special and we can’t help but stop and notice and be present with, and more often than not we go to Mexico and stay with my in-laws. Lots of pings of joy! Speaking of…as most of you reading this know, this Substack is rooted in providing tools and techniques to cultivate joy in the pursuit of feeling well. Investing in our longevity and having a good time doing it. So, it is incredibly fitting that this month features a conversation with my dear friend, who is so appropriately named, Joy. This post is on the longer side, which I know can challenge our attention spans: so my recommendation is to create conditions of comfort as you digest the opposite of a quick TikTok post. Maybe that includes a warm beverage and sunshine, and enJOY our conversation.
Before we dive into our convo, I’ll set the stage for what sparked the idea to chat with Joy. As a few of my more recent posts have suggested, I am in my absolutely-fascinated-with-the-concept-of-achieving-moderation-in-life era, especially when it comes to movement. It’s something I discuss extensively with Kyle, my soon-to-be Physiotherapist and life partner, perhaps because it took both of us feeling uncomfortable in our bodies to step back and reconsider what it means to move well. What is a sustainable movement practice? And why has the wellness world become obsessed with optimizing for longevity, when the process of optimizing is ironically often not leading to optimal health or movement?
We’ve been talking about the idea of good form versus good form for YOUR body. There was a big movement in the fitness world that there was no such thing as bad form or technique…everyone is different! Just keep hinging deeper and deeper and as long as you’re not in pain, you’re fine! While the idea is nice, I believe it is an outdated model. For example, so often we are instructed to go into the deepest variation of something, where we’re told that more range under tension = the recipe for more “gains”. Can you hear the Pilates teacher chiming, “Deeper! Go deeper!” Just because we can in the moment, doesn’t necessarily mean we should! The optimization community tells us that jogging isn’t enough – we need to boost our VO2 max with sprinting! Yet sprinting is a movement pattern that drives a lot of force, and as we fatigue, our body starts to shift into these, call them “funky” compensations that can lead to that nagging ankle pain or irritated hip. Not many thought leaders in the space are talking about these compensations that need to take place in this pursuit of more more more, and how that compensation starts to drive pain and injury. A 22 year old might not have those compensations quite yet, while a 44 year old is more likely to based on the simple fact that they have lived longer and their body has experienced more wear and tear, aka life. Essentially, anyone doing anything in an extreme, performance-driven way, is very likely going to experience physical compensations to pursue that PB squat, marathon, deep lunge, etc. Kyle will write a whole guest post on why and how this happens, because I think it’s a fascinating thing to understand!
I thought for so long that more is better when it comes to movement - optimization equated to the consistent pursuit of doing more. More muscle definition and less body fat equals superior. Higher VO2 max equates to living longer. A faster pace per km means you’ve improved, progressed, elevated your fitness etc. Kyle recently presented me with an idea that has shifted both of our perspectives immensely, and that is this:
If we picture our well-being on a linear graph, we have sickness to the far left, health smack dap in the middle, and then performance is at the far right. You might need to read that again to download that this suggests that living and moving for performance shifts us away from a state of health to the same degree that disease does.
Whaaaaat!? I bet a lot of people would be offended by this and disagree, but I actually think it presents a radical idea. Of course, “health” is not this stationary state we achieve and looks differently for folks in different stages of life, but the idea suggests that we all have a certain, call it, “bandwidth”, and living, especially moving, for performance, can use up that bandwidth earlier than living and moving more moderately. For someone who has always feared being “average”, this is a confronting idea for me, and I am also very aware that my pursuits for performing have led to compensations in how I move and how I feel that do not support my health. I think the wellness and movement world has, in general, confused performance and longevity. We can optimize ourselves for performance, but that does not necessarily mean we are investing in our longevity and health span (quality of life). Moving moderately is rarely associated with the pursuit of optimization, which I believe is quite problematic if we want to live long, healthy and happy lives. And, this idea of investing in our longevity through “optimization” so often leads to us missing the magic of the moment and enjoying the process. I get into this more in my chat with Joy.
Through this curiosity around moving moderately and moving an “average” amount, Kyle and I have noticed that the students in class who might move a little slower, pick up a “medium” amount of weight, and opt for variations versus the deepest expression, have fewer compensations (yes, we talk about your form over dinner…jks jks…sorta :)). One day when we were discussing this, I can’t remember if it was Kyle or myself who brought up that Joy moves really well, especially in shapes that a lot of folks tend to show compensation in. Joy, to me, is a moderate mover when it comes to how she participates in class: she takes variations, moves very consciously and curiously, and listens to her body. She also exudes true joy in movement that me and students around her are very grateful for. It’s wonderful to witness.