financial parallel: liquidity
mindful movement and physical presence. somatic exploration. staying active so the body doesn’t get stuck or rigid.
Origin Story
Like most folks, my history with movement started out performance-based. I would go to the gym a few times a week and mindlessly move my limbs for 20 minutes or so.
I would run when I felt stressed or when I was lonely, and for a short period of time it would make me feel better. So I knew there was a deeper impact than just building cardiovascular stamina. But I didn’t know the right questions to ask to explore that territory further. My physical movement was one-dimensional and unreflective.
It never occurred to me to think of my body as an integrated system.
For example, I didn’t see any point in strength training. It didn’t appeal to me because I was never interested in being a bulky “muscle” guy. I had no clue that it was lack of musculoskeletal strength that was causing a lot of my chronic back pain.
As far I was concerned, my body was mechanical without anything deeper going on below the surface.
When I started mountain biking, things shifted a bit. The activity was still performance based, but it was divorced from a sport goal, plus, it was outside.
My relationship to my body and to movement shifted drastically when I started hanging around people who slowed down all my movement and invited me to scan my body. They would ask questions like, “What’s moving? What are you feeling?”
That’s when I began to have an awareness of the subtle, internal motions of the body and its various layers — not just my limbs but my skin, muscles, tissue, and the nervous system connecting everything together.
I started engaging in somatic practices like Continuum and yoga nidra, and tracking subtle muscle movements.
A big breakthrough moment was when I went to a nature awareness workshop with Jamie McHugh of Somatic Expression. We were having experiences all around understanding the body as a sensory phenomenon, whether we’re touching water, sand, feeling the wind blowing on us, etc.
We also explored our body in conjunction with primal movements, such as reenacting amphibians coming out of the ocean — reliving our evolution. We were invited to wobble around the terrain, holding onto objects to stabilize ourselves in the transition to becoming bipeds. These were movements I’d never done in a gym before. They unlocked a deeper awareness of my body’s innate wisdom.
The experience restored the capacity I didn’t know I had for live biofeedback. All of a sudden I understood that there’s multiple forms of movement going on. There are larger muscle movements at work when I’m running, biking, or playing basketball. Yet there are all these small parts of the body going on that if I neglected, made me feel not whole.
The body can accumulate a lot of effects and still not give you “symptoms.” So if I’m not regularly paying attention to the subtle feedback of the body, I can end up piling on layers of calcification that make it harder to sense when things are out of balance.
Over the last 15 years this has crystalized even more clearly. I’ve come to see that I’m always getting feedback from the body, and I’ve taken to saying that I want to listen to the whisper, not the shout of my body.
With the practice of tuning into my body, my feedback meter has become more sensitive. Now I can pay attention to the more subtle things going on.
But it took me around 10 years to bring my soft body into conversation with my performance body. The soft body is what I call the somatic body, the tissue and nerves as opposed to the performance-based physiology. The soft animal / subtle animal is all the stuff that’s going on inside of me.
Before, I was constantly denying this aspect of myself, arguing against it. I started getting an inkling of its value when every time I was engaging the subtle, soft body I was falling asleep. That was my indicator that my sympathetic nervous system was being ridden too hard, so if it had any opening, it crapped out. I couldn’t stay with the moment — I’d fall asleep.
I didn’t know it at the time because I liked falling asleep, but now I see that was the extent of how much compensation I was unwinding.
Previously, my sympathetic nervous system was doing so much movement that I was exhausted all the time. Secular culture teaches movement only as what’s going on on the outside. But the inner movement is really important and is what tires us out.
The inner movement tires us out to the extent it’s not in conversation. It’s the lack of expression that’s leading to a lack of awareness. You have this whole element of your body that’s not being heard and nurtured, so it’s not in service anymore.
Now that I listen to my soft body, it’s what slows me down, like a carbon monoxide detector beeping and signaling you to get out of the house.
I came full circle and realized that during the time of rediscovering my soft body, I was doing a lot less of the performance based stuff, and I felt like there was a vacuum.
Now I try to go deeper on both sides.
You don’t want one body to tyrannize. It’s all about the variability between the two where I feel fully optimized. The two bodies are in conversation with each other and with me.
The performance body wants to power through even when it’s hurt. This may feel satisfying in order to meet a specific goal in the short term, but it isn’t helpful in the long term. On the other extreme, the soft body can get a little too “foo foo” — steering us towards only gentle movements that don’t require exertion. The evolutionary body needs something in between. It requires power and strength to navigate space and time, but hopefully without abusing our joints, muscles, tendons, etc., which leaves us stiff and sore rather than supple and supported.
Protocols / Resources
I’ll be honest: I hate “working out.” But I love moving. For me, movement feels like a love affair — a playful exploration that spans soft, subtle gestures to big, powerful motions. It’s less about tracking reps or chasing time and more about tuning in to how and why I move. I think of myself as the guardian of my own movement, asking: Am I in flow?
The second I feel like I’m being tracked by time rather than losing track of time, I stop. That’s when movement becomes “work,” and I fall out of flow.
If I didn’t have responsibilities pulling me back, I could spend the whole day immersed in movement: flowing between heat and cold, crawling on the lawn, balancing in headstands, lying under the sun, or moving however my body feels called. When I’m fully in my body — my soma-scape — I feel alive, grounded, and deeply connected.
Contrast that with the default, autopilot way we often move through life: driving without noticing the journey, sitting hunched at a desk, or mechanically pushing through a treadmill workout. That kind of movement doesn’t feel earned — it’s unreflective. But when you earn your movement, like stepping into a cold bath or balancing on a slackline, it sparks something deeper. You feel alive, inspired, and curious about what else your body can do.
Below, I share my movement practices — from daily routines to playful experiments — designed to foster presence, resilience, and joy.
Morning Routine: Stress, Flow, and Resilience
My mornings start with extremes to build resilience:
- 130°F Sauna: I dry brush to stimulate lymphatic flow while I sweat.
- 32°F Ice Bath: I submerge my head for the first 10 seconds, triggering the mammalian diving reflex. This natural response slows the heart rate, redirects blood to vital organs, and reduces stress and anxiety, leaving me calm and energized for the day.
- Movement Practice: Outside and barefoot (weather permitting), I combine traditional exercises like squats and kettlebells with animal-inspired movements. This blends strength, flexibility, and play while syncing my body with the rising sun.
- Sauna Cool-Down: I return to the heat for deep breathing, stretching, and another round of dry brushing. The hormetic stress from alternating temperatures helps reduce inflammation and relieves joint pain.
I also incorporate Wim Hof breathing to enhance oxygen flow, reduce stress, and clear my mind. By the end of my routine, I feel alive, alert, and ready to embrace the day.
Movement Throughout the Day: Stay Dynamic
My morning sets the tone, but movement doesn’t stop there. I weave it into my day:
- Attunement: I pay attention to subtle movements, like realigning my posture or adjusting my desk setup to avoid strain.
- Intentional Design: Kettlebells sit outside my house, so I carry them to and from my office daily. Slacklines, balance boards, and mini trampolines are always within reach for spontaneous movement breaks.
- Playful Exploration: I create backyard obstacle courses, practice falling, stand on one leg during calls, and improvise yoga sequences. These moments keep me engaged and prevent repetitive strain.
Barefoot Connection
I value the feedback my feet provide. Whether barefoot or in minimalist shoes (currently loving my Lems), I let my feet connect with the ground, strengthening muscles, improving alignment, and grounding myself.
The Wisdom of Earned Movement
When I immerse myself in practices like cold baths, balancing, or crawling on the ground, the movement feels earned. It’s no longer mindless; it’s meaningful.
These experiences are my “A-ha!” moments — they teach me resilience, inspire curiosity, and remind me of what it feels like to truly live in my body.
For me, the Earth itself is the best gym. Nature does the work if I simply show up and put myself in relationship with it. That’s a wisdom no gym membership can replicate.
Deeper Why
I feel fortunate that I can move at my age because my dad couldn’t. He was overweight and had bad knees. He struggled to walk and so was very sedentary.
A lot of people I see in my old home town can barely move. And I feel like I’m moving better than I ever have in my life.
Movement is, for me, the foundation of longevity and increased healthspan. Being able to sit, stand, balance, stabilize, bend, reach, twist — these determine our quality of life in a major way. From how much we can get out and enjoy the world, to how much independence we have.
Instead of focusing on specific, performative movements, I’m at a place now where I’m nourishing an intimate relationship with my physical self, becoming increasingly aware of the subtle signals my body is sending me so that I can tend to its needs.
Not only is that more motivating than going to a gym, but it’s also a fascinating exploration. I’m learning to listen to my somatic self and my soft animal with greater attunement. And the more I listen, the more I end up learning and feeling in awe.
The movement masterpiece is about supporting my interest in resiliency. Resilience comes by having a lot of different practices and creating a much larger range of a lot of different types of movements. And having fun with that.
Resiliency makes me feel alive. When I’m feeling alive, I feel well. That’s the metric I’m using to assess wellness: aliveness!
What’s Next?
I’m currently bringing the whole gamut to the playing field — internal and external sources. Leveraging advanced medical scans like Prenuvo’s comprehensive whole-body MRI and Cleerly’s heart screening, as well as lab panels from Function Health, and bringing those into conversation with my evolutionary body and my own subtle biofeedback.
My current feeling is one of integration. Yes, I’ve got very specific protocols for moving my body, and I’m diving deep into diagnostics and data — including getting my entire gnome mapped through Nebula Genomics, which has been a next-level addition to the support I’m receiving from my team of doctors at BioReset.
Yet, I don’t feel trapped in the literality of these processes or practices. I’m not slavishly going through the motions or obsessing about getting in a certain number of steps each day. Instead, I’m inhabiting my body and building a relationship with it.
15 years ago I was living with the narrative that I needed to be a modern day intellectual. I was enamored with ideas and the history of ideas and philosophy, but all that was ungrounded and untethered.
There was no integration of the world of motion into my full-time occupation with the mind. I would sit, disembodied and cogitate, then I would go to the gym or run with my awareness completely turned off, going through the motions.
The reality is that everything ends up in the body — our body and the Earthly body. There’s no escaping our material being, our energetic being, our somatic being. It’s not immune from the relationship or lack of relationship that it has with the mind.
Before I knew how to be in relationship with my body, I was prone to a lot of rumination and phantom arguments in my head. I would futurize my current dissatisfaction or pain, making myself miserable believing that I’d never get relief from the mental or physical dis-ease I felt in the moment.
The soft body taught me how to be present. You can’t be having these futuristic worry conversations when scanning your body, lying down in yoga nidra, or standing in the sun, fresh out of an ice bath. If I listen closely to what’s going on inside me, my body will just tell me what to do. And that’s my ultimate guide for moving and mastering my physical space.
I feel like I’m sitting in a pretty balanced place at the moment. One of the cool outcomes is that when you work on the soft animal within, your ideas get softer, too. I’m less dogmatic, evangelical, and argumentative. Instead, I have a soft lens on life. And that means life has a softer lens on me, too.
~ Gino