The Body Remembers How to Play

They don't decide to. They don't practice it, worry about it, doubt whether they'll get it right this time. The body simply knows.

Children move the same way — before they're taught not to. They build obstacle courses instead of avoiding them. A challenge isn't a threat yet. It's just interesting.

Somewhere along the way, most of us lose this.

I was teaching a class recently, and in the background, my daughter was singing to herself — completely unconcerned with getting anything right, just making sound because it felt good to make it. And I found myself thinking: this is what we spend years of practice trying to get back to.

Not a new skill. An old one. One we already had.

The body remembers, even when the mind forgets. Underneath the bracing, underneath the tension we've mistaken for normal, there is still a nervous system that knows how to feel safe enough to play.

You find it in strange places. In the fatigue of a held pose that starts, unexpectedly, to feel like fun instead of struggle. In a challenge that used to feel like a threat and now just feels like an interesting problem — how do I get through this, under this, over this?

Curveballs stop feeling like emergencies. They start to feel almost like a game.

Not because life got easier.

Because something in you remembered it already knew how to land.