The Pervasive Distraction of Modern Life and Our Kinesthetic Ticket to Resilience

Observe the city around you. Notice the subtle shifts in your body when a fellow New Yorker, engrossed in their phone, abruptly slows their pace on the sidewalk. Feel the muscle tension? Count the heads in the subway car, a sea of faces illuminated by screens. Just recently, a young woman nearly walked into an oncoming MTA bus on 14th Street. It was a heart-stopping moment to witness, leaving one to wonder: what did she feel?

Chronic distraction isn't just an urban phenomenon; it's pervasive in modern society. It begs the question: what simple things can we do to cultivate greater self-awareness and resilience in a world constantly vying for our attention?

As a Physical Therapist, Feldenkrais practitioner, and Tai Chi player, I've discovered that one of the most potent tools we possess for honing our attention skills is kinesthetic awareness—the conscious practice of paying attention to the feelings of our own movement. Observing how we walk, how we navigate stairs, and how we perform all the myriad activities of our daily lives is the fundamental blueprint for cultivating awareness and resilience.

Movement as a Masterclass in Attention In various disciplines, movement serves as a powerful teacher:

Tai Chi trains us in both internal and external attention—coordinating hips and shoulders, feeling the chi draw up from the ground and express itself through the hands.
Feldenkrais encourages us to move with a reduced level of effort and intentional slowness. This allows us to feel the more nuanced integration of our body and learn to distinguish the gap between our intention and our action.
Physical Therapy often considers the external dynamics—the kinetic chain, or managing movements with local, regional, or global intention.

In my view, it's all valuable. Movement intention inherently cultivates awareness and resilience. It fundamentally trains us to cope more effectively, whether dealing with pain, functional limitation, or the natural decline that is part of life. Regulating our attention and observing our movement behavior are our tickets to a deeper, more satisfying existence.

Why is this relevant to a physical therapy blog? We need to ask ourselves a profound question and genuinely reckon with what it means to be responsible in our own lives. Why is a philosophical topic about awareness relevant in a physical therapy blog?

Because physical therapy isn't just about injury recovery; it's about optimizing function and quality of life. Our relationship with our bodies—and our awareness of them—directly impacts our physical health, preventing injury, managing chronic conditions, and improving how we interact with the world. By training our attention through movement, we become more present, more capable, and ultimately, more responsible for our own well-being in a distracting world.

Image source: Freepik