In my 20s, I loved running. I called it “my Prozac.” Every week, I tried to run 25 miles.
It kept my mood up and my heart healthy. But when I reached my 30s, my relationship with running soured. My back started protesting the long runs.
Then it protested the short runs. Eventually, one morning, I couldn’t walk. My back said, “Nope, no more running.
” For months, I felt pretty sad about this huge loss in my life. I tried other types of exercising, but my back protested it all — biking, yoga, pilates, zumba, you name it. Everything that our society calls “exercising” hurt my back for many days afterward.
“Sorry. But we’re done with all of that,” my 33 vertebrae said in unison. A different exercise mind-set At the same time, I was reporting on global health for NPR, and I started to realize that exercising per se was a strange phenomenon.
Around the world, people don’t necessarily go out and move their bodies with the intent to burn calories and tone their thighs (mmmm ...
chicken thighs). Instead, they embrace a revolutionary idea: They move — and move quite a bit — with a clear purpose in mind beyond the movement. They move to reach a destination.
They move to hunt or forage. They move to take care of animals or tend crops. Or build a structure.
Or gather firewood. “Every day you're doing something from dawn to dusk,” says Esther Ngumbi , who grew up in rural Kenya and is now an entomologist at the University of Illinois, Urbana. “In the mornin.